Hello everyone,I graduated with a Masters in Computational Finance a little more than two years ago. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a job in Finance right after my graduation. Several factors (no US citizenship, no money etc.) forced me to look outside of finance for a job. I have been working for a barter exchange market maker for the past two years. While my day-to-day job has nothing to do with traditional finance per se, it is highly quantitative in nature and I have been able to use several techniques I learnt during my Masters- time series forecasting, optimizaiton (mostly linear, on the job), regression, simulation (dicerete event, mostly) etc. I have also had a chance to do some financial modeling in the context of asset acquisition and due diligence for some M&A deals. Currently, I use SAS heavily and work with massive data sets. I also use VBA, albeit not as much and my spreadsheet skills are good. I do not know C++ and last programmed in C and Matlab in college.Whille my current job is intellectually satisfying and fast paced (which I enjoy), I would like to switch to Finance as that is the field I want to work in. Having lurked in these forums long enough, I know I might not have enough qualifications to get a front office/ desk quant job. I am open to work in any analytical area in Sales & Trading, Asset Management, in order to get my foot in the door. How would you rate my chances? What kind of positions should I target? Do I have sufficient skills? If not, what should I focus on developing? Is there anyone who been in such a situation before (I did a search and couldnt find this topic discussed before)?I am based in New Jersey (so targeting either NY or CT) and am 26 years old (not sure if that is important).Thanks in advance.

it sounds to me that your current job has much more promise than a traditional finance position. you are in the industry of the future. finance is the industry of the past. you should not fail to appreciate what you already have because the grass next door LOOKS greener.

QuoteOriginally posted by: KackToodlesit sounds to me that your current job has much more promise than a traditional finance position. you are in the industry of the future. finance is the industry of the past. you should not fail to appreciate what you already have because the grass next door LOOKS greener.I think in some cases the grass merely looks greener, and in some cases it actually is. If a finance job pays twice as much as his current job, I'd say the grass is greener.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Rrolack2If a finance job pays twice as much as his current job, I'd say the grass is greener. In making the financial comparison, you should do an NPV calculation based on an unbiased assessment of your future income potential in your current industry versus finance. In particular, this means you should realistically assess your income potential in both industries taking into account your capacity for performance in the future relative to the competittion. AND you should not think myoptically in terms of just this or next year's salary. Seems to me that if you can succeed in your current industry, you can become much richer faster than trying to negotiate the multi-tiered maze of the wall street corporate hierarchy. Just ask the first 100 employees at eBay or Google!

QuoteOriginally posted by: KackToodlesQuoteOriginally posted by: Rrolack2If a finance job pays twice as much as his current job, I'd say the grass is greener. Just ask the first 100 employees at eBay or Google!Or you could ask the former employees of CMGI

Thanks for the input, guys. Let me clarify. I work in the travel industry and that too a niche area- vacation exchanges. While this is not the only area my company is into, it's the biggest revenue generator. This industry is about 30 years old and my company basically is the market with competition being highly fragmented. This is not a growth market in North America but has good growth potential in Asia, particularly India and China (which industry doesn't). As for greener pastures, yes, my current salary is way lower than any of my Wall St. friends. But that's not the only issue on my mind. The group I work for is only a couple of years old (I joined right after it was started) and it is a highly quantitative and analytical group in a Mom and Pop business. Though my work is interesting, all the while a small portion of my work has been to support executive decision making which invariably turns out to be a defense of the work that our group does (why we hire Phds, why do we need forecasting, optimization and all that jazz?!) and this kind of work has been increasing of late. Our group is always on the back foot spending ridiculous amounts of time and effort justifying our existence to the rest of the company. The political climate in this company is volatile and I have worked for 3 different bosses since I joined and our company has had 2 different parent companies in the last 2 years. Recently I was offered a managerial role to start a new group to manage quantitative work for emerging markets. I was excited that I had such an opportunity so early in my career. But, this position evaporated quickly due to internal politics and left a bad taste in my mouth. Attrition in this company is high and though my colleagues consider me "made" because I was there right from the start, I am not so sure. Plus, not many people in my company (including me) are happy with some of the strategic choices that management has made.Long story short, I wanna get out. There is no other player in this industry I can jump to because there really is only one player. Finance happens to be a natural choice given my qualifications and also given my personal preferences for kind of work. I am already working in a niche industry, so am not worried about how my skills will port to other fields after finance. Looking forward to your input.

Anybody?