A finance grad looking into IT then to moving to quant, feasible?

[cynthiiiiiaaaaa]

Hi guys, it's gonna be a bit long story, bear with me.

I'm a BSc grad, class of 2013 from one of top-30 university worldwide with level 1 CFA.
Also, I'm 25 now which I feel is quite old, and I want to get this career progression as fast as possible.
I'm posting this discussion to beg for practical advices. (yes, BEG. I'm desperate)

After graduation, I've got 7-months prop trading experience in prop-shops in London;
2-month intern, 4-month full-time (this is where I was sacked) and 1-month intern again,
and I'm between jobs since April 2014 (now mid- August 2014).

While working in the prop shops, I found myself becoming more interested in and enthused to quant (quant analysis & trading) which requires strong software skills. So, after I left my last position, I took initiative and mastered VBA, C, and Matlab to build a quant trading model which I'm currently running on my personal trading account for a couple of months (profitable).

I then made a huge number of applications to quant analyst positions with the excel files of my quant trading model attached, and only very few invited me for an interview, which then was taken by other PhD candidates.

Being desperate, I joined a 1-month certification programme for 'Machine Learning' held by one of the Ivy league uni, so I found this pretty helpful in my quant job hunting, making me look much more relevant in employers' eyes.

NOW, I think i just couldn't spend my time in vain (actually not strictly 'in vain' because I established a quant model and learnt programming languages that can be helpful in my career. Anyway, keep going-), I'm in a recruitment process of an IT position (grad application support analyst) where I'll be exposed to and will have a chance to learn software and coding languages. The IT company introduced itself having a range of giant IBs as their clients, which I am most probably working with.

My plan now is to have a couple of years (or 1.5 year) of experience in the IT firm as a bypass, building up a practical experience to build up programmes, then I'll be back as a quant. I can't (and will NEVER ever) give up my dream, a hedge fund manager. Also, I'm 25 now which I feel is quite old, and I want to get this career progression as fast as possible.

Anyway, back on the topic, my question is;
"is that feasible for a BSc finance graduate to finally land in a quant trader position after a couple of years of IT experience as an application support analyst?"


Any comment will be much appreciated!
Thank you in advance!

Cynthia.

 

[mhy]

I'm in a recruitment process of an IT position (grad application support analyst)

Don't do this if your final objective is to get into quantitative finance / quantitative trading. As a support person you will not be exposed at all to the core of the software that investment banks use. You will basically be putting out fires every day while everyone (traders, developers, managers, everyone!) is shouting at you. You will understand the systems enough to fix problems but not deeply enough to actually implement or improve them.

You ideally want to be on the R&D side of things in the midst of the action- specifically front office development. Teams that deal directly with trading systems, exchanges, Excel sheets, risk and pricing systems-that sort of thing. That's a lot closer to the quant teams and after doing that for a while you would be in a good position to start looking for quant dev / quant trading type of jobs. Do not expect it to be easy though. You may have to go from pure dev -> quant dev -> quant trader/quant analyst.

 

[Liam]

Don't do this if your final objective is to get into quantitative finance / quantitative trading. As a support person you will not be exposed at all to the core of the software that investment banks use. You will basically be putting out fires every day while everyone is shouting at you. You will understand the systems enough to fix problems but not deeply enough to actually implement or improve them.

Spot on - I know someone that's done application support for 8 years for a bank and that's the gist of his job, he's probably learnt about as much finance there as you would working in a 7/11.
Also he's one of the biggest imbeciles I know with a very naive view of finance and IT. This will be a key factor in terms of moving around - while it would be a sweeping generalisation to say all application support personell are like him, recruiters and employers will place the burden on you to prove you are the exception to the rule and to prove that by hiring you they don't have to reprogram the way you think to make you useful, which could be very frustrating for them. I see similar issues with people trying BA roles in order to become traders etc and, even with the route suggested by the previous poster, it will be hard, not to mention the cv could look messy if anything goes wrong that's out of your hands in the meantime. The age 25 thing isn't the issue - the question is are you mentally fit enough after doing all these different things in other sectors to learn about a business that is run very differently and at times more counterintuitively than other businesses?

 

[mhy]

I see similar issues with people trying BA roles in order to become traders etc and, even with the route suggested by the previous poster, it will be hard. The age 25 thing isn't the issue - the question is are you mentally fit enough after doing all these different things in other sectors to learn about a business that is run very differently and at times more counterintuitively than other businesses?

At least for me, I don't see 'moving around' by itself to be such a big deal. I feel that the difficulty for most people is 'getting in the door'. A lot of people try to make career moves without even knowing what they're getting themselves into, and the real killer in the majority of cases is that they have no connections in the relevant job sector. Getting a job is infinitely easier if you can just have someone refer you internally, instead of 'applying online'. If you do the latter, it will be a long, hard uphill battle.

Also, if the people interviewing you feel that you aren't thinking the same way as they are, you've got no chance. The reverse applies too--if I (fintech) had to interview someone who was coming from a bank, I would expect them to 'fit in' to the tech way of thinking otherwise it would be a waste of each others' time. The key is making friends at the companies you want to go to and keeping in touch.

 

[Liam]

the real killer in the majority of cases is that they have no connections in the relevant job sector. The key is making friends at the companies you want to go to and keeping in touch.

Absolutely - I think I missed that point. Even if the OP takes the advice to get in where the action is, they'll have to network sooner or later. And networking for career change has to be very focused as only 1-10% of your network will be useful when you start. Also, I did teaching observation, toying with the idea of changing, and found networking vastly easier than in finance - in finance one issue I've found is that 1/3 of the contacts I have are obnoxious idiots and useless. There's nothing wrong as such with finance contacts that aren't in your target field, but when they are clueless about things we've discussed here and forward your cv to the wrong person they're no use. The OP will have to really be on their game here.

 

[mhy]

Absolutely - I think I missed that point. Even if the OP takes the advice to get in where the action is, they'll have to network sooner or later. And networking for career change has to be very focused as only 1-10% of your network will be useful when you start. Also, I did teaching observation, toying with the idea of changing, and found networking vastly easier than in finance - in finance one issue I've found is that 1/3 of the contacts I have are obnoxious idiots and useless. There's nothing wrong as such with finance contacts that aren't in your target field, but when they are clueless about things we've discussed here and forward your cv to the wrong person they're no use. The OP will have to really be on their game here.

Yup-you need to make sure that your contacts can be trusted with information and that they aren't idiots who don't know what they're doing. Learning to differentiate between these two types of people is one very important skill you need to have in the financial industry--regardless of division.