December 25th, 2007, 4:49 pm
The "no finance experience necessary" is an industry standard lie. To be fair to job advertisers HHs get told this by banks.It is true, actually it must be true else no one would ever git hired.But that is why I wrote in the Guide about "showing commitment" to this line of work.A rational manager wants to reduce his risk of hiring someone who doesn't work out. Fact is that intelligence is a set of abilities, and some bright people don't "get" finance, even when they have relevant or impressive PhDs from brand name schools.Thus they could test your maths ability without it being in the context of finance, but that increases risk with no real return, so it's a bad trade.Of course as HHs we do not always see great recruitment processes and people ask finance questions simply because they are too lazy to think of better ones. This means they hire slightly less able people on average, but although it is their mistake, it is your problem.Also as a HH, it worries me when I find someone who says that they are mad keen to do quant finance, but show no evidence of making any effort to learn about the subject.Of course, our reach these days extends into people who aren't yet in the point in their academic careers where spending much time on finance is an optimum use of their time, so I don't hassle them much to start hitting the books.But as you see in G2, we understand how to subvert PhD study a little to improve your chances.I do part company a little with 2Fish about aim.Yes, it is not wise to focus too tightly on one type of job, but another industry standard lie is that internal moves within a bank are easy, and that "this job is good for picking up the business".Banks are shit at managing the development of talent, losing people rather than bringing them on.No industry with which I have ever been involved in is worse than banks at this.They are so crap that I can freely point this out publicly to 30,000 people on this site, in the sure and certain knowledge that no matter how eloquently I make a good business case for managing career development at banks in a professional way I can be certain that it will not improve things in any way that cuts the unnecessary staff turnover that profits pimps like me.