There are 28 graduate applications per job in the front office; but only 8 in IT

Despite spending billions on technology and offering lucrative salaries, investment banks have in recent years struggled to attract sufficient numbers of graduates into their IT analyst programmes.

Most banks end their full-time graduate recruitment programmes in November, but last year – having increased their IT intake – many extended the technology recruitment process into the new year.

Instead, technically minded under-graduates have been increasingly lured towards IT companies with a reputation for innovation. In the battle for technology talent, Silicon Valley is beating Wall Street.

JP Morgan has just launched a new marketing campaign, called "Be the Spark", aimed at highlighting the technology opportunities for graduates within its investment bank.

This is not because it's struggling to attract candidates, but because "graduates often don’t realise that technology is our business,” according to Mark Kimber, its CTO for the investment bank in EMEA.

“Everything that JP Morgan achieves is underpinned by the work of our technologists and, in many cases, technology is what we directly offer to our clients,” he says.

Nonetheless, IT roles are nowhere near as popular as front office positions. JP Morgan, for instance, tells us the ratio of applications to vacancies is 28:1 for every available investment banking and sales and trading role. Within technology, the ratio is 8:1.

Citi tells us that it received 12 applications for every technology vacancy it has, but the number of full-time positions available demonstrates the division's importance. It has 75 full-time IT positions in London, Budapest, Warsaw and Belfast, and is offering around 250 roles across the bank this year.

JP Morgan suggests that any graduates looking to break into a technology role should come armed with a computer science, maths or engineering degree. Are technical UK graduates still eyeing careers in investment banks?

Professor Steve Renals, deputy head of the school of computing at the University of Edinburgh, believes so.

"The perception is that investment banks' reputations have been hit by recent crises, but we haven't found that among our students," he says. "Many of the brightest undergraduates, who would have traditionally stayed on to pursue PhDs, have gone into banks. There are interesting tech jobs in banks, they pay well and the higher level of student debt means there's a stronger pull to find employment, rather than continue studying."

"Financial services is still top of the agenda for many students, and we find our very best graduates end up in banking," adds Artur Czumaj, head of the computer science department at Warwick University.

Source: Paul Clarke, efinancialcareers.co.uk, Wednesday 21st September 2011