What hope do I have?

Hello all: I'm glad I found this forum. I am going through a personal situation and wanted to know what my prospects are:

I'm male, in my early 30s..."Ivy League" graduate, Math degree (B.Sci), Masters Degree in "Pure Math" from a UK university. After I finished undergrad, I went abroad and have lived in different parts of Europe for over a decade and have NEVER held a real long term job. All of my jobs have been Math teaching (NOT in Schools, private tutoring) and/or English teaching. The only reason I took the English teaching jobs was because (in the places I have been) you make enough to live and get by. But there comes a point in your life when you know it's a dead end and it gets quite boring after so many years.

I tried going back to the US 2 years ago and applied to dozens and dozens of jobs with no luck. I got a few interviews with no results. My desire is to get a finance job but I am not sure that is possible any longer with my age and profile. I have a good transcript, so grades are not an issue...but there's just something about maybe my lack of US work experience that just doesn't click well enough for employers out there.

Any advice?

 
Best Response

The first thing you need to decide is what area of finance you are interested in. You say your desire is to "get a finance job." Okay... what kind of "finance job" are you interested in? Your profile says "Investment Banking - Public Finance - Other." If you are indeed interested in any sort of investment banking, you are probably going to have to seriously consider doing an MBA. You may be able to do some self-learning and try to cold-call and hustle your way into an internship at a tiny boutique firm (high probability it will be unpaid), gain practical experience there and then apply to other full-time paid positions, etc., but the odds are stacked against you.

If you want to do paid work for a major financial institution or any firm that has any sort of brand value, your only realistic option is to go through the traditional channels (which involves doing an MBA). Are you really sure this is the path you want to take? You are going to be in your mid-30s as an associate and there will be kids who are a year removed from college who know more about finance than you.

I don't know anything about you, but your quantitative background suggests you might be suited for quantitative areas of finance, e.g. trading, research or development at quantitative hedge funds or trading firms (e.g. Citadel). I am not an expert on this, but I know of people with PhDs (in some cases, only Master's degrees) in math, statistics, physics, computer science, etc. that fill these positions. I know from speaking with friends and peers who work at quant-oriented firms that talented developers or researchers are always in short supply (and demand is always high), so that might be an area you could look into.

 

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