Trending Content
Career Resources
WSO Free Modeling Series - Now Open Through
April 30, 2024
9 Free Financial Modeling Lessons
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
Depends on your work experience. If you're been doing SOMETHING finance related, possibly. Most firms have already decided on their class of new hires, so you would really have to impress them to get a spot his late. But if your "work experience" was Teach For America or the Peace Corps, you may be out of luck.
I have about 5 years of work experience in trading. It seems like I need to wait until the fall of 2010 to try to get in as an experienced hire applicant.
Would it be better to wait until the class of 2011 hiring season?
I may be wrong, but I think the timeline for taking on experienced hires is not as rigid as that of new analysts
Are you crazy? Why would you want to work for a NYC BB in trading if you're successful in Chicago? This would be like a trader from Citadel applying for a job at a retail brokerage. You'd better have a good explanation for the interview because it may look like a step down if you're coming from a prop trading firm. (This is not meant to disrespect NYC BB trading- I work there- but typically the progression is Investment Bank-> Prop Shop, not the other way around.)
Generally, the experienced hiring season in NYC runs all year but tends to heat up November through February. Get a profile up on linkedIn that uses words like "expert", "experienced", and "documented", and you'll start getting calls and messages from headhunters and an occasional HR person or hiring manager. Explain what you're looking for to them and see what they can do for you. Given your industry experience, if you've been generating at least a few million in net P&L annually for the past few years, you shouldn't settle for anything less than the rank of VP. Also, make sure you discuss bonus expectations ahead of time- there's a huge difference between how bonuses work in Chicago and at the NYC BBs.
I can completely vouch for this. I changed my industry from Computer Software to Financial Services, and joined a Quant Finance group on linkedIn over winter break. I've been contacted by 2 headhunters in the last 2 months asking whether I'm interested in jobs in Hedge Funds, and I'm still only a senior in college.
IlliniProgrammer, quick question: Would your advise of Prop>BB still apply if it were a top BB prop-desk?
Most BBs have better tools and data than a lot of prop shops (this may change with new regulatory requirements on IT). If you're running deep out-of-the-money equity options strategies and want to look at the market's perceived default risk of specific issuers from more than a decade ago, good luck trying to get information on that from vendors. At a firm that has a bond index, though, like Merrill or Barclays, they've probably got a lot more information and tools available internally. If you want to try really quirky strategies, it's probably harder to do that at a prop shop than a BB.
Also bear in mind that a number of the Commercial Banking- Capital Markets BBs could potentially get hit by the Volcker rule. In other words, there may be a lot less proprietary trading capital available at the large banks than there currently is.
Big firms have a lot more political battles than smaller firms (At least I think- I only interned at a smaller firm). Things aren't always dictated by pragmatism at the banks. You will have to learn to either become an expert politician or you will do a lot of teeth grinding as less wise ideas from the politically-connected affect your work. It's not as bad in trading as in research, sales, technology, or HR, but it still causes problems.
So there's probably more trading strategies available at a firm with a broad capital markets and research group, but your cut will probably be less. There may or may not be more capital available for you to trade with depending on how badly your firm gets hit by new regulations.
One STUPID way to make a decision on who to work for is prestige. (This is coming from someone who did that for his first job) Smart people? Maybe. Experienced people willing to teach you stuff about the markets that you don't already know? Absolutely. But if you already have a bit of a track record, there's no reason to go for Goldman Sachs if a no-name trading firm with experienced folks is offering you a better deal outside the name brand.
Be careful about this. A lot of jobs at hedge funds being promoted by headhunters are still back-office technology stuff, and you can get taken advantage of pretty easily as a senior in college. Even in the more front-officey tech groups like Analytics, 75% of the work is still writing scripts, looking at logs to figure out why something broke, and writing code to make something spin right three times instead of spin left twice. The other 25% of it is understanding the pricing model and the specific instrument being traded, which is usually a lot dryer than it sounds.I would look for positions that involve words like "fast execution" or "algorithms" if they're looking for people with a programming background. I would be careful if they need a background in scripting languages or database administration. Just because you work for a hedge fund or an investment bank doesn't mean you get anywhere close to playing with the money.
Top prop shops like getco, DRW, optiver, are probably better than most bank trading jobs, at least with regards to prestige. But 99% of prop shops in chicago are not great places to work at. Sure, you theoretically can make several million in a year, but those cases are extremely rare. At least at a BB, you have a good name on your resume, get great experience, and in a decent year could make like $300K.
Sit corporis vitae et dolorem error accusantium. Necessitatibus in fugit nemo qui. Est qui veniam quidem dolorem dolor hic dicta. Id quibusdam et libero sed voluptatem. Vero sequi vitae voluptatum ullam numquam ea corrupti. Sed id quod et consequatur. Perspiciatis et facilis voluptatem qui.
Quod illum velit molestias nulla qui. Sunt harum autem dolores esse est neque. Omnis ut est in nemo itaque autem ea nulla. Iusto blanditiis deleniti autem asperiores qui laboriosam repellat. Quia praesentium aspernatur ea consequatur.
Qui nulla voluptatem voluptatem excepturi magnam saepe excepturi id. Facere aliquam qui sit deserunt quis alias expedita. Perspiciatis libero mollitia iste consequatur deserunt. Labore sed vero et.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...