Scotland’s financial firms might be showing some signs of trimming staff, but their appetite for graduate recruitment remains undiminished.

Faye Chua, head of research at the Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC), says graduate hiring isn’t about to plummet: “Financial services in Scotland is expected to continue to grow, however, not as fast as in the last five years. In terms of graduate recruitment, we expect the levels to remain the same. With the current economic climate, it seems that there is little impact on the levels of graduate intake among Scottish financial services firms.”

Fund managers’ appetite for graduates might be petite, but it’s consistent year on year, says Richard Barry, head of HR at Baillie Gifford: “Numbers in our investment teams have been around eight to 10, and we expect the same next year. We’re also launching graduate programmes for operations and IT, so if anything, our total numbers have gone up slightly.”

Paul Brown, director of the careers service at St Andrews University, reckons students are as active as ever in applying to banks.

“Our sense is that more people have been getting further down the line with interviews and assessment centres within banks this year than last.”

Resilient graduate hiring might have something to do with the fact that most of the roles graduates are being hired into are in investment operations, which has suffered a dearth of talent over the last couple of years.

Not surprisingly, Scotland’s fund administrators are therefore keen to take on graduates, says Alan Thornburrow, chief executive of Scottish Investment Operations: “We have 16 member companies and 12 of them are coming to Global Financial Services week to talk up their graduate opportunities later this month.”