There are some upsides to working for Bank of America in 2023: the bank has indicated that it won’t be making the sorts of layoffs now associated with Goldman Sachs, its bonuses have been ok, albeit highly differentiated, and its investment bankers did comparatively well last year.
But within Bank of America, there is a pocket of woe. Some of the bank’s recruiters are seemingly feeling a little underappreciated. They had an exceptional 2022, but their very exceptionalness caused a problem.
“We were pushed hard to meet hiring goals,” one tells us. “But we did too good of a job. Now, we’re getting low pay increases and reduced bonuses.”
Bank of America declined to comment for this article, but the high performance of the bank’s recruitment team is public knowledge, as are its side effects. CEO Brian Moynihan said earlier this month that BofA’s recruiters were “sort of overachieving” in the first half of 2022. They brought in a lot of extra people, but when voluntary exits fell in the second half of 2022, the bank ended up with too many staff. Moynihan said there’s now a “pause” on hiring for all but essential roles as a result.
Recruiters say the pause itself has generated work – thousands of jobs deemed to be inessential were taken down from the bank’s careers site and processes were paused. “We have no line of site on when we’ll be able to hire again and are feeling overworked and underappreciated,” says one.
It doesn’t help that salaries appear to have increased by less than inflation. – Many people at the bank say they received little or no salary rise this week. This does, however, a very substantial salary increase for senior people last January (MDs went from $400k to $500k, directors from $250k to $350k), plus a 7% pay rise for employees earning less than $100k in May.
Sarah Butcher – Read more on efinancialcareers.co.uk
