Soft Skills for Hard Times

Full FT article

How we see it: Soft skills at a premium

By Peter Whitehead

Published: July 6 2010 10:44 | Last updated: July 6 2010 10:44

The days of the hard-nosed banker might be on the wane as banks seek recruits with “softer” personal skills, such as gravitas, personality, charisma.

In some areas, particularly risk management, they need people who can act as an interface, interacting with and influencing senior management.

This is just one of the trends identified by Chris Hickey, a managing director at Robert Walters, the recruitment consultancy, in this new series in which we seek the views of an industry expert. This is how he sees other aspects of the banking jobs market:

● Where have the vacancies in banking come from and which are the banks seeking to recruit – new staff or people laid off over the past two years?

Some are replacement hires but lots of new people are being taken on as there are not enough ex-players to meet demand. Some have moved out of the city – into teaching, universities and other interests. Others have gone to other areas of banking or re-qualified.

● Where are the shortages the banks are trying to fill?

Control functions have seen growth. But there is an element of caution here as banks wait to see what happens as the Financial Services Authority is phased out and the Bank of England begins to assume control.

Projects and change management remains a big hiring area as the economy shows signs of recovery. As a result of various mergers and acquisitions throughout the financial crisis, change management programmes require business analysts and project managers. Recruitment in this area has been buoyant.

Wealth management businesses continue to demand candidates across all levels. In addition, there is demand for expertise in documentation and processing of derivatives trades (there has been a big focus on clearing backlogs in the over-the-counter market), audit and market risk management. Treasury and liquidity professionals have also been sought-after.

In compliance, we have witnessed significant demand for control room, surveillance monitoring and, with new legislation, anti-bribery specialists.

Projects are also now going ahead – especially consolidating IT and the back office. The market value of IT specialists has gone up as there are not enough on the market.

● What skills are the banks looking for – any changes since the downturn?

Apart from those “softer skills”, banks are focusing more on forecasting and planning, while control was their priority during the recession.

● Are there enough people with those skills?

There are – but attracting them is proving difficult as they are mostly well looked after by their current employers.

● How far afield are UK banks looking for talent?

Institutions are looking globally for specific in-demand transferable skills – such as product control, audit and risk management, for example.

● Are banks needing to offer inducements to get the right staff?

Candidates with in-demand skills are getting exceptionally aggressive incentives to stay from their existing employers – large increases in base salaries, a title increase or international opportunities. I would say that around 50 per cent of all our candidates offered jobs receive buy-backs of some kind.

● How strong a position is the job-seeker in?

It depends on the product and skill set. In busier functions and products, the best candidates have sometimes received up to five offers from different institutions. Private wealth management is pretty strong, for example.

Banks with more streamlined recruitment processes are securing the best talent – the ones that assess candidates for days, rather than over a long series of short interviews spread over weeks.

Those prepared to be flexible are getting the best recruits – such as using videoconferencing and after-hours meetings.

● Are banks seeking quantity or quality?

Definitely quality. Banks are not rushing into recruitment and are taking time to vet each hire. This generally involves interviews with more senior management than in the past and the business generally getting much more involved. The flip side of this is that banks which move quickly are more likely to secure the best talent.

● Is there a difference between UK-based banks and UK-based arms of international banks?

As a general rule, UK-based banks are able to move quicker in terms of recruiting people as they do not have to seek approval from overseas HQs.

However, we have noticed that non-government funded UK-based banks are able to move the fastest and have beaten others to candidates in many cases.

● Is there a difference in requirements between investment banks and retail banks?

Retail and commercial banks are now willing to consider people with investment banking backgrounds and, crucially, these candidates are willing to consider those jobs, as the recession has made candidates look further afield.

There is more cross-over. Reality has set in: retail banking is now being competitive on pay and is seen as less risky.

great post. I'm not sure what you mean about eye-contact being "the great equalizer in business and in life." Could you elaborate?

Love the attitude quote

Midas Mulligan Magoo:

I learned this lesson the hard way. Some of the most successful people I've met were not necessarily the brightest, but they were the ones you wanted to...grab a beer...grill a steak...LBO a company...with.

Great line

Great post, you always hear the "who you know", but often times that alludes to family connections and such, ignoring connections and relationships that you have worked to build with people.

