Polly's press & media appearances
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Rediscover your Passion - Go It Alone
Finansmiljøet i London - et Jobbhelvete
Fear and Loathing in the Heart of the city
My Glittering City Career Turned into Golden Handcuffs
Do Women Really Get a Raw Deal in the City?
My High Flying City Job was not worth a Life of Misery
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Recruitment: A degree of attraction Financial Times (Tom Braithwaite) 6th April 2005 This year’s graduates will be the most indebted ever with an average £15,171 of outstanding loans. But employers have vacancies to fill and have to compete hard to land the brightest students. Starting salaries at investment banks can exceed £35,000, law trainees can earn £28,000 and the big accountants pay up to £25,000: suddenly the debt burden seems lighter, at least for a few.
The very top salaries have not changed much in the past few years though. The real difference this year is an expected 4.8 per cent rise in the average salary to £22,000, according to research from the Association of Graduate Recruiters. Meanwhile, vacancies among AGR employers are up 14.5 per cent. And as competition heats up, recruiters are looking to distinguish themselves by means other than the size of their pay cheques. “CSR” (corporate social responsibility) is this year’s buzz phrase, delivered with alacrity by recruiters. And they even seem to mean it. The reason is that corporate scandals, such as the collapse of Enron and WorldCom, have made City recruiters’ jobs harder and given the public sector a boost. Carl Gilleard, head of the AGR, says one public sector recruiter recently told him: “Everyone wants to work for the good guys now.” City recruiters have to act fast to bolster their CSR credentials. Just as business fraud has deterred some students, the ensuing regulation and changed accounting rules have caused a 25 per cent increase in graduate recruiting this year at KPMG. Morgan Stanley recruits are given the CSR lowdown on their first day and introduced to the bank’s array of community commitments that include school mentoring programmes, charity team events, a charity committee and paid leave for volunteering. Training is a more established buzzword than CSR but companies are finding it has an increasing resonance with students. New starters on Morgan Stanley’s IT programme spend 18 weeks training in New York. One recruiter says students have become more focused on the long term benefits of joining a City institution and want to enhance their CVs by gaining qualifications, especially in glamorous locations. Exposure to the company can come long before the initial training phase as internships are growing in popularity. Mr Gilleard says these help both sides. If a first-year student has a good time, he or she could encourage others to apply. But the reverse is true too. “If an individual has a bad experience then it’s quite a dangerous thing to have somebody wandering around campus slagging off your company,” he says. It would also be dangerous to have a young disillusioned banker publish a novel based on her experience. Polly Courtney has just finished writing Golden Handcuffs (out next year), which draws on her time as a graduate at an investment bank. She says there was an overwhelming macho culture: “Corporate Finance was dominated by men who went out on lads’ nights out and wouldn’t invite the women.” Out of a graduate intake of 37, only seven were women. In Miss Courtney’s department of 25, she soon became the last after two female colleagues decided to leave. Ultimately it was the “staple 12 hour days” - often she would work longer - that made her change career. Recruiters are aware of a problem and are faced with a chicken and egg conundrum. Is the macho culture a result of an overwhelmingly male workforce or vice versa? Some banks are responding by going into schools to preach to girls the virtues of a financial career. A growth in recruiters pitching to schools also comes from the tight UK graduate labour market, which does not just lead to wage inflation, better working conditions and training trips to New York. School leavers are increasingly seen as fair game either to be sold the company’s brand or sold a job, right away. It is no coincidence that this comes ahead of the October introduction of top-up university fees of up to £3,000. Ruth Stokes, head of graduate recruitment at KPMG, notes that school leavers can beat their university-going contemporaries to qualifying as accountants. Many 18-year-olds, though, are set on staying in education. Several recruiters confirmed that, to respond to this, they are considering offering bursaries to help students meet the extra cost of going to university with the hope that most will later consider a City career with their sponsor. But homegrown strategies might not be sufficient. KPMG is raising its target for international graduate recruitment from 10 per cent to 15 to 20 per cent of the 850 strong intake. And Joanne Scott at Morgan Stanley is also looking abroad: “France, Germany, Italy, Spain - we are getting strong candidates from those areas. If we get more high quality graduates from Europe, we’ll recruit them.” One former graduate investment banker welcomes City recruiters’ commitment to work-life balance and training. But he saw no evidence. “As a first year analyst you work ridiculous hours. It’s made worse by the fact that you don’t really know what you’re doing most of the time.” And the main thing he misses about the bank? “The pay packet.” |
Polly's TV & Radio appearances
From Engineer to Investment Banker to Novelist
Berliner Zeitung Magazin, 2007
I Know the Pressure Matthew was Under
I Sold My Soul to the City - then Wanted it Back
Banker Novel Shows it's not all Success in the City
Taste of High Life in City can Seduce Interns
City Woman who quit City over Sexism admits Lapdancing
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