Can't land job in trading
It has been a while since i am trying to get a job in trading, but I can't get through.
I am a finance student with high GPA from a non-target University.
Banks don't even call me because of my non-target University (I am pretty convinced of that since they prefer to hire biology or philosophy graduates from top universities...)
Hedge Funds don't call me because I don't have experience in banks.
Prop shops are the only one that give me a chance, but they hire mainly math students and base their selection process in way to hire very quantitative people, which I am not since I come from finance and so I have trouble in doing well final rounds.
What should I do? I am starting to feel like I will never make it.
Banks- apply to middle and back office roles. They won’t care as much about your educational background. Network into trading later.
Or go do a masters in finance at a well known place, use on campus recruiting there.
Or learn math and programming. Compete on skill alone at prop shops.
I’ve had the luck of getting a few offers this season, but keep applying and networking. Oddly enough, the places I got offers at just stumbled upon me as opposed to places I networked for.
Really random sometimes. Networking usually just gets you an interview... which a blind web application can also do.
Trading what?
I can almost guarantee you can get a trading job tomorrow given the little you have posted.
Your issue is WHAT trading job you want. I can think of five or ten open slots right now looking for college grads.
First one I pulled up is $90k to $110k a year.
Maybe your looking in the wrong place?
I'm talking about Derivatives trading.
where do you find these trading jobs?
What do you mean? I go on the careers page of banks and funds.
Are you networking your a$$ off? Are you part of your schools investment fund? To your point regarding major, don't be bitter since people will sense it and to put it bluntly a finance major is not relevant to trading on any level quant or not.
How can I do networking? My school has no investment fund and no good companies come there recruiting.
I have tried to network very hardly on LinkedIn but it didn't help much. Maybe I am doing it in the wrong way. What's the best way to network online? (Since I have no way to do that in person)
That's some tough luck regarding school investment fund since most schools have them at this point. If you are a high gpa student my guess is you could get with a faculty member and try to get one started. If you are a senior you've started the process too late for trading at a bank but maybe you can get in a small shop like a mutual fund doing research and move from there. Similarly jobs at govt organizations like Federal Reserve/Fannie/Freddie have capital markets/trading jobs and a lot of those folks are high gpa that attended non-target.\
Regarding linkedin I had alumni that did trading but I was keen on commodity trading so I do feel you regarding who to reach out to. I had to do some cold-linkedin messages. Just gotta be persistent, below is my format for it. I had pretty good success with non-alumni and ended up getting some interviews as a result.
"Hi FIRST NAME OF PERSON REACHING OUT TO, I am a FRESH/SOPH/JUNIOR/SENIOR AREA OF STUDY major at SCHOOL. I am trying to learn more about the AREA THEY ARE WORKING IN space, and I was wondering if I could speak with you about your time in the industry?
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