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Career start: Tier 2 Model Validation?

Joined
8/18/14
Messages
37
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18
Hi,

I'm new to this forum and am looking for advice if anyone could help me.

I am a PhD in pure maths with pretty much no coding and little finance experience, trying to become a quant in the city of London, preferably in the Front Office, with hope to move to in algo trading in a few years' time.

I have been applying for quant jobs for a couple of months now, had a few interviews so far, and have been preparing for those interviews via reading a variety of books (Baxter/Rennie, Wilmott, Hull, certain C++ materials).

I have mostly been rejected very early on, because they all mentioned "I don't know enough", "I have too little experience" and/or often couldn't answer questions,
all of which of course is fair enough, tbh. I have made good progress in my studies though, and am now able to pass several rounds and have been doing much better.

However, I am at the very last (non-technical) stage with a tier 2 bank in model validation, which I was not really hoping to start with, especially considering that this role only covers one asset class.

My question is this: Should I continue studying and keep trying, considering that I easily get 2 interviews per week? Or should I just take the role if they make me an offer without much time to decide?

I was thinking: Model Val is a more relaxed place to start where I could learn the skills I completely lack and change later on. On the other hand, would it impair my future career, considering I will be paid less, would have to work my up to not just FO, but also to a tier 1 bank, and then maybe algo trading? Also, would I have time to learn the necessary statistical methods required for algo trading, or will you be a specialist in derivatives pricing?

Friends of mine got great FO jobs in tier 1 IBs even though they knew very, very little, but told me they just got lucky, and were mostly asked brainteasers.

Any information is much appreciated, thank you in advance!
 
My question is this: Should I continue studying and keep trying, considering that I easily get 2 interviews per week? Or should I just take the role if they make me an offer without much time to decide?
It solely depends on your risk aversion :)
After a graduation I have accepted the first job offer because I had only one year to find a job (otherwise my visa would expire). A good friend of mine made an internship in a big bank, rejected an offer in Basel / Reporting dept and became a successful trade.
Another guy also rejected some offers but then was not able to find anything and had to return to Russia.

P.S. Model valudation is quite good to begin with, if you have little knowledge about practical quantitative finance.
 
Ah, I see, thanks!

So what about career flexibility? Is it true that it's difficult to move out of middle office? I heard they're not as well respected as the front office quants, and that you can definitely get stuck there.

Another thing is: The interviews are usually more technical than FO in my experience, would you say that's true?
 
You'll only get 'stuck' if you have that mindset. It isn't easy to switch from BO/MO to FO (in the same way that it's not easy to switch from doing management consulting at MBB to engineering at Google--it's a different career path altogether) but I know plenty of people who did it, either through MFE/MBA or just plain networking/lateraling.

Given your credentials though, I don't imagine you have trouble getting in the door for interviews in 'FO' groups (I imagine desk quant/pricing quant jobs?). If you don't have a good impression / feeling about the model validation gig, maybe it is better to stay in the hunt.

FYI this is a good resource for someone in your situation

http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf
 
thanks, mhy. Generally, I find getting interviews quite easy, but passing them much more difficult! I'm at a serious disadvantage compare to financial mathematicians. I guess I'd prefer to do FO, so most likely will try to stay.

Do you know of many people who moved across? Is the level of knowledge/skill/people in general higher in FO? I see a lot of people in MO can originally from the FO..
 
Interviewing is a learn-able skill. Seems like you've just gotten started so keep doing it and you'll be fine.

Re: FO -> MO--I think this is more of a career & lifestyle move. People get tired of the stressful FO jobs and move to less intense areas or other industries. There are also cases where people get 'kicked out' of their positions through politics and such.

Personally, I know 5-6 people off the top of my head who moved from non-FO groups to FO groups; one worked as a developer and is now in the Strats group at a major bank; another started in IT and ended up being a trader on the Equities desk (not a quant trader though). I guess the common factor is they had a lot of contact with FO groups in the first place so making the change wasn't as hard compared to other groups.

It's hard to draw a comparison between people in different groups at banks. I work in tech and know people in quant groups / FO groups but I don't see any skill / intelligence difference. There are very smart people working in technology from top-tier academic backgrounds (Ivies/Oxbridge/MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/CMU etc) and the same goes for quant groups and S&T. Generally tech/quant people tend to be a lot more quantitative and technical whereas you'll see a lot of MBAs and undergrad finance&economics majors in S&T. If I had to choose, I'd say the quant groups possess the highest 'raw' level of intelligence simply because of the prevalence of PhDs.
 
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Interviewing is a learn-able skill-seems like you've just gotten started so keep doing it and you'll be fine.

Re: FO -> MO--I think this is more of a career & lifestyle move. People get tired of the stressful FO jobs and move to less intense areas or other industries.

I was a trader at a BIG trading firm. It was killing me. I've been in risk for 20 years. Life is good.
 
Friends of mine got great FO jobs in tier 1 IBs even though they knew very, very little, but told me they just got lucky, and were mostly asked brainteasers.

Any information is much appreciated, thank you in advance!

Ask your friends to hook you up.
 
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