London head hunters and recruiters ghosting me
3rd year analyst looking to lateral from a 2nd tier bank (HSBC, RBC, Deutsche, Nomura) to a better bank with a more solid deal pipeline now that the market is slowly picking up.
Am I the only one who is having a very negative experience with London recruiters (Metis, Linear, Page, Edgworth...)? I have been having a regular dialogue with some of these firms over the past 2 years, I used to have maybe a call with them every 6 months, but I was always off market since I was focused on doing a good job at my bank.
Now that I am actively looking at lateral movements, all of them keep ghosting me. I have seen some of these recruiters posting interesting mandates on LinkedIn, but every time I send them an email with my CV to discuss this opportunity they just ignore it.
The market is still not that great, there are roles out there but far too many applicants. Your emails will drown in competing messages.
Also, I am sure you are a great candidate; but do you think you are also (much) better than all the other applicants?
Difficult to say without seeing other people´s CV, however, I would say I have a pretty rounded experience. I have 3 closed transactions under my belt, one of them involving a public UK target, so I have some experience with takeover code transactions. I am in an M&A group, so I have strong technical skills and a lot of experience working with merger and LBO models.
I am not a top bucket at GS TMT or MS M&A, but I am surprised of the lack of traction I am getting lately from recruiters, particularly when many of these had shown interest in my profile in past when the market was in a worse shape.
Similar experience here, unfortunately. Hoping 2025 will be better when the market picks up.
HSBC is a tier 3 bank dude
London is beyond cooked sir, unless you have a very good reason to stay, get out whilst you can
Are those the leading headhunters for tier-1 lateral positions? Thought of other names
These are pretty strong in London, very well connected to EBs (Evercore, Lazard, Moelis, Greenhill) and other top banks like Jefferies. If you have any other names, feel free to share.
Homestly headhunters in the UK are c*nts, I’ve given up on them because similar to you they keep regular dialogue with me and even push me to apply for roles and ghost me. Literally hop on an hour call with me to understand what I’m looking for, pitch me a role and when I apply they never get back to me. Pretty sick of them at this point so just ignore anytime a headhunter reaches out.
All headhunters are snake oil sales-men. They will reach out to you when they need candiates to fill their bottom barrel roles because HH are sleazy like that. All of the HH you listed in your OP all get retained by the same firm to fill the same positions. They BS and say that they are "exclusively retained" and that they "hired the whole team" but its just a load of BS.
I have heard this from TONS of people in London these days. It's incredible how unprofessional this recruiting system has become. It must have to do with too much capital (i.e. hiring) in the years prior... more candidate demand leading to more HHs being engaged who could afford delivering much lower quality of work. And here we are now, unprofessional HHs x less job opportunities = the perfect storm
When I was an intern I had a HH at Citibank literally try pitch me a VP role (yes you heard that right) and after I told him I only have 6 months of experience in the relevant division he said it would be fine and pushed for me to send my CV.
wtf lmao. was it VP in ib or something else
maybe the recruiters are just young kids in London these days (or WFH from some county), but it's not their fault that every single role has a couple hundred applicants now.
there are fewer roles in London, there are more people looking for work. several recruiters I knew don't even have their own jobs any longer.
Laid off and now looking - same experience. I've had better luck reaching out directly to funds. Markets have not come back like they should have. On a visa so looking at tech roles as well so I don't get kicked out. Stay strong brother.
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