If you're not "connected" so that you can get a job by talking to someone and they short-circuiting the system to take you in, then like all of us losers, you're left with cold-calling in your attempt to get a job. That means recruiters, corporate HR, low-level hiring managers, "the system". And your chances of making a pass are in the 10% if you're truly exceptional, like the kind of guy for whom a $500,000 per year would be a bargain. (I bet you aren't though, so your chances are like for the rest of us, the really good guys, in the 1% range).
At 10% chances you have to ensure around 50 interviews to really rule out you're not just unlucky that you keep failing those interviews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution : if the probability of successfully getting a job is p = 10%, the probability of getting exactly 0 successes (thus the probability of getting rejected) in N trials is (1 - p)^N = 0.9^N.
For a single interview, the probability of failing the interview is 0.9^1 = 90%, quite obvious since the probability of passing it is 10%.
Most stupid people would reason simply: if my chances of pass are 10%, then all I need is to go to 10 interviews and I'm gonna get the job.
But 0.9^10 = 0.35 so with just 10 interviews, the unlucky ones will fail one third of the times. Dunno about you but I'm the unlucky type.
Therefore to really consider I'm participating in a deterministic game and not just gambling, I need my chances of failure to be below 1%.
One percent could still be unlucky but if I'm *that* unlucky, I consider it fair. Will acquire some rabbit foot or something else next time.
Or better, what I'm doing right now, give up applying to "the system" altogether and just trade / work by myself.
If you get that job, it's gonna be some crappy career wrecking mind-destroying bullshit anyways.
For 1% chances of rejection, I need to find out how many interviews I need to attend.
So the equation is 0.01 = 0.9^N, therefore N = Ln(0.01) / Ln(0.9) =~ 44.
The entire fucking Netherlands doesn't have 50 finance companies who do quant / trading stuff. Not to mention the fact that a 10% chance of success of a really good candidate would need to meet with an equally capable counterpart, which is not the case with Flow Traders, Optiver and All Options (remember, I've told you in the beginning your contact with these companies in the lack of insider contacts are with
recruiters, corporate HR, low-ranking hiring managers ... not just not the brightest bunch but quite the opposite of it)... dunno about the others but eliminating three of the contenders has already halved your "about 5 companies in total" choices.
Anyways, good luck with Netherlands!