The prospects for top executives "cleaned out" of the industry through the GFC and mortgage market consolidation do not look bright, according to a top industry recruiter.

Paula Taylor of Vanilla Consulting said the jobs market in the mortgage sector remained "exceptionally volatile" across the board, with no sign of a return to pre-GFC buoyancy.

"Executive recruitment has been very difficult, very low level, and continues to be so," Taylor said. "There was a clean out of middle management, and we have not seen a return to recruiting."

Taylor said a number of more senior and prominent names in the industry have found it difficult to secure new permanent roles, and were instead doing consulting or contractual work.

Taylor said in this way these candidates continued to keep their "finger in the pie" and maintain their current industry knowledge, while they sought more permanence and stability in a full time role.

"From my networks, there are still a number of people looking for job opportunities, but there are none available at present," she said. "On the whole, there are more looking than have found jobs."

Taylor said the last three quarters have seen a return to some level of consistency in mortgage market recruitment, but that this has largely been in more operational and sales roles.

She argues that the European market situation would continue to plague the market with flow-on effects, injecting renewed hesitancy into the recruitment market.

"We are still seeing those impacts in 2012 - we are not seeing new players coming into the market. With further M&A and consolidation, it would indicate continued lower levels of recruitment."

Vanilla Consultig itself was forced to close its Melbourne office and reduce staff in Sydney "just to survive" the financial crisis, Taylor said, and is now running a much smaller operation.