Any help welcomed! Struggling with internal move to Trading Side

Hey monkeys,

Was hoping some people on the S&T side could give me a hand or any advice here because I'm at wits' end trying to figure this out after several years in the industry. I have posted before on various other subjects but created a burner just for this post so I don't out myself. My goal is to be on the trading side at a bank but I keep running into walls with it. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I apologize if I'm a little vague on details to help keep my identity a secret for now.

In short, my background: Non-target finance major, worked in the Middle Office for a Tier 1 BB for 3 years, moved to another Tier 1 NY BB when a FO move wasn't panning out (it was indicated to me privately a FO move wasn't happening for anyone in MO at that point), I did Market Risk for a year, and moved to a Trading Assistant seat now at my current BB.

My issue is that there's no growth in my current seat and I don't see there being any way to get to a Junior Trader seat from where I'm sitting day to day. I've found that my bank has gone exclusively to just grooming junior salespeople and traders right out of school at a firm-wide level and thus I'm stuck in no man's land. I have the skillset of a junior trader (curve marking, PnL tracking, trade entry, break report monitoring, clearing, how not to mess up the coffee orders), and have middle office experience too. It's been beyond frustrating the last few years to try to get over the hump. I love weighing and putting on risk and built a model with a friend to bet horse racing and have made some nice spending money doing it. I can show a love of risk and how to manage it.

I'm finding that headhunters only want to place me into Middle Office seats, which is a step-back. HR is somewhat in the same boat. The salespeople/traders on our desks know what I want, and trust me to get the right work done, but seem to have their hands tied on bringing someone on outside of the target school person to groom from right out of school from upper management. It's not a question of interviewing poorly, (I have the WSO guides, etc.), its just being in no man's land again for the second time.

Does anyone have any ideas? Any of the more senior monkeys here have any input on what they'd advise? Any monkeys on here do any FO placement?

Thanks Frustrated