It has become one of the defining images of the financial crisis. The long line of Lehman Brothers staff, carrying cardboard boxes, stepping from their Docklands tower block - unemployed.

Nor is it an isolated picture. Across the financial districts of London, institutions are collapsing, merging or looking to cut back. Thousands of jobs have been lost and thousands more will go before the dust settles.

You would imagine that almost all those newly out of work are or will be looking for a job as soon as possible. Sure enough, according to Pascal Smith, a managing partner of Heidrick & Struggles, the headhunters: “We've been inundated with resumés.”

If, as Mr Smith added, it is difficult to help the hordes when there are few jobs around, it is not impossible. The collapse of the big names means that smaller, boutique investment banks and brokers are getting their turn. “They typically find it very difficult to hire when they are competing with bulge-bracket banks for the same people,” Mr Smith said. But not any more.

European banks involved in specialist or emerging markets such as the Middle East are also keen to snap up surplus talent - and Mr Smith has been approached by private banks, as well. “Smart people who come out of investment banks are very interesting to them,” he said. A spokesman at Barclays Wealth said that it was “definitely” interested in taking advantage of the new talent pool.

On the day of the Lehman Brothers collapse, Brooklands Executives, an executive search firm, immediately identified two “high-profile personalities” it wanted to place elsewhere. David Jensen, the chief executive, said that workers in front-office functions such as trading could now move into back-office roles in areas such as risk.

“The world will become a more heavily regulated place,” Mr Jensen said. “Companies need to beef up their risk teams. Individuals who understand where the weaknesses were in the old system may find themselves best-placed to suggest how they could be tightened up.”

Professional services firms represent another possible destination. A KPMG representative said that it would welcome applicants for advisory or consulting roles. John Kerr, a talent partner at Deloitte, sees huge potential in employing former investment bankers and has been approached by several people looking to “reignite their careers” in corporate finance. The firm's previously small debt advisory business is a potential area where they could be employed.

Some recruits have their own ideas about the ways in which they could contribute and the firm is discussing these, he said. “[Investment banking] is a relatively entrepreneurial environment. We can give them that. There's space to develop new areas of our business.”

For those seeking a more dramatic change, the public sector could be a safe haven. The Training and Development Agency, which recruits for the teaching profession, has held presentations at Canary Wharf and recorded a 13 per cent increase in career-changers. While the not-for-profit sector might appear to be anathema to bankers, Debbie Hockham, director of Forum3, a charity recruitment event, has been approached by more than 500 out-of-work bankers, a 30 per cent rise on last year. “Their skills could apply very well to a career in fundraising or financial management,” she said.

Million-pound bonuses may not feature but there is a tendency to underestimate charity pay, she said: a finance director at a large charity can expect to earn in the region of £90,000.

Dave Butler, head of financial services at Russam GMS, an interim placement agency, believes that in the short term there will be demand for people with finance knowledge to help to restructure the not-for-profit sector. The skills are easily transferred. “If you've closed out a data centre or done a merger you know how to manage change.”

Redundancy can be an opportunity to take time out. “Go abroad for a couple of years, see how things are done elsewhere then come back when the sector has settled down,” Mr Butler said.

The lowdown

— Up to 110,000 banking and finance jobs could be lost in the UK over the next year, according to research by the Hay Group and the Centre for Economic and Business Research

— 2,500 Lehman Brothers investment banking staff and 150 fixed-income workers have been offered jobs by Nomura, the bank's new owner. About 1,200 Lehman staff are still waiting to hear about their futures

— 1,300 jobs are expected to be cut at Northern Rock - according to the unions, 800 are likely to be compulsory redundancies

— It is predicted that UBS will announce about 1,900 job losses next month. This is in addition to the 7,000 already lost worldwide at the bank

— Job losses that have yet to be announced include any resulting from the merger of HBOS and Lloyds TSB or Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, the bailout of Bradford & Bingley and Santander's acquisition of Alliance & Leicester

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