Employment advice is critical for many traders now, so the Security Traders Association and its biggest chapter will be offering job and career counseling.
The Security Traders Association of New York, STANY, will hold a breakfast conference on Wednesday at Bayard’s devoted to helping traders find jobs or prepare for new ones.
“It’s a little bit unusual, but we think this is a really important subject that we should do now,” says Lisa Utasi, president of STANY. The session is entitled “Is There Life After Trading? Career Transition in a Difficult Market.”
The session will include strategies and advice from job recruitment experts who have worked with traders. STANY has never held an employment session before at its bi-monthly meetings.
But Utasi says now, at a time when STANY membership numbers are declining about 8 percent a year, professionals need help on how to promote and change careers in a difficult market.
The STANY session will be followed by a conference call later this month, which will be available to all STA members. Officials of national recruiting firms will give advice and answer questions, according to John Giesea, CEO and president of the STA.
“We’re trying to be sensitive to the needs of our members and show support for those who are facing difficult times,” Giesea said.
STA has also felt the pain of thinning ranks owing to the recent market meltdown along with increasing electronic markets. Giesea says STA now has some 5,200 members. That’s a huge drop from its high-water mark of 7,500 back in the halcyon days of the 1990s.
Indeed, the trading industry, according to Bob Iati of the Tabb Group, has been losing members at a rate of about 5 to 7 percent a year since the late 1990s. Iati says that rate of job loss should continue over the next few years before industry employment numbers stabilize.
The STANY breakfast starts at 7:30 a.m. on March 11 at Bayard’s, which is located at One Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan. All STANY members are invited.
