Top finance jobs hard to come by - graduate jobs

Hopeful new investment bankers are being left out in the cold as institutions react to the economic downturn by shrinking the pool of universities they recruit from, it has been reported.

According to campus careers officers, a select few leading universities have now increased their lead in gaining the small number of senior finance positions available.

Gordon Chesterman, director of Cambridge University Careers Service, told the Financial Times: "There is now more gathering than hunting among the banks."

He estimated that banks recruited about half as many students in 2008 compared with the previous year, and revealed that a number of banks had pulled out of the university's banking recruitment event in October.

Investment banks are expected to slash graduate recruitment intake this year as the sector contracts in response to the worst financial crisis in decades.

New graduate employment in the finance sector during 2007 dipped below 10,000 for the first time in five years after the credit crunch took effect, figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show. The year also saw the number of students entering banking, insurance and pension funding sectors drop 2.8% compared with the previous year.

Consensus among careers officers is that Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London get first dibs on the most senior positions, with some firms also choosing to recruit from the London School of Economics, Warwick University and University College London.