“Lazy and needy and unwilling to graft” read a message on my phone this morning. The sender was a senior manager at one of the world’s largest investment banks. I had asked him to describe his new recruits.
“Many have bad attitudes,” he continued, adding that this applied to about half of the young hires in his division. Do they stay — and adapt to their bosses’ expectations — or do they end up leaving, I queried? “We try to manage them out.”
However heart-sinking this is (for anyone involved), I have a hunch this is not an uncommon scenario. Gen Z in particular has been on the receiving end of similar comments, and not just in finance (among the latest complainants is Oscar-winning actor Jodie Foster, lamenting that young colleagues would come to work late when “not feeling it today”).
The accepted norm is that investment banking is demanding, stressful and all-consuming. “To survive as an investment banker, you … need to be willing to say goodbye to your social life for a few years,” warns a blog on the Corporate Finance Institute, an association which says it provides training and productivity tools to over 2mn people in finance worldwide.
Fewer young people may be prepared to make that sacrifice as the status and financial rewards associated with it seem to be of lesser relevance to new generations.
In fact, the old investment banking guard is now confronted not only with what may feel to them a naive outlook on work and life; they are also facing a diminishing pool of candidates to choose from, as other industries overtake them in terms of both financial and “cultural” appeal.
In a recent report, consultancy Bain warns that wholesale banks, more broadly, are “slipping down” the ranking of sought-after financial and business employers. Compared to large tech companies, fintechs and consulting firms, banks are a fourth-place loser.
To varying degrees, they’re behind others in terms of compensation and career progression, as well as culture.
The study’s authors say that one of the key concerns for bank CEOs and senior executives is “attracting and motivating employees who have different priorities than in the past”.
There is nothing new in intergenerational frictions. But as the work of high finance becomes harder still, with less freely available money, rising regulatory pressures on the job, and glossier careers on offer, adapting to new staff’s expectations will only become more urgent.
Not all of them will be reasonable, of course. But they will certainly need to be addressed, so that rather than “managing out” the new recruits who end up being a wrong fit, banks will be able to “manage in” the talented young people who may otherwise be looking elsewhere.
Silvia Pavoni is editor in chief of The Banker. Follow her on LinkedIn here.
Get in touch at thebankereditorial@ft.com.
