Finance students eye future with uncertainty
November 4, 2008
- Finance students eye future with uncertainty
SINGAPORE (Reuters) -
These may be uncertain times for banking and finance workers, but spare a thought for thousands of wannabe whiz kids still looking for a start in industry.
She said prospective employees would have to scale back their expectations and perhaps seek less glamorous openings with less prestigious firms.
”They shouldn’t be so brand conscious,” Ross told Reuters, but said the prognosis wasn’t all bad.
”Fresh graduates shouldn’t feel all doom and gloom, they should keep an open mind and feel positive.
University students studying finance in Singapore, a regional financial center, were not upbeat.
”It’s a bottomless pit,” said P. Ong, a third-year finance student at Singapore Management University, on the current global financial crisis.
”They don’t teach this in the textbooks. I think anyone who hasn’t graduated is very, very jittery.”
Jing Rong, 24, a finance major graduating next May, said it was good the financial crisis was cutting the wheat from the chaff.
”It’s definitely a lot tougher to find a job but one thing good is that we know which banks to apply for since some have gone under already,” he said.
He said applied a few days ago to join a bank as a junior private banker, only to find out later that it was going to be nationalized.
”It’s not within my control. I just apply and wait for a response,” he said.
JOB CUTS
Many banks and finance institutions around the world have already announced sweeping cuts in the wake of the crisis, meaning graduates will be not only be competing with each other for jobs, but also with the newly unemployed.
Goldman Sachs Group said last week it plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce joining Barclays Plc, which is looking to cut at least 3,000 jobs in the United States and Merrill Lynch, which warned recently that “thousands” would be laid off as it is absorbed into Bank of America Corp.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - These may be uncertain times for banking and finance workers, but spare a thought for thousands of wannabe whiz kids still looking for a start in industry.
Andrea Ross, director of recruitment firm Robert Walters, Singapore, said she expects to see far fewer jobs for fresh graduates as banks and investment houses cut back on recruiting and training in the wake of the global financial crisis.
She said prospective employees would have to scale back their expectations and perhaps seek less glamorous openings with less prestigious firms.
”They shouldn’t be so brand conscious,” Ross told Reuters, but said the prognosis wasn’t all bad.
”Fresh graduates shouldn’t feel all doom and gloom, they should keep an open mind and feel positive.
University students studying finance in Singapore, a regional financial center, were not upbeat.
“It’s a bottomless pit,” said P. Ong, a third-year finance student at Singapore Management University, on the current global financial crisis.
“They don’t teach this in the textbooks. I think anyone who hasn’t graduated is very, very jittery.”
Jing Rong, 24, a finance major graduating next May, said it was good the financial crisis was cutting the wheat from the chaff.
“It’s definitely a lot tougher to find a job but one thing good is that we know which banks to apply for since some have gone under already,” he said.
He said applied a few days ago to join a bank as a junior private banker, only to find out later that it was going to be nationalized.
“It’s not within my control. I just apply and wait for a response,” he said.
JOB CUTS
Many banks and finance institutions around the world have already announced sweeping cuts in the wake of the crisis, meaning graduates will be not only be competing with each other for jobs, but also with the newly unemployed.
Goldman Sachs Group said last week it plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce joining Barclays Plc, which is looking to cut at least 3,000 jobs in the United States and Merrill Lynch, which warned recently that “thousands” would be laid off as it is absorbed into Bank of America Corp.
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