Sifma Technology Management Conference
Into the Sifma Era | AML Software Landscape Consolidates and Expands | People Are Scarce Again | ATSs in Europe Follow U.S. Lead | Fragmentation's New Discipline: Liquidity Management | Asia Comes Around to Algorithms | Low Latency Not a Go-It-Alone Proposition
People Are Scarce Again
June 18, 2007
For years they have been emerging from relative back-office obscurity to share more of the limelight with front-office colleagues. But now IT talent is considered to be one of the hottest commodities at major investment banks, brokerage firms and other companies in and servicing the investment community. Technology--in increasingly innovative and sophisticated forms--is recognized as a way to differentiate oneself from the competition, and that requires talent.
Many of these tech experts are in such demand that recruiting and retaining them is one of the biggest challenges facing financial companies. The bar is especially high for smaller firms that can't throw money at these people the way their bigger rivals can--and do. They instead resort to other means, including so-called quality-of-life benefits, to attract workers.
Take Ethan Berman,
CEO of RiskMetrics Group, the privately owned, New York-based
company spun out of JP Morgan & Co. in 1998 and now the leader
in enterprisewide risk management systems for financial
institutions. Berman said he spends "well over" half his time
thinking about finding and keeping good workers. "I like to joke
I'm really like the head of HR, not the company," he said.
RiskMetrics currently employs over 900, more than 300 in its risk business and 600 who came with its recent acquisition of proxy-voting and governance research company Institutional Shareholder Services. Together they serve over 2,400 clients worldwide, including banks, central banks, hedge funds, asset managers and pension funds.
Berman expects to add roughly 100 additional employees by year-end. His human resources competition is concentrated within a few blocks' radius of RiskMetrics' lower Manhattan headquarters, yet Berman prides himself on his record of attracting--and most important, retaining--good people. One of the company's main selling points: a corporate culture emphasizing professional creativity and development, and allowing balance between work and home life.
Gravitas
Technology founder, president and chief executive Jayesh Punater
noted that recruiting the "right" people and developing and keeping
them takes up 20 percent to 25 percent of his time, up from less
than 5 percent three years ago. Gravitas, which is over ten years
old, is based in New York and has an office in Connecticut to be
closer to its hedge fund IT services clients, which has become a
high-growth specialty in recent years.
Punater said that recruiting has become so critical to his company's success, and so time-consuming, that Gravitas earlier this year hired a director of human resources. That's a major gesture and commitment by a company with not even 60 employees. Punater explained that for the first time, Gravitas isn't looking for new business right now so much as new people to meet the growing demand. He noted that it recently took 14 months to fill a key position in client services, something that in the past might have taken two to three months.
Employment firm Robert Half Technology, which provides IT professionals to companies on a project and full-time basis, this month released results of its national poll of more than 1,400 chief information officers from different industries. It showed that the demand for IT talent remains strong and is expected to rise. The projected net increase in hiring of 15 percent in the third quarter would be the highest since the fourth quarter of 2001. It is also expected to be up three percentage points from the previous quarter's projection. Regionally, employers on the East and West coasts expect to see the greatest increases.
