Analyst Role - Buy-Side Dream or Middle Office Dud ?!

I was recently approached by a headhunter for an ambiguously titled 'Analyst' role at a relatively new Hedge Fund / DCM advisor (not a household name but mid-sized, +$100m, led by industry heavyweights and a very small team, they have large backers - and the debt deals they have advised on / executed range around $200m-$500m)

Sounds like my dream role - entry level to the buy-side - but not sure if I am misinterpreting anything. This is what the role would entail ;

Dept : portfolio management; Building Financial Models, VBA Business Intelligence - Analysis and Reporting. Company Valuations & Industry Research. Preperation of Client Presentations & Info Memos. Ideal for an analyst interested in the buy-side, looking to develop experience in financing new market ideas.

Any Thoughts ???

 

Just spoke to the headhunter, he mentioned that it is a small team but a rapidly growing fund, so duties & exposure will be broad. Sounds like they want someone who will be there for the long run, and open to more responsibility the more comfortable they are in the role. -- I'll be interviewing next week/week after... so I'll report back once that is done.

 
Best Response

Sorry to hijack this thread. I'm idling on a Thur morning and just wanted to understand better how you really distinguish FO in your type of HF.

They say in HFs, titles don't mean anything. So my progress in my quant HF is this: - first 3 months mindless VBA - next 6 months implementing PM's model with no say in strategy - now devising 60% of a new strategy with my ideas with PM to pitch to CIO, do paper trading and if good, get allocation.

I definitely wish to think what I'm doing now is FO.

My exact question is why wouldn't a data analysis or building financial models mean FO? Would this situation be plausible - you crunch the data, see something in their balance sheets that isn't right, tell the PM, he makes a trade? Sounds like FO.

 

Hi, sorry for the late response -you sound like you've gotten yourself into a great role & there are certainly plenty of data roles in HFs that with the right work ethic and will power can get you in a really great position.

This wasn't the case for this role though, it was reporting into the IT manager, very much centered around the actual building of the databases that hold data, and business intelligence was nothing to do with the funds but more around the actual way the IT programs work and tracking how efficient the data mining is (Valuations & Research wasn't even mentioned in the interview so no idea why they decided to throw that in the spec)... They essentially wanted an IT specialist and were not even bothered about any financial knowledge at all.

I do know that this isn't always the case. One of my close friends is raking it in as a commodities trader, started out as a data intern there.

 

I think who you report to is pretty important. I'm in a data analyst type of role, but my team is strictly FO and reports to the CIO. I think there is going to be a lot more Data Analyst type of roles in FO (especially in quant/macro HFs) that may not even have the word "data" as part of the title, but as long as your manager/dept is FO, then I think it's a decent place to start.

 

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