Hi everyone,I need some advice regarding taking on a job in market risk. I have been working in sales and marketing for the past 8 years; however, not in capital markets but in IT and Telecom. I became fascinted with capital markets and planned a shift in to this field. To do that, I took different courses in math and probability, applied to a top Master in Mathfin, got accepted, and have done very well. I made a changed from MSc to MPhil so I can keep a foot on what's going on in the academic work and am allowed to work full time now. My maain goal was and still is to get into Sales of either exotics or structured products. I am too old to be a quant and cannot afford the extra 3 years I will need to complete a PhD. I have exchanged emails with Dominic and he has given me great tips. Thing is that I have applied to some desks and they have rejected me for I have no previous experience in the field (I think is mostly the fact that I don't have a porftfolio of instituional clients). They don't seem to care too much that I am a senior sales person who have managed to allways overachieved sales quotas and new clients acquisition forecasts. About a week ago, I got a call from a big frech multinational (50 biggest in France) with over 130K employees. They have a Financial Holding that takes care of all the capital market activities. They hedge heavily their interest and exchange rate risk with many different intruments and they also do lots of securitization of they receivables and other things. They have even founded many SPVs... They have offered me a job (well paid considering that it is not banking) in Manager of Market Risk where I would have to mark to marked most of their intruments on a monthly basis and sort of other things. 50% of my work would be to be the link to the rating agencies and to monitor all of the securitization activities. It sounds very interesting and I am sure I could learn a lot.... problem is that I don't now if after working a couple of years in that role, I could make a move to sales of structured products. I like this position and they do a lot of things for being a corporation and not a desk, but I AM A TRULY SALESMAN.... I am a very self-confident person but at 35 and shortly from being a father, I am a bit worried that I will take that job out of fear from having to go too long during a job search process.. My competitive spirit tells me to fight the market and win my position in sales and my convervative side tells me to take this job...the question to the forum is if they believe that after this position, since I will be even older, it would be pretty much impossible to break it into sales.. thanks a lot for all the inputs and I will try to see you at the next Random Walkers get together..Nkisi..

Well, it's tough to say in your specific case but I would say that as a general rule you will find it tough to break into an ibank if you're over 30, mainly because people will not necessarily be prepared to hire you as a VP if you have limited experience in the field, but they won't want to offer you an associate-equivalent position because of your age and how you'd feel having a 26-year old peer group. You have to keep in mind that the only people over 40 in sales are by and large going to be MD-level executives who have been in the business for 15 years or more and that banks have such a wide choice of young applicants to pick from that you'd have to be exceptional in some way to register on their radar screens.In your specific case, the conundrum is that I'd say you're over-qualified for your bog-standard sales job but under-qualified for a pure quant position, so I'm not surprised you've been offered a quant-type job in an non-bank institution. To be honest, I think your best bet would be to take that job and keep your eyes peeled for an opening in an investment bank. You'll find that as you make contacts in the industry, moving about becomes easier. Trying to break in directly is going to prove difficult otherwise.That's my $0.02, but maybe I'm just more risk-averse than you are...