Hi,This is my first post on this board... great job Guys...I'm Ph.D. and had dissertation in Theory of Authomatic Controll (Theory of stability, DE, Stochastic DE etc.)I also work for 6 years as Sr Software Engineer in great and advanced software development company(C++, Java, .Net, XML, WSDL, WSFL)... But I can't apply my math knowledge although compensation is good.I'm looking at Job posts as quantitative analyst - but they all require >2 years experience in major financial institution... How can I get experience if I can not ge Job to get this experience?Please help me and give some hints how to start...Thanks in advance, and keep up great job...

Get the Ft and then register with one ofthe numerous recruitment agencies in the paper. They'll get you the job....so long as you have a "banking personality." If you want to know what that is read liars pokerYou should be able to soon get a jobplayer

The recruiters that we work with are delighted to help wilmott.com readers. (Little-Known Fact #42: They get most of their hottest leads through our site!) They are very much aware of problems faced by Obchelli and are keen to assist. I don't want to favour any recruiter in particular, so just browse through the Jobs Board and speak to a few.P

Thanks guys,I already tried and posted resume to few agencies - all I got was autoreply from one...I'm currently digging financial literature - to have some basic knowledge... My Programming and math skills are great... I was smarter at 24 though - at that point I had Ph.D. and 20 publications in magor scientific journals of Russia and USA... Skills are fading slowly... (Programming does not require knowledge I have)I'm aproaching 34 in month - is age the factor?what can I say about experience in financial institutions? I have none...Good luck to all...

Dear all,I am jobseeker. I now changed my name to "Money" not because I want a lot of money but rather broken after jobless for half year after graduation. Even i did an internship at a very prestigious bank, I couldn't find a job at all !!!!Yes, I also agree SOME of those recruiters at the job Forum are kind to help. However, none of them still can get me a job (after all having rounds and rounds of interviews). The reason is simply because when the recruiters assign the headhunters to "hunt" the head, they want to nab somebody from the rival firms and not to nab a person from the graduate school. Get my point ? But if you have a PHD, perhaps that may be different but no guarantee.I just heard some of my classmates finally got a job recently. This is a good news. Anyway I feel your IT skills are great ! WIll you rather consider quantitative developers kind of jobs ? There should have more such openings than a pure desk quant.Hope this helps,Depressed Money(jobseeker)

Companies seem reluctant to hire someone they don't know, who has no experience working in a company. It is risky - there are lots of people who just don't work out in a corporate environment, and if you hire one of them, then you end up looking bad. I am often surprised how unattractive good graduates are to unknown firms, yet how attractive the same graduate is to firms where they have a connection (eg their dad is a major client) - and it isn't entirely unreasonable.As (in the short term) you can't do anything about the experience, if you can get to know some of the people, that will help a huge amount. They will then look at your CV with a view of how they can help you, rather than with an air of scepticism. Ways to go about this:- on this forum - you are meeting some very smart people with very good jobs and tonnes of contacts, many of whom have been mentored/helped in the past and would be keen to do so for the right person. If you make a good impression, it can help. Admittedly, if you make a bad impression, look out. And try to be a little bit subtle! And don't think that just because they can't offer you a job or you wouldn't want to work at their company, you shouldn't speak to them - opportunities come up in unexpected places.- if you get an opportunity to have a coffee with a quant, take it. Your professor/tutors at university should know quants in industry who would be happy to meet with you. Chances are they won't be able to offer you a job, but the discussion will be valuable, and may lead to other leads. Many cities have quant groups or treasury associations that you can join, and then meet people.- recruitment agencies will often chat to you, and once they like you, they will recommend you all over the place. And a company is a lot more willing to listen to a recruitment agency than a graduate with no reputation at stake. And be aware that there are good and bad recruitment agents - if one is no good, try another.- All this presupposes that you are pretty smart, a nice person, hard working, enthusiastic. If you are not, meeting people will only lower your chance of getting a job! If that is the case, I recommend blackmail, taking advantage of relatives, or waiting until the next finance boom when they will hire anyone they can get their hands on!Sorry for the ramble! Hope it might offer some thoughts.

Towards the end of my MSc I had only two serious offers on the table -> an actuarial trainee job, or dole! (Sadly I had not managed to secure an Ibank job during my MSc.)Is it best to sit on the dole after an MSc in Fin Maths? I'm not so sure that Ibanks would be so keen to recruit someone from the dole.. or would they?Sometimes I feel that maybe I should have spent the last year taking up a part time job to cover bills and using my time to read up on finance text books, C++ etc. ... but then again I would still have all that debt hanging over me from 4 years of university plus very little commercial experience.I would be interested to hear of other people's thought/experiences on this. Is gaining experience in a different finance field e.g. actuary, accountancy better than no commercial experience after MSc?

I'd say that any job is preferable to no job. Enough people have gone into quant finance from acturial work, accountantcy (including myself), engineering, etc that having spent some time there won't stand against you when you try and get a job in quant finance - it will show you are hard working, have the ability to work with others, see things from a real world perspective, etc. You can still spend time studying after hours if there is particular stuff you want to know, and who knows - you might enjoy the job. The only warning I'd give is: if you get to the stage that you only think like an accountant, etc, it can be a problem (if you think like an accountant the whole time - you probably need a bullet ). You need to make sure that you remain open minded enough to be able to learn things wherever you want to go, and not go in thinking that you know everything.