How much difficult it is to get a quant job in U.K. for a non-experienced person (Entry level) without HSMP or work-permit ? I am a Ph.D. in Mathematics, good in programing C++, matlab but have only basic knowledge of Finance.

First, I assume you are not in the UK. That eliminates most opportunities in one sweep. Then you do not have a work-permit/HSMP. Your chances are already negligible. Even after that, suppose that you get an interview. Why should a company pay for your air-fare to the UK? Would you be willing to spend from your own pocket? Also, what makes you so exceptional that somebody should interview without any knowledge of finance. Maybe they should be awed by your math/computer skills.But......from your previous posts it seems you are doing your PhD in India. If you don't mind me saying it, PhDs granted from Indian Universities are abysmally low quality (even IITs). The top quality students move to the US to do their PhDs. Seriously, sir, you are kidding us. Right?

I am not kidding at all. I assume some Indian universities may not fulfill the expectations of the world community. But according to me it does not mean that every student is not good. I have passion to be a quant because it is dynamic job. I am not kidding you from any angle. I am serious

Well, if you're familiar with economics, economists call your problem (and that of all somewhat unconventional job seekers) signaling. You might be excellent, but it's hard for an employer to know that, and so he might prefer someone whose skills are worse than yours and whose salary demands are higher but who has the sort of credentials the employer values. Thus the question becomes: How can you signal that you're as great as I'm sure you are? If British visa rules permit, an internship might be one possible approach. You'll be lucky if you salary pays for your flight and basic room and board, but it'd be a way to get a brand name on your résumé. Certification might also help. (Let's say CQF for quant finance. For the programing part some employers seem to value BrainBench--I know a major Chicago hedge fund requires it from all interviewees for programming-intensive jobs.) Another suggestion would be trying to get a research assistantship with a finance prof, ideally a celebrity one.

Seriously, how do you know it is a "dynamic" job. How many quants/traders do you know first hand? Have you ever seen real trading? Or does your passion arise from the Huxley ads? I was just stating the obvious. If you are really serious, bite the bullet and enroll in an MFE program. It might be worth your money. As far as the quality goes, I stand by my statement that PhD students in India, are in general, of significantly lower quality than the ones who migrate to the US. Ask yourself these questions.1. Have you published anything of significance (having at least some citations) over the course of your PhD.2. How would you compare yourself to a top student from a top mathematics department, say MIT. Is your research output any where close to what she might have done?3. Have you published in any journal/conference at which the top researchers submit, and has an acceptance rate of <10% or so?I can predict that you will respond with saying that you have a long list of publications, but publications in regional conferences are a pile of dung.

Thanks for your suggestions. Your comments are very important to me because it refers me to check where I stands to get quant job and do more work. Again thanks for your suggestions. Its a dynamic job because it totally depends on the market mood, changes dramatically within a fraction of seconds. So we have to keep updated with market. I have 4 international journals papers. Not a single one in national journal. All of my papers are in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer published by elseiver at www.sciencedirect.com. Last point is I am having a enthusiasm to learn mathematical Finance. Again thanks a lot for your comments and giving me enthusiasm to do hard work to get quant job.

Getting a job remotely is pretty hard, also your chances of getting a good job aren't exactly helped.With a PhD, you are a large % of the way to getting a HSMP, have you checked your score ?Brainbench is not a great measure of programming ability, indeed I know how to game it, and think many of the questions are bollocks.But it's cheap, and easy for employers, so I don't criticise completely those who use it, and if you are trying to prove you're shit hot at c++ is no worse than any other way.Must be said, a large bank told me recently that they genuinely believe the Microsoft certification was actually useful, really, and it was a big bank.Sad to say ,they got a a 15 minute lecture on it's deficiencies, so I suspect that policy is not long for this world.I think humt needs to listen to JD, even though he is putting his valid points a bit aggressively.I would love to help him get a job, I would make money from that, which tends to make my life marginally less miderable.But can I do this ?I'm not flying to India to check him out, he's not coming here.There is the CQF which as a distance programme will help, but still he has to get in front of people wh might work with him.Publications help, It's possible to so impress an employer that he will fly you from India with the expectation that he will sort out visas.We hope to announce a proper system for that this autumun, but by it's nature will not be a mass market approach.So humt, a few questions:What % of our reading list have you completed ?What sort of maths did you do for your PhD ?Reckon you can impress me with your C++ or Matlab ? (google on "dominic connor" before you answer that.

QuoteOriginally posted by: LStabilityWell, if you're familiar with economics, economists call your problem (and that of all somewhat unconventional job seekers) signaling. You might be excellent, but it's hard for an employer to know that, and so he might prefer someone whose skills are worse than yours and whose salary demands are higher but who has the sort of credentials the employer values. Thus the question becomes: How can you signal that you're as great as I'm sure you are? If British visa rules permit, an internship might be one possible approach. You'll be lucky if you salary pays for your flight and basic room and board, but it'd be a way to get a brand name on your résumé. Certification might also help. (Let's say CQF for quant finance. For the programing part some employers seem to value BrainBench--I know a major Chicago hedge fund requires it from all interviewees for programming-intensive jobs.) Another suggestion would be trying to get a research assistantship with a finance prof, ideally a celebrity one.. Will it be useful to get a quant job after research assistantship with some prof in uk or will some company allow me to do a internship ?

