June 24th, 2008, 10:52 pm
QuoteOriginally posted by: ZmeiGorynychMelanez, the last thing you need is more courses - you're a lecturer yourself, after all, and your background looks very impressive. The last ex-lecturer I interviewed was one of the best candidates I ever met. I would recommend getting DCFC's Guide to getting a quant job and studying it, and learning some programming in your spare time. There's plenty of threads on this forum on how to do that. I somewhat disagree with HyperGeometric in that I find working in finance a lot more intellectually challenging and fun than academe ever was - but the feel is certainly very different, and the question whether you are tired of academe or merely of mathematics is a very legitimate one, that only you can answer. Also, be aware that economics (as in the academic discipline) and finance have virtually zero overlap, so you should find out which one you are really interested in.If you decide you do want to do finance after all - once you ingested and followed the Guide, just start interviewing, that'll be very helpful in finding out what's out there and what you actually want to do (which is the harder part), and in time you will get fantastic job offers. There are indeed a LOT of very boring quant jobs out there and you have to be very careful not to land in one of them (getting DCFC's advice is quite useful there). If you want to chat about all that over a beer, please pm me.Zmei is spot on. You're CV is already quite good. On a bull market, if you do your homework, I am sure you'll end up with some good offer. However the market is crappy right now, so I suggest you take the time to learn programming and prepare for the interviews. For that, plenty of tips on MJ/Dominic guides. Be sure to check the description of the various role in a bank. I guess MJ is very good on that front. Like Zmei said, hardest part is find what you want to do. On top of bad vs good jobs, I would add the people you'll work with. Even a decent job can be made crappy if there is a personality gap.