Across Asia and particularly in Hong Kong, banks want people with native language skills, especially Mandarin Chinese – or Putonghua, as it is known in China.

在亚洲各地，特别是香港，银行希望聘用掌握当地语言的人，尤其是会说汉语普通话的人。

In investment banking this is almost exclusively the case, according to recruiters, while on the markets and trading side there is still some room for westerners without the local lingo.

据猎头公司介绍，投资银行几乎无一例外抱有这种想法，尽管不懂当地语言的西方人在市场和交易部门仍能占据一席之地。

The number of roles across banking in Asia has been shrinking steadily for the past three years, according to Coalition, the research group.

研究机构Coalition的数据显示，过去3年里，亚洲银行业的岗位数量一直在稳定地减少。

Increased automation of some functions, including trading, and poor overall deal activity has hit fees and highlighted the now excess resources added during the previous years of big Chinese state-owned enterprise listings.

包括交易在内的一些职能实现了更大程度的自动化，交易活动整体表现不佳则拖累了费用收入，另外也突显出一个事实：过去几年大型中国国企上市期间增添的资源如今已显得多余。

However, this January, hiring finally began to pick up again at least in more junior roles, as the work investment bankers did to line up and prepare deals while markets were quiet looks likely to move into its execution phase.

不过，今年1月招聘形势终于开始再次好转，至少对较初级的岗位来说是如此。原因是，投资银行家在市场处于平静期时所做的交易筹备工作，看起来很可能将进入执行阶段。

Adam Jeffes at financial recruitment firm Morgan McKinley in Hong Kong notes that this January was the company’s busiest for three years.

香港金融猎头公司摩根麦金利(Morgan McKinley)的亚当•杰夫斯(Adam Jeffes)指出，今年1月是其公司3年来最忙的时期。

But he says banks were mainly looking for staff at the vice-president and director level, rather than more senior managing directors. Other headhunters gave similar accounts.

但他表示，银行主要是在物色副总裁和总监级别的人员，而不是更高级别的董事总经理。其他猎头公司的说法也大致相同。

But many of these jobs are for Chinese who have experience or education abroad and are native Mandarin speakers. “Even on the markets side, the mid to senior management still tend to be European or American, but from the second-in-command down, it is increasingly local or extremely good Mandarin speakers,” says Mr Jeffes.

但这当中的许多岗位是为有海外经历或留学经历、且母语为汉语普通话的人准备的。杰夫斯说：“尽管在市场部门，中高级管理岗位仍往往由欧美人占据，但是从二把手往下的岗位正越来越多地由当地人或汉语普通话讲得极好的人占据。

“There are a lot of people in the UK and US trying to get out here, but unless you have a lot of political equity, or a big sponsor, it is very hard.”

“有许多英国人和美国人想在这里混出名堂来，但如果你没有大量政治资产或者一个大靠山，将会十分困难。”

Across Asia, fixed income trading and the core investment banking jobs of origination and advisory have seen declines every year since 2010, according to Coalition.

Coalition的研究显示，2010年以来，亚洲各地的固定收益交易以及承揽与咨询等核心投行业务岗位数量每年都在减少。

The former has seen total jobs among the top-10 banks fall from 4,350 to 3,600 between the end of 2010 and the end of last year, while the latter has gone from 4,100 to fewer than 3,500.

2010年底到去年底，前十大银行的固定收益交易岗位总数由4350个减少到3600个，核心投行业务岗位总数由4100个减少到不足3500个。

Equities jobs saw similar declines until a small uptick last year that was mainly due to the resurgence of Japanese equity markets.

股票部门的岗位数量也经历了类似的下降，直到去年才有小幅回升，这主要是由于日本股市出现复苏。

The declines partly reflect the fact that many aspects of the broking, or sales, side of the business are becoming automated to a much greater degree. The junior bankers of today need to be much more highly skilled than was the case before.

岗位数量减少在一定程度上反映出一个事实：银行经纪或销售部门的许多方面，自动化程度都较以往大幅提升。如今的初级银行家需要具备较以往高得多的技能。

“What we need is hedge-fund type guys, people who can really connect the dots,” one headhunter says. “The industry as a whole needs to do more with less; it needs guys with higher utility.”

“我们需要的是对冲基金类型的人才，要真正能把各个环节连接起来，”一名猎头说道，“整个行业需要用更少的资源做更多的事情，需要效用更高的人才。”

However, risk control and compliance are still seeing a lot of activity, with banks in Hong Kong and Singapore looking for senior people with experience, while they continue to offshore more junior jobs to countries such as India.

然而，风险控制及合规部门仍有大量的业务，香港及新加坡的银行正在物色有经验的高级岗位人才，尽管它们也在不断地把较初级岗位挪到海外，比如印度这样的国家。

“Anything to do with governance, risk and compliance is still very hot,” says Mark O’Reilly of recruiter Astbury Marsden in Singapore. “The pressure on boards to meet all these new standards is creating lots of mandates to hire risk and internal audit staff.”

“任何与治理、风险及合规相关的工作仍十分热门，”金融猎头公司Astbury Marsden驻新加坡的马克•奥赖利(Mark O'Reilly)表示，“由于面临满足各种新标准的压力，董事会正在发出大量指令，要求聘请风控和内部审计人员。”

The other big bright spot is within China itself, where many markets are only just developing and there is a real dearth of skills and experience. The big problem here is that westerners generally do not work well in these roles as the cultural differences and the gap in language and communication skills are usually just too great.

另一大亮点是中国内地，在那里，许多市场才刚刚发展起来，真的相当缺乏各种技能和经验。那里的最大问题是，由于通常而言文化差异太大、语言不通、沟通技巧又存在很大区别，西方人普遍无法很好地胜任上述工作。

Some bank executives in China believe this could threaten the very development of the industry itself. Eric Ren, a senior director at Haitong Securities, says the lack of personnel and skills in the market could hamper the development of some sectors, particularly more technical areas such as futures or options trading and broking.

中国的一些银行业高管认为，这会威胁到银行业自身的发展。海通期货(Haitong Futures)的高级总监任俊行(Eric Ren)表示，市场上人才与技能的短缺可能会阻碍某些领域的发展，尤其是更具技术性的领域，比如期货或期权的交易及经纪业务。

“There is a problem of shortage of personnel that will persist for a long time. Options are very high tech and complex and a lack of skills can be a fatal bottleneck for the market,” he says.

他说：“人才短缺问题将会持续很长一段时间。期权是极具技术性和复杂的，缺少专业技能会成为市场的致命瓶颈。”