Completely lost, what to do to build up resume for pivot to S&T
Sophomore at a good flagship state school (think Michigan, Texas, etc.) double majoring in math / CS (not in the business school) with a 3.8 GPA. Coming into college, I thought I was going to be a SWE, but unfortunately the tech job market is completely fucked right now. After a no-name SWE internship last summer, I decided to put 100% of my recruiting effort into trading positions at prop shops, figuring that results would materialize faster than if I were to continue trying to recruit for tech, which to some degree proved true given how tech is currently even more fucked than it was last season. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one with this idea, because even though I made it to some final rounds at top shops (think Susquehanna tier) and thought I aced them, I still got cut because the abundant competition was better. Later started to realize how few seats there are in prop trading, and compounded with greylisting / cooldown periods for recruiting (up to 12 months), I figured that S&T at a (BB) bank would be a less risky stepping stone I would be willing to take before pivoting to prop (or trading at an HF) a few years out of school. Now, I understand that recruiting for this starts in just a few months from now in the spring (some have started already for 2025), and I don't have any finance experience on my resume because I never considered S&T until recently (most of the prop shops I interviewed at had very light resume screens and would interview pretty much anyone at a target school and / or who passed their online assessment). What do you advise I do to build my resume before the spring? Should I try recruiting for PWM instead and then S&T for the summer of 2026 and take 4.5 years to graduate?
You don't have to do a finance internship before getting a S&T one if u have a tech background. Just make sure that you can articulate that you want to do S&T. Figure out what kind of product u wanna trade. focus on getting on front office fixed income positions this summer and it will be a great foundation going forward.
Ironically, since most finance internships are doing corp instead of market, it's not gonna be that relevant anyway. In fact, they might not help to get into S&T as much as SWE experience. Just make sure you have enough market knowledge to pass the interview and you will be fine.
Agree here the goal should be to get the best internship period. If a SWE internship is best option do that before wealth management or so.
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