The work of the ICMA Centre is to educate about the capital markets, so the students and the managers are all pleased that there are reported green shoots in the City Finance industry. But what will it mean for vacancies?

From a graduate recruitment perspective, the last few years have seen increased importance towards internships as City Finance graduate recruiters have recruited fewer and fewer students directly into front office roles, instead opting to trial applicants over the summer, and offering graduate training to a few of the best performers.  That’s meant that the BSc second year students (that the internships were designed for) are competing against BSc finalists & MSc students for the summer work.

So, I’m watching the job market with interest this Spring – if the green shoots are truly there, then City Finance firms will be looking at the projected numbers of new graduate trainees starting in September 2014 and thinking that that won’t be enough newbies starting to meet the needs of front office departments. This in turn will mean that recruiters will be asking graduate jobs boards, such as targetjobs & milkround, to start re-advertising vacancies that closed in the Autumn, hoping to snag some additional recruiters over the summer.

I noticed today that JP Morgan have started re-advertising their IBD vacancies in London on targetjobs – so I’ll be watching with interest whether this is the start of a trend and potential better recruitment times to come.