How do I land HF from ER?

Hi I would be interested about what I wrote in the title. Additionally, I would be interested in the following details:

  1. How does the recruting process work (Do you get approached by recruiters or do you need to "chase" the opportuntiy? Which one is more common?)
  2. Do you need a particular coverage during you ER years?
  3. How many years in can you realisticaly expect to join a HF?

Any additional info is welcome

9 Comments
 

It varies, we recently hired someone who had maybe 3 months of xp

HF scene in LDN is pretty small and unstructured, it's a lot more ad-hoc and network-driven. Most headhunter outreach will be for the multimanager funds, there isn't a set process. You just get involved when you feel you are ready

 
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Recruiters aren’t that useful in London in my opinion, and Long/Short here is not the same opportunity set as it is in the US. The good single manager funds that are worth working for hire very sporadically and almost exclusively through word of mouth or the random job posting.

There’s the large platforms, if you have a high risk tolerance, and you can usually bypass recruiters for these. There are some nimble/marquee shops here too that will use a variety of headhunters but they’re few and far between.

 

I would suggest you do some research on this, given you want to work at one. I’d start by getting clued up on what a multimanager hedge fund is vs single manager and then looking at old WSO threads asking about london hedge funds…

You'll realise you need to be very lucky to get a genuinely exceptional seat here with good economics. The large multimanagers (Citadel, Millenium) will be doing the bulk of regular hiring and they churn through ~1/3 of their investment personnel every year.

Hence why your risk tolerance needs to be reasonably high, and you need to have a constant flow of ideas which make money in 2 - 12 weeks which is a different skillset to what sellside ER trains.

 

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