Last week she was angry with a major European bank giving her the run-around. And now our “View from the Bottom” columnist says her very specialized structuring background is stifling her job search. The writer is a young Singaporean banker who worked on Wall Street and is now looking for a job back in Asia.

A headhunter recently told me that banks are wary of candidates with more than six months of unemployment on their resume, but buy-side firms don’t mind so much.

However, my background is in capital markets structuring, making it almost impossible to shift to the buy side in the current market without specific skills in asset management, private equity etc.

I have also been diversifying my job search to the corporate sector, but these businesses are scared that I will shift back to financial services if and when the economy recovers. Plus I don’t have a corporate finance or accounting background which might make me an appealing cross-over candidate.

While I am keeping myself busy by researching other industries and helping to market a friend’s start-up company, my unemployment stress is rising with every day that passes. The question of "am I doing enough?” inevitably arises with increasing frequency. Friends find it difficult to be empathetic because they are not in my shoes.

I have been listening to job suggestions from just about everyone I know, but I’m not acting on many of them. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but often I have already pursued their suggested “opportunity” with ferocity, only to hit a dead end.

Although I might still give it another shot, I need to manage my own expectations. After all, I am the one who is going through sudden surges of career anxiety and insomnia on random nights.

Learning lessons

I have picked up on a few things from all the recruiting processes I have gone through. I had found my previous job at a US investment bank on Wall Street pretty interesting, but my sector is very specialised and I cannot say for sure whether I want to pursue it for the rest of my career.

I was not laid off due to incompetency - my entire team was dumped because of a merger. Senior members of other teams at my former firm have tried to recruit me back, but management shuffles have frozen headcounts, so their arms are tied.

However, because of my specialized background, it has been hard to find work in the current employment market. So the two main faults with my resume are that I am short in experience and that I worked in a highly focused function. Having identifying the key issues, ideally I need a new job that offers me chance to rid myself of these problems.

But, on the other hand, in order to get some badly-needed income, it would also be logically for me to just grab the next opening that comes my way, even if it’s in the same specialised area. Perhaps I can then hope for a lateral switch in the future, or save my salary for further studies so I can press the restart button and then hope to diversify my background.

However, taking the next offer regardless of the position does not guarantee that history won’t repeat itself should another crisis hit the financial markets. Hence, until something concrete pans out, amidst the recruiting, I am still going to try to make things happen by keeping myself updated, making contacts, and seeking to do internships in industries other than banking.