How to get into a MFE program without financial background/experience?

[watercooler]

Hi Everyone. I am new here. I love this community.

I graduated with BEng in electronic engineering. After working in a semiconductor firm for 2 years, I find I am very interested in quantitative finance. and I have applied for a MFE program in HK and Singapore.

However, my major weakness is that I have no financial backgnd/working experience. And my progeramming skill is not as strong as those of computer engineers.

So... How can I convince the interviewer that I am willing to and I will be a good financial engineer...?

:sos:

 

[Uncle Max]

Well, you have to learn finance and programming before going to an interview. That's why people go to MFE. And it will be much better for you if you can pick up programming part before getting into MFE, thus you can concentrate on financial part.

 

[watercooler]

thank a LOT, Max.

I am good at math. And I have engineering background and I can learn computing very fast. The thing is, how to convince the MFE program director that I am a suitable candidate.

thanks. What should say in the interview?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

This reminds me a conversation I had with one of my professors in the Baruch MFE program. We were talking about job interviews. To answer the question asked by the employers why they should hire one self instead of others, my prof's response was "I will work really really hard for you".

It was a joke, of course. The point is saying so isn't going to differentiate you from thousand others who probably would answer the same way. I'm sure that the employers or admission committee aren't convinced when someone say they are willing to work really hard. Everyone is going to say that.

Instead, they would look at past performance, proven success, or other more subtle indicators.

And for the interview, if you are good enough to be among the few dozens who got invited to interview, then the hardest part is over. Majority of applicants didn't even get to that step.

 

[DominiConnor]

Must be said that I've seen the "I am a hard worker" line used to good effect, the trick is to be believed. Like every other claim you make at interview and in your CV, you should have at least one example of it in your life.
Achievement is a function of sweat and brains, and on paper it can be hard to separate the two.

Quants tend to be drawn from the smarter end of the distribution, and some smart people cruise along, which is fine until they hit some swamp that just requires a hard slog to escape. Some managers have had bad experienced with staff like this.

So it's not the worst line you could use, maybe not the best either, but above all the line must be true.
The optimum answer of course is highly tailored to what you've learned about the role through the interview and by your headhunter digging. You need to discover what is important to them and say "I've learned that X is important to the team's success, and since I'd done a lot of Y, I think I can make a good contribution".
The optimal Y in this expression is not just maximising it's utility with respect to achieving X, but also finding a Y that few other people have.
An issue with any MFE/CQF is that you are learning stuff that quite literally thousands of others are being taught, and most of them aren't dumb or lazy.
Thus to well answer the question "why should we hire you not another ?", you need to start work now on a few Y things that your peers aren't doing. That Y should be something you can excel at, and enjoy. Even if you pick a Y that you feel works in many jobs, be prepared for it not to work in any given interview. This strategy gives you an extra shot that your competitors may not have, and in a highly competitive game the expectation of this is good, even if the distribution of outcomes is wide and includes a lot of zeroes.

 

[watercooler]

Many thanks to Andy and DominiConnor.Your advices are really helpful. It means a lot.Thanks guys.