MFE Job Market

[CandyOates]

In a recent thread @Ken Abbott stated that there is "an oversupply of MFEs" and yet the top programs have near flawless internship and career placements. How is the job market for new MFEs? Is the job search really only problematic for graduates of less prestigious programs? I'm interested to hear peoples views. Thanks.

 

[Frank.X]

I'm also interested in the current situation of the job market. I'm especially interested in prop trading.
I'd love to hear some thoughts on this too.

 

[Keith Tan]

i still see plenty of job vacancies lying around. one can choose non-mfe route upon post-mfe , like portfolio management, risk, IB analyst, platform developer or even big data. for graduates of less prestigious programs applying to prestigious firms, of course there's a problem with job hunting. there are many small three-man, five-man prop shops with no brand name waiting to hire.

 

[C S]

In a recent thread @Ken Abbott yet the top programs have near flawless internship and career placements.

Do you have actual data for this? Last I checked, the top programs generally obscured or didn't release such data.

 

[CandyOates]

Do you have actual data for this? Last I checked, the top programs generally obscured or didn't release such data.

That's certainly true that all the information isn't readily available. Of the top programs that do release their employment statistics and the programs I've spoken with directly, the hiring rates have all been pretty good.

 

[ChaoL]

That's certainly true that all the information isn't readily available. Of the top programs that do release their employment statistics and the programs I've spoken with directly, the hiring rates have all been pretty good.

I think some employment statistics data on their websites cannot reflect current MFE job market situation. Most MFE students are international students, and most of them go back to their home countries. So it is hard for program to collect employment data. And most of placement rate is based on students who reply to program's queries.

 

[Jedison]

I really don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but I find the general sentiment on quantnet regarding the job market to be overly pessimistic. To be clear, I am still in school, and have no full time experience. But when you look at placement rates at top programs they're really quite good. Moreover, I've seen a lot of posts about how quants don't get trading jobs. Once again, however, if you look at placement stats from top programs around 30% of grads are working in trading roles. Maybe these posts are referring to HFT which is something different altogether.

 

[CandyOates]

I really don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but I find the general sentiment on quantnet regarding the job market to be overly pessimistic. To be clear, I am still in school, and have no full time experience. But when you look at placement rates at top programs they're really quite good. Moreover, I've seen a lot of posts about how quants don't get trading jobs. Once again, however, if you look at placement stats from top programs around 30% of grads are working in trading roles. Maybe these posts are referring to HFT which is something different altogether.

I don't know much about that, but when I spoke with the program director at NYU he said, if I recall correctly, that the ideal candidate for a HFT position is someone with a few years of experience working at Microsoft or Google (or something similar) with a good quantitative background. I suspect very few MFE grads have such a background, so it would make sense for many to fail to enter HFT positions.

 

[Jedison]

I don't know much about that, but when I spoke with the program director at NYU he said, if I recall correctly, that the ideal candidate for a HFT position is someone with a few years of experience working at Microsoft or Google (or something similar) with a good quantitative background. I suspect very few MFE grads have such a background, so it would make sense for many to fail to enter HFT positions.

Ya I've heard similar things. Ironically it seems that an MFE is a much better route to a traditional trading role than a HF position. It's hard to tell from the placement reports, but most of the trading positions don't sound overly quantitative. Perhaps I'm mistaken though...

 

[ChaoL]

I'm wondering whether there is MFE graduate looks for traditional IBD research analyst or HF analyst positions?
Even their graduate courses are more quantitative, however, I think they cannot be less competitive than regular finance undergraduate in finding a traditional IBD job.

 

[IntoDarkness]

for traditional trading, they only need undergrad. the skillset overlap between mfe and ibd is minimum

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Would anyone be happy to get a mid office job in risk, regulation from a top MFE program? Or it would be considered a big failure if you don't land a front office trading job from the bulge bracket firms?

If you say yes to the first question, there will be jobs. If you say yes to the second, then brace yourself. I have a feeling that many are in denial and don't accept the fact that it's not 2006 anymore.