August 24th, 2010, 4:02 pm
My job as a quant headhunter is to help you get what you want, not to tell you what you should want, so it's fine if you want to work there.The obvious first idea is to teach quant finance and/or banking.There's a lot of smart people in those places, and the combination of them wanting to move to the West, and the growing sophistication of their markets, and maybe a bit of outsourcing by western banks will mean there's some demand. Aside from your experience, getting very good at the language will be essential, but also be aware that being able to teach business English has some value.There are MFE programs everywhere...Related to the offshoring is your employer may have an office in that country that you can work in. Once they realise that you're flexible on money, a deal can be made. You need to optimise for companies that are likely to have an office there, so more HSBC than GS for instance.Inferior employers like Accenture do outsourcing in low wage cost countries, the idea of getting a grown up to lead their horde of second raters will be very attractive to them, especially if the grown up is prepared to work for the peanuts that Accenture et al pay.Note the theme here is that you are unlikely to get big money in this, but I'm guessing you know that already.That region has a bunch of local exchanges, all of whom are very ambitious. Roles as an advisor might come up, based upon your experience in developed markets, also if you are good at sharing ideas, they may want you to help them persuade people to use them as a venue. There are also regulators, etc.Many types of trading don't really require you to be in a specific place, and regulation / tax could mean that they become very attractive for prop trading, and of course each has a nascent hedge fund industry. For instance, you might work in commodities in the west, then move to Indonesia which is a viable location for some.The high risk option is to start your own business there, advising local firms, and using the pile of cheap/good people there and your contacts.What you haven't shared is whether these places are your final destination ?This matters because it affects what jobs are best for you, ideally you want an employer that looks good in the West.That's not always easy to spot, firms get better or worse, and there are some unintuitive results.I mentioned Accenture, if you're from Vietnam, working in their local office, it's good to have it on your CV, because it means you beat a lot of other Vietnamese, since they pay better than most jobs there.But as a westerner, it means you're second rate, or at best that you showed extraordinarily poor judgement, because Accenture is not an employer of choice for highly skilled Western people.By 'western people' I mean people who've been educated in the West, your ethnic group is not the factor here.