2 years later I'm again back on this career forum. Can't seem to find any satisfaction and as I get older, moving to the buy-side or a change in career path looks a distant possibility. My passport makes things worse as all discussions with recruiters ends with the question, "do you need visa sponsorship?". I can only work in one of the major financial hubs (the least important one) and all the decent jobs from there are being sent away to low cost locations. I'm myself in such a location in Europe and although initially I had told myself to stick around at one firm for long to see if there could be an internal move, things are getting increasingly intolerable now.
I've been in Rates valuations methodology for most of my career but wouldn't call myself a Quant. I'm decent with Python/R and other languages typically used in statistics/econometrics, but have no inclination to learn C++. Could someone point out if a move to Market risk would be an upward journey and can I start at the same level or would no one interview me if I don't have words like VaR, FRTB, etc on my CV? I'm afraid this move to a non-hub has made things worse and I might get stuck forever. Any advice on how to get out if I don't even get interviews anywhere other than similar low cost locations? (I do have big firm names and decently known schools on my CV, if that matters at all)
And secondly, do recruiters/hiring manager take Linkedin profiles seriously to validate what you've on your CV? Sometimes I've seen they come to my profile after getting my CV but don't call afterwards. I don't update my LinkedIn because I've mostly been ashamed of how far down I've come.
I have also been learning ML by myself, although haven't done much on Kaggle, etc. This is a field where I'm less reluctant to start at the bottom, but I don't want to end up reporting to someone from whom I can't learn anything and they're only at top because they joined earlier.