In a world of GPA's and number of internships its seems like soft skills can be easily forgotten about. Marks alone will rarely get you the job...

Not to take away from the post, but did anybody else notice that each item on the top 60 list gets increasingly longer?

Before I got into PE, I worked in some sales positions. It was a step outside the typical career path, but it literally changed my personality and forced me to build up my soft skills.

My previous job was in commercial loans, and I would be talking on the phone with business owners/execs all day. At first I was nervous and sucked like a hoover, but eventually I learned to relax and have fun with it. My production shot through the roof once I started to loosen up and joke around with these guys.

Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" is a great place to start if you're an awkward baboon.

My view on life is that soft skills are a kind of value-added thing to tack onto the products of technical skills. There's building a house and building a home. The engineer might build the house, but the real-estate agent sells the home. That's a soft skill.

That said, attitude is not a soft skill. It is more of a character attribute than a soft skill. Being honest and treating people fairly are also character attributes.

At the end of the day, you can run the country on technical skills- it might be boring and lifeless with people inhabiting boxes that sit outside and rot rather than "living in homes"- but you can't run the country on "value-add" skills alone. Technical skills are the steak and potatoes of life- soft skills are the seasonings and dessert. (Character attributes are the refrigerator and oven/stove to make sure the food doesn't make you sick.)

There are those introvert folks who always develop or buy some balls or pleasing personality after few drinks! Does that make us prospective dbags? Perhaps they should drink till death does them apart! Like a friend once said ´´If money doesn´t make you happy, more money will´´ Good day gentlemen.

Like the Chuck Swindoll, quote, btw. Good to see that some people are brave enough to think Christian ethics are allowed to have a mild impact on how people do business (not that religious mandates should be shoved down peoples' throats or that Jesus should be a marketing statement, though.)

what type of "technical" skills do you need in IBD anyway? i'd go as far as saying that soft skills ARE the "steak and potatoes" for IBD, while excel is the seasoning that IP mentions

11 & 30 are best in my eyes

I love how IP has become the contrarian of WSO. I still love ya bro.

Absolutely true. I went through a paradigm shift where I devoted myself solely to developing soft skills, but since then I've deviated back to a healthy equilibrium. Technical skills are what get you in the door these days, especially in an increasingly analytics-driven business environment - but soft skills and vision are what make you flourish.

P.S. Math is a soft skill?

The soft skills article seems like it can be summed up by keeping an overall positive attitude and being responsible.

Late to the party, Midas. See attached thread for a more heated/involved discussion:

http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/its-not-what-you-know-but-who-you…

I looked through the list and a lot of these are just baseline must-have's for being a good employee. I don't see the point of "interpersonal skills" and "personal chemistry", the two biggest things on that list I don't have. Of course you have to be courteous at all times, shouldn't be an a-hole, yada yada, but I didn't (and still don't) see how "being liked" makes you a good employee.

I took the advice of a lot of people on that thread and tried pretending to be social. Somehow, I always feel like "normal" people can see right through the act. However, I do get along fabulously with similarly nerdy people, and there is no need to act there, or to pretend to like them, or to pretend that I'm trying to be liked. Hmm.

IlliniProgrammer:

At the end of the day, you can run the country on technical skills- it might be boring and lifeless with people inhabiting boxes that sit outside and rot rather than "living in homes"- but you can't run the country on "value-add" skills alone. Technical skills are the steak and potatoes of life- soft skills are the seasonings and dessert. (Character attributes are the refrigerator and oven/stove to make sure the food doesn't make you sick.)

If you are trying to say that to run a country on technical skills alone it will be a poorly run country, I would agree with this. But I think that for the majority of professions, soft skills are the steak and potatoes. Soft skills are what you need to influence people, to lead people, to gain respect -- all things a professional needs to do to be successful. If you read The Big Short, that one-eyed Autistic Hedge Fund manger who shorted sub-prime debt was very successful with no soft skills. But he could have made EVEN more money (and perhaps brought more attention to a deeply troubled housing market) if his lack of soft skills didn't piss off so many of his investors who ended up leaving.

And yes I would agree, I'm not big on self-help books, but How to Win Friends and Influence Others is a classic that anyone should read. And since when are Math skills considered soft skills?

My point, though, is that you can run the country- badly- on technical skills but you can't even run the country on just soft skills.

And yes, Dale Carnegie never gets old.