Hiring looks up on Toronto’s Bay Street

T ORONTO • The headlines must seem grim to new grads looking to forge a career in Toronto’s financial services market. Still limping from the fallout of the financial crisis and eurozone sovereign debt calamities, banks and brokerages around the world have announced thousands of job cuts.

Yet by many accounts, the employment outlook on Bay Street could almost be characterized as rosy.

That’s due in part to the much-lauded strength of the Canadian banking sector but also to opportunities in new or newly important sectors like risk or wealth management.

“There’s always people who struggle, but I think the reality is that, overall, the financial markets in Toronto are quite strong,” says Joseph Palumbo, executive director of the Career Development Centre at the Schulich School of Business. “We’re seeing more risk-management hiring for obvious reasons, and more internal consulting,” he says of post-crisis recruitment trends.

Employment in Toronto’s financial services industry — which includes jobs in banking, insurance and investment management — totalled 222,380 in 2011, according to Statistics Canada data crunched by the city’s economic development division. That’s down from a peak of 228,220 in 2009, but climbing back up from a dip down to 220,680 in 2010.

Students are generally opti-

mistic about landing postgraduation employment, according to Jeff Muzzerall, director of the Rotman School of Management’s Corporate Connections Centre. He rattles off a list of the city’s attributes, which the Toronto Financial Services Alliance has also touted: It claims two of the 10 largest global life insurers, five of the world’s 50 largest banks, the third-largest stock exchange in North America, four of the top 100 pension funds and seven of the Top 10 largest hedge fund administrators.

Competition may be increasing because of a rise in the volume of applicants, says

Always people who struggle

Jennifer Bouyoukos, director of global sourcing and strategy at Royal Bank of Canada, but the country’s largest bank has not slowed its hiring in terms of entry-level and student jobs.

On the accounting and professional services side of the Street, Donna Khawaja, director of talent management and operations at Ernst & Young LLP, says the firm has not reduced its recruiting efforts.

Toronto’s total employment in the accounting and tax prep fields has steadily increased, up 43% over the past five years to 39,340 in 2011.

Shaaj Vijay is set to graduate this year with a Rotman MBA and already has a job lined up with RBC’S sales and

trading business.

As president of the school’s finance association, Mr. Vijay says the hiring numbers for students post-european crisis show no decline. About 70% to 80% of the 270 students in his class have lined up postgraduation employment, he says, noting many are looking beyond the traditional investment banking roles they might have gravitated to in the past.

“Not as many people are going for the core capital markets jobs. They’re realizing opportunities in risk, in wealth management — which is a hugely growing business in all the banks — in asset management.”

Peter Jarvis, executive director of the Toronto CFA Society, says with a raft of talented candidates vying for positions, landing a job in financial markets is still challenging. But he, too, sees areas of opportunity.

“I would say probably for the next five years anyway, one of the key places to be is in the private wealth game.”

John Ewing, who co-founded Toronto-based independent manager Ewing Morris & Co. Investment Partners in 2011, used to handle hiring for the 13-person research analyst team he was part of at Burgundy Asset Management Ltd.

He says while large players such as banks may still be hiring, the rate of people leaving may be higher than the number of new additions, a trend that could lead to more competition at mid-size and smaller employers.