As they left their offices in the City and Canary Wharf clutching the cardboard boxes containing the contents of their desks and cursing the credit crunch, many, if not all, wondered where they would go next. Being a banker at a time when banks were shedding staff, not hiring, did not seem a terribly strong position to be in.

The answer, it seems, lay in Britain’s big energy companies. They are continuing to hire even as the economy slides into recession and bankers are flocking to jobs in the industry. According to GRS, a recruitment company, recruitment into senior roles in the energy sector has increased by 35 per cent during the past year.

Adam Nichol, a director at GRS, said that since early September the firm had placed 18 former Lehman Brothers staff at energy companies, all of whom were earning salaries in excess of £100,000 a year. All the Big Six energy companies – E.ON, EDF, Centrica, ScottishPower, npower and Scottish & Southern – were still recruiting staff in key positions.

“It was a trickle, but it’s now become a flood and it shows no signs of drying up,” Mr Nichol said. “The energy firms have maintained their salaries. If they are not bulletproof, then they are virtually immune from the downturn.”

In particular, he said, there was robust demand for risk managers, legal and tax experts and energy traders. “The energy companies love it because they are creaming off the best talent for less than they would have had to pay a year ago,” Mr Nichol said.

With utility companies enjoying bumper profits this year in spite of the downturn, the gap in salaries between workers in the energy industry and the City has also narrowed. This time last year, professionals working in banks earned around 18 per cent more than their contemporaries in similar positions at energy companies.

That figure has narrowed to about 7 per cent, according to GRS. Its figures show that salaries in the energy sector have increased by 12 per cent in the past year and average bonuses are predicted to be more than 20 per cent of salary this year.

Demand for staff extends throughout the industry, which is preparing to invest up to £100 billion by 2020 building new power stations and infrastructure in the UK. Gareth Bone, a consultant at Resourcing Solutions, a specialist recruitment company, argues that the renewable energy sector is particularly bouyant. “The ongoing job prospects are phenomenal.”

For example, Centrica, the owner of British Gas, advertised more than 140 vacancies across the UK last week. These included audit managers earning up to £140,000, senior geophysicists and petrophysicists commanding £100,000, through to £46,000 for power station engineers and part-time heating sales advisers earning £6,000.

David Butters, a consultant at GRS, said: “Utilities companies now offer the same opportunities and prospects that banks did five years ago and I have seen a huge increase in the number of professionals coming from a banking background looking for placements within energy. The emergence of renewables and the ever-changing environment make this not only a more stable sector, but also a hugely exciting one. Demand in this sector for good candidates will only continue to grow.’

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