Bankers Care About Culture, Could Not Care Less About Divers

We're midway through our own annual Banking Survey, and though we won't be releasing our new Banking Rankings (which are based on that survey) until late this summer, we will be giving you a sneak peak at some of our findings over the next several months.

To that end, today I wanted to highlight a survey question that asks respondents to rank various factors in order of importance in their job-decision-making process. These factors include a bank's "training opportunities," "commitment to diversity," "location," "lifestyle/work-life balance," "early responsibility," "compensation," "prestige," "business outlook" and "firm culture/colleagues."

Thus far, by an overwhelming margin, "firm culture/colleagues" has received the most votes, with more than 30 percent of respondents calling it their top factor when deciding which banking job offer to accept, and nearly 70 percent ranking it among their top three factors.

In second place is "business outlook," with 15 percent of respondents naming it as their most important factor, and 45 percent ranking it among their top three. And in third place is "prestige," with 12 percent of respondents saying it's their top factor, and 40 percent ranking it in their top three.

Meanwhile, the factors that investment banking jobseekers care about the least are "lifestyle/work-life balance" (only 17 percent of respondents rank it among their three most important), "training opportunities" (8 percent rank it among their top three) and, in last place, "commitment to diversity" (just 1 percent of respondents rank it in their top three).

Overall, it's not surprising that bankers care so much about culture; they voted "culture" their No. 1 factor in our survey last year, and firms, for years, have worked on creating more congenial cultures, often touting how great theirs is during the recruiting process.

However, it is surprising that "compensation" gets such an average rating (it currently ranks a notch below "prestige" and is on track to be rated as a less important factor than it was last year) and that diversity (lately a hot topic on Wall Street, with firms spending much time and effort to build their diversity hiring practices; or, at the very least, building the appearance of doing so) is almost not a factor at all.