Is the risk industry about to experience a period of major turnover?
According to GARP’s 2024 Global Risk Careers Survey, nearly 79% of risk managers report a high degree of satisfaction in their work. At the same time, 73% of survey respondents anticipate jobs in risk management to increase slightly or significantly over the next 18 months.
In other words, it’s clear risk professionals are happy with their jobs. But what if the risks created by generative AI, cybercrime and geopolitical upheaval are creating new opportunities that could inspire risk managers to leave their current roles despite this satisfaction?
Josh Lawson, Senior Director of Risk Management Recruitment, Barclay Simpson
“The average tenure of a risk professional tends to be three to five years, and we're about to enter that three-to-five-year window since the last period of major turnover occurred,” said Josh Lawson, senior director of risk management recruitment at recruitment agency Barclay Simpson. “My perception is the market is building now to a stage where a lot of candidates are ready to move. But will it be a flood or dominoes?”
To learn more about how junior risk managers can distinguish themselves from their peers amid this time of potential opportunity, we spoke to Lawson, a recruitment expert specializing in market and investment risk, about the different types of professional environments in risk, the importance of understanding your limitations and one surprising mistake job candidates tend to make in their interviews.
As a recruiter, how would you recommend junior risk professionals begin a job search?
If I'm a junior professional that wants to work in risk, the first thing I'm considering is the environment I think is going to suit me the best. A bank, a hedge fund, an asset manager, an insurance firm, and a fintech will have different work environments and will likely differ in terms of their risk sophistication.
As far as where the opportunities lie, commodity risk is an area to look at. Having commodity knowledge is useful right now, especially because it’s tough to find adept commodity people.
In the end, there are so many different roles in risk that even when you talk about market risk in isolation, I can tell you about 100 different jobs that are massively different, even though they might have the same title. In the same way that it can be difficult as a recruiter to look at thousands of risk professionals, it’s challenging being one risk professional and looking at thousands of companies.
How can entry-level and junior risk managers, who may not yet know their niche due to a lack of experience, go about finding the right professional fit for them?
I’d start by considering what’s important to them. How many hours do you want to work a day? What's your focal point? What strength do you have? How close to market do you want to be?
Many junior market risk managers will tell you they want to be close to traders. However, very, very few make it into trading nor get the exposure that they say they want.
I'd also be sure I understand my limitations. Maybe you want to get experience with risk systems and analytics, and you go and pursue a job at Morgan Stanley, which is hugely sophisticated in risk. In your interview you realize they've got their own coding language, and you don't know Python. That wouldn't be a good fit.
How big a factor do soft skills play in the recruiting process?
Well, communication skills are essential. In my world of market risk recruiting, candidates need to have a grounded knowledge of a company’s products; in other words, they must understand the basic concepts of how they work. If they can build a historical simulation VaR model, great. But can they relate their knowledge and their skills beyond the job itself?
What’s a surprising mistake risk candidates tend to make during a job interview?
Not reading the news on the day of their interview. A peer of mine told me about an individual who prepped all night for an interview and thought they were as prepared as possible. Then the interviewer asked them to name the spot price of oil that day, and they couldn’t tell them. Risk managers need to always understand the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world.