How to Get a Quant Job in Finance

How to Get a Quant Job in Finance
financejobs.co

Thanks a lot for writing/posting this. I enjoyed the read.

One thing I had to chuckle at was this:

>Mark Joshi obtained a B.A. in mathematics (top of year) from the University of Oxford in 1990, and a Ph.D. in pure mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. He was an assistant lecturer in the department of pure mathematics and mathematical statistics at Cambridge University from 1994 to 1999. Following which he worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland from 1999 to 2005 as a quantitative analyst at a variety of levels, finishing as the Head of Quantitative Research for Group Risk Management. He joined the Centre for Actuarial Studies at the University of Melbourne in November 2005 as an associate professor and is now a full professor.

Pure math to quant to actuary. It's kind of funny how I see/have met so many people that have gone this route. It's like they got sucked into pure mathematics, then thought: shoot I really need to get some practical work done with this math! And afterwards, at a later stage in life they wanted to back out and wanted a stable, high paying, but still math heavy job (actuary!).

Does anybody here have any experiences with being on the 'front office'? I'd love to hear them.

It also allows an endless pissing contest of comparing new brainteasers among your colleagues, and telling stories of helpless candidates who couldn't even manage the first gasp of a hint of an idea towards the solution.

I tend not to like extremely complex brainteasers as interview questions, and especially not ones that require an "aha" moment to solve them correctly, because mostly what you're testing for is whether the candidate has seen that question before (or one like it).

On the other hand, I am a big fan of asking relatively easy math questions (i.e. first year undergraduate) in interviews, because if I'm going to be paying someone $100k+ to work on mathematical models, I'm damn well going to make sure that they understand basic probability, statistics, calculus and linear algebra. These are a bit like fizz-buzz for quants - if the candidate can answer them it doesn't prove anything, but if they can't answer them then you can stop the interview right there.

Generally to software engineer it so it performs properly, can be put on a grid, etc etc.