An upbeat Financial Times article last week about job opps in Asia has been causing quite a stir in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Recruiters’ (and eFinancialCareers editors’) inboxes are currently cluttered with “have you read this?” emails containing the FT link (or one to a similar Asia-leads-the-world story in The New York Times).

Overall, this is positive news for anyone involved in the employment industry. Published in such a high-profile, global newspaper, the FT report might help Asian recruiters and HR professionals convince their overseas headquarters that they really do need more resources to handle a growing volume of roles.

There is, however, at least one potential pitfall. Some candidates (especially desperate Western ones) might not look too far beyond the alluring headline “Investment banks on Asia hiring campaign” (or in the case of the NYT, “Finance jobs hint at recovery in Asia").

Recruiters here are already dealing with a renewed flood of foreign resumes on the back of general media reports that economies in Asia are leading the global recovery. Two articles specifically about hiring in the banking sector will only inspire more City and Wall Street types to send their CVs east.

Trouble is, many of the jobs in this so-called “hiring campaign” require Asian experience and banks aren’t in the mood to compromise because recruitment is still well below 2006/2007 boom levels.

Firms can pick and choose their candidates, and weed out any aspiring expats, especially for front-office jobs that demand local industry-coverage and/or local relationships. As banks like Standard Chartered and ANZ search for relationship managers, Londoners and New Yorkers aren’t at the top of their hit lists.

Moreover, the current spate of front-office movement has a distinct senior flavour to it, thus ruling out a further chunk of overseas talent. Twenty-something high-flyers can no longer go to Asia to kick start their careers.

This probably won’t please too many FT-reading City i-bankers, but the foreigners with the best chances of landing jobs in Asia are support staff like product controllers and IT professionals.

RBS, for example, is recruiting operational employees for its global banking and markets division as it looks to relocate jobs out of London and into Singapore, while Barclays is building its IT hub in the city state.

But right now, the main recruitment challenge facing hiring managers and agency recruiters is managing expectations.