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When To Apply If You Have a PhD?

Chase

Joined
9/8/11
Messages
7
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11
I will be finishing my engineering PhD this Spring and was hoping to apply for quant jobs in the Summer after I finish so that I could better prepare for interviews. Will this be too late or passed some optimal job application season in the Spring? Also, does anyone have insight into whether employers will look unfavorably at the brief job-hunting time spent unemployed after finishing my PhD?
 
summer is usually a dead. If you are finishing your PhD this Spring, start to apply now.
 
Thanks for the response. I was just at an engineering career fair and asked the Blackrock and BofA recruiters what they thought. They said for people with PhDs are in a different recruitment pool that is hired year round and so applying in summer would not hurt, but they were also primarily there to recruit engineers for non-finance jobs, so now I'm not sure what to think.

Anyone else have input? Perhaps specifically relating to PhDs?
 
Thanks Andy. Any idea whether those specific channels tend to be much more receptive in the spring, or is the summer also good?
 
It depends on the banks. They should say on their website the deadline to apply. Many firms will treat PhD as experienced professionals and they hire year round.
You probably refer to the usual training programs that banks run. Unfortunately, they gear more to the MBA/undergrad crowd which has a very formal, established recruiting procedure.
There are very few formal recruiting procedures like that for Master/PhD people which is the biggest problem that the audience of this website faces.
 
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