I'm a banking analyst that recently received an offer from Citadel and am leaning towards turning it down. I actually like the idea of Citadel a great deal, but it isn't my top choice of a place to work next, though I might consider working there in 3 years if I got to cover an industry that I'm really interested in.
**I tried to consider the "option value" of continuing to recruit versus the value of the offer, but I'd like WSO to weigh in and see what they think as well. I also think the way I'm thinking about it as well as the ensuing discussion may be helpful to others. My rationale is a bit math-y in an illustrative banker way and I wanted to see whether the WSO community could pressure test some of my assumptions to see whether they are reasonable. **
Assumptions / Rationale: - I have recruited from August to November 2016 and have received interviews from 10 places. I received offers at 2 places. Citadel was one offer. I got a biz dev position at a quant fund (think RenTec, Two Sigma, Citadel, etc) for the other role. I turned down 1 multi-manager at the pre-offer stage because I preferred the Citadel offer despite that I was still shaky on it and it was otherwise very similar (think BAM, Millennium, Point72). This implies approximately a 20% offer rate and a rate of approximately 3 interviews per month. - Most people do most of their interviews in January / February for private equity. I am a better hedge fund candidate than private equity candidate (I actually love markets, am good at math and am a weird person; places like Citadel like both things) and, moreover, private equity recruiting is I think more competitive, so I expect an offer rate that is a bit less than my historical rate. I'm guessing it is ~10% in January / February. - On the other hand, I would expect that I would get twice as many interviews per month in Jan / Feb because that's when most people recruit. Historically I got interviews with ~3 places / month, but I would guess it would be ~6-8 places per month in Jan / Feb. So I would guess I'd get ~15-20 interviews in Jan / Feb. - I did not like the role at Citadel due to industry coverage and location, despite that it is a otherwise awesome place to work. I would rank it actually below most of the other places I interviewed based on my personal preferences, except for the other multi-managers (so it is about 50th percentile for me). Hopefully, I have learned something about communicating my preferences to headhunters through interviewing for a couple months so I would guess that of the ~15-20 interviews, I would only really like ~10-15 better than Citadel.
So what is the probability that I get at least 1 offer that is better than Citadel if I turn it down and re-recruit in January? It is 1-((1-10%)^12.5)=73% (e.g., P(at least 1 success) = 1 - P (no successes)). What is the probability that I get an offer at all? It is 1-((1-10%)^17.5)=85%.
**On average, then, it makes sense that I should wait to see what else is out there, but only if the assumptions above are true. Do you guys think I am making reasonable assumptions about recruiting outcomes? **
I'd back this all the way out to more simple probabilities. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Are you interested at all in the role at Citadel? If so, take it. It's a good brand, and you state that HFs are a better fit than PE. If you have a HF offer, why even bother with PE?
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