A job at the table

Since the world financial meltdown three weeks ago, hundreds of investment bankers have been thrown out of work in London—like in other parts of the world—and still more are hanging on by the seat of their exquisitely tailored, pinstriped pants. With almost surreal swiftness, the cafes of gleaming Canary Wharf, where American giants such as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are located, have turned into career triage centers.

To spend an afternoon at Starbucks or Caffe Nero, two popular coffeehouses in an underground shopping mall in London, is to watch a parade of grim-faced job seekers sit down to polite interviews with corporate headhunters.

“Never before has there been such a high supply of candidates in the market. It’s nice that people are coming to us—we never knew we had so many good friends,” one headhunter said in between interviews. He asked not to be named because his company does not allow him to speak to the media. “There’s almost a sense of wartime panic, of throwing your CV out there,” he added.

After Lehman Bros., a longtime tenant on Canary Wharf, declared bankruptcy three weeks ago, there were extraordinary scenes of bankers flocking to nearby cafes and pubs and running through a gantlet of interviews with headhunters who had set up shop at tables, clipboards in hand. One Lehman Brothers employee glumly likened the process to speed-dating.

For some European financial institutions, the collapse of the American financial heavyweights might bring an opportunity to snap up talent that was previously out of their league.

Some companies are now saying to themselves, “We haven’t been able to get our hands on good operations people for some time, and now suddenly we are managing to find top-rate people we’ve been looking to hire for a long time,” said Linda Jackson, the director of Fairplace, a career consultancy.

Even the British Government has jumped into the hiring derby, setting up an information meeting on Canary Wharf to entice people to swap a career in the high-flying world of finance for a job as a public schoolteacher.

“It’s the first time we’ve tried this approach,” said Mark Coussins, recruitment manager for the government’s Training and Development Agency for Schools.

To the 80 people who showed up last Thursday, the agency had an especially resonant message, Coussins noted: “Teaching does offer security.”