RJ and Makay

Here's some evidence that pay-for-performance is alive and well on Wall Street: The average Wall Street bonus dropped 5% in 2010, according to the eFinancialCareers annual Global Bonus Survey completed in mid-January.

Still, 56% of bonus-eligible financial professionals got a larger bonus than the previous year. Nineteen percent got a smaller bonus and 8% got no bonus.

Lately, there has been a great amount of news about the upswing in hiring on the Street. While unemployment and job creation continue to remain sluggish nationwide, the financial services sector is starting to feel “bullish” about hiring again. At RJ & Makay we’re seeing cautious optimism throughout the industry regarding human capital hiring trends. We’re seeing first hand a steady increase in job orders this year, and a substantial jump in Q2 quantity over Q1.

News abounds in recent months regarding financial services hiring. Securities firms added almost 7,000 jobs in June according to BrokerHunter.com’s latest Employment Trends report. The finance and insurance industry added 15,200 new employees in June, the first increase since December. The New York State Department of Labor shows that New York just had the largest three-month increase in financial industry jobs (6,800) since 2008.

eFinancialCareers.com is showing huge percentage increases of job postings YOY for several financial sectors. Investment Banking/M&A is up 75% YOY; Compliance/Legal up 62%; Accounting and Finance is up 58%. Trading is down 8% YOY. Knowing that most of the available positions in financial services aren't posted to job boards this is a good sign for the first half of the year. At RJ & Makay we are at triple figure YOY increase in awarded position openings.

Yesterday we received an mail from Constance Melrose (Managing Director, North America) at  eFinancialCareers which was directed to HR managers and recruiters in the finance industry. They did a report on the most difficult firms to interview with in the industry.

Here's their list of which type of firm or entity financial pros think is the most difficult to interview with.