Odds of getting a Front Office job with PhD in geoscience??
What are the chances of getting a job in IB/trading/research with PhD in geoscience from an average US school (60-70 national ranking)? I also have R, matlab and python skills.
Suggestions/experience would be greatly appreciated about what would be the better way to start... thanks
Hmmm. Geoscience is an important discipline, but it's not as clear how this helps a bank as much as many other STEM disciplines.
Off the top of my head, depending on where you did your research, you may have a role to play in longer-term weather derivatives or maybe trading catastrophe bonds (linked to earthquakes- designed to help insurance companies and large corps mitigate risk.)
As a STEM PhD student, you probably have a strong stats background and that may also be helpful for some strategy research roles. My understanding is that a lot of the modeling in geosciences requires a lot of programming, which would also be helpful for strategy research or analytics.
I would also hit up quantnet.com for advice.
Alternatively, go work for NASA or NOAA for a few years. Honestly, my understanding is that the Feds aren't incredibly cheap when it comes to pay and the work is a whole lot more interesting than finance. Also, compared to finance, government is a growth industry.
A lot of the BB have cut back on their sales and trading recruiting from the graduate level and pretty much only recruit undergrads because they're cheaper than MBAs and other masters. So I would assume they're probably not looking to hard at PhDs either from a standard recruiting perspective. I like illiniprogrammers idea of shooting for NASA or NOAA for a few years. With that experience it'll be easier to switch to the street I would think
Thanks a lot for your quick replies!! Yeah, i have a strong math and stats background along with programming. i did lots of modeling work - developed some models.
i see the point about NASA or NOAA -- but i have a few postdoc offers from decent schools like Duke. What do you think doing a year or two of postdoc at Duke or Stanford would increase the chances of switching to the street?
Duke, certainly Stanford would play well on the street, but I think NASA would play better if you decide to target that. The trader who did his mechanical engineering degree at Princeton saw his smartest classmate graduate to work at NASA. If you can land at NASA at the post-PhD level, most finance people who don't know any better would say that's pretty darned special.
What you also want is some sort of marketable experience. If you can bring to the interview stories about the science behind the Mars rover missions, or maybe if you can talk about some geology dig that sent you climbing up the face of some 500 foot cliff or doing deco dives off the coast of Alaska, that's something pretty interesting. I don't know how much field work geoscientists really get- or if it's mostly just modeling and handing that kind of stuff off to geologists- but absent NASA or NOAA, the more interesting field work you have, the better. This is something that most QR people- and probably most traders would find really interesting on a resume. We'll figure out from the interview whether you can handle the stats and coding, but we like working with interesting people.
That said, if you get an FO offer from a good firm, and you're reasonably sure you want to go to industry, take the offer. The only benefit of a postdoc is preserving the option of academia.
Three years ago, I would have foolishly said that you can always go back to academia after working in banking. I had a number of friends who left banking to do PhDs. Today, after having gone to grad school, I'm not as sure- at least at the post-PhD level. I get the impression from a lot of PhD students that they don't think even an Econ PhD can get a professorship or research role after working for a bank. It may be the case that you're only allowed to fool around with industry before pursuing a PhD. And in an unrelated field like Geoscience, it may be a lot harder to justify the career move to an ideological academic than it would be for a Finance, ORFE, or Econ PhD.
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