QuoteOriginally posted by: humtumiitThanks for your suggestions. Your comments are very important to me because it refers me to check where I stands to get quant job and do more work. Again thanks for your suggestions. Its a dynamic job because it totally depends on the market mood, changes dramatically within a fraction of seconds. So we have to keep updated with market. I have 4 international journals papers. Not a single one in national journal. All of my papers are in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer published by elseiver at www.sciencedirect.com. Last point is I am having a enthusiasm to learn mathematical Finance. Again thanks a lot for your comments and giving me enthusiasm to do hard work to get quant job.Quick question. Why are all your publications in this one journal? Is it because this is the best one out there and everyone is dying to publish in it? Or is your advisor on the editorial board?

QuoteOriginally posted by: jackdanielsQuoteOriginally posted by: humtumiitThanks for your suggestions. Your comments are very important to me because it refers me to check where I stands to get quant job and do more work. Again thanks for your suggestions. Its a dynamic job because it totally depends on the market mood, changes dramatically within a fraction of seconds. So we have to keep updated with market. I have 4 international journals papers. Not a single one in national journal. All of my papers are in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer published by elseiver at www.sciencedirect.com. Last point is I am having a enthusiasm to learn mathematical Finance. Again thanks a lot for your comments and giving me enthusiasm to do hard work to get quant job.Quick question. Why are all your publications in this one journal? Is it because this is the best one out there and everyone is dying to publish in it? Or is your advisor on the editorial board?My adviser is not in Editorial board it all because of papers level. I don't have any link with anyone in editorial board. I sent all the papers in one journal because I find it a very good journal having Impact factor 1.47 ( assigned recently for 2006) that is one of the best journal or Heat and mass transfer community.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCBrainbench is not a great measure of programming ability, indeed I know how to game it, and think many of the questions are bollocks.But it's cheap, and easy for employers, so I don't criticise completely those who use it, and if you are trying to prove you're shit hot at c++ is no worse than any other way.As long as your way of gaming it doesn't break the rules, this also counts as a test of your smarts--and, yes, there are fairly obvious and explicitly permitted strategies the smart test take will recognize. Proving that you're shit-hot at any complex discipline is always hard, but this kind of test at least proves that you're able to come up with the arcana of the language (many of which are better avoided in actual development) under time pressure, which should be a reasonable signal that you're at least pretty good.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCGetting a job remotely is pretty hard, also your chances of getting a good job aren't exactly helped.With a PhD, you are a large % of the way to getting a HSMP, have you checked your score ?Brainbench is not a great measure of programming ability, indeed I know how to game it, and think many of the questions are bollocks.But it's cheap, and easy for employers, so I don't criticise completely those who use it, and if you are trying to prove you're shit hot at c++ is no worse than any other way.Must be said, a large bank told me recently that they genuinely believe the Microsoft certification was actually useful, really, and it was a big bank.Sad to say ,they got a a 15 minute lecture on it's deficiencies, so I suspect that policy is not long for this world.I think humt needs to listen to JD, even though he is putting his valid points a bit aggressively.I would love to help him get a job, I would make money from that, which tends to make my life marginally less miderable.But can I do this ?I'm not flying to India to check him out, he's not coming here.There is the CQF which as a distance programme will help, but still he has to get in front of people wh might work with him.Publications help, It's possible to so impress an employer that he will fly you from India with the expectation that he will sort out visas.We hope to announce a proper system for that this autumun, but by it's nature will not be a mass market approach.So humt, a few questions:What % of our reading list have you completed ?What sort of maths did you do for your PhD ?Reckon you can impress me with your C++ or Matlab ? (google on "dominic connor" before you answer that.I solved system of PDE's, did analytical work, numerical analysis during my Ph.D. Studying Financial derivatives, Interest rate models, Stochastic calculus. used Matlab and Fortran in Ph.D. Doing finance based programing in C++ from a book named Financial numericalRecipes in C++. I have checked few days back for HSMP and felt 5 points short. I scored 70 that time. But I am eligible for Holiday work permit.

QuoteOriginally posted by: humtumiitQuoteOriginally posted by: jackdanielsQuoteOriginally posted by: humtumiitThanks for your suggestions. Your comments are very important to me because it refers me to check where I stands to get quant job and do more work. Again thanks for your suggestions. Its a dynamic job because it totally depends on the market mood, changes dramatically within a fraction of seconds. So we have to keep updated with market. I have 4 international journals papers. Not a single one in national journal. All of my papers are in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer published by elseiver at www.sciencedirect.com. Last point is I am having a enthusiasm to learn mathematical Finance. Again thanks a lot for your comments and giving me enthusiasm to do hard work to get quant job.Quick question. Why are all your publications in this one journal? Is it because this is the best one out there and everyone is dying to publish in it? Or is your advisor on the editorial board?My adviser is not in Editorial board it all because of papers level. I don't have any link with anyone in editorial board. I sent all the papers in one journal because I find it a very good journal having Impact factor 1.47 ( assigned recently for 2006) that is one of the best journal or Heat and mass transfer community.humt. I cannot comment on the quality of the journal because I am from a different field. But 1.47 seems quite low. What is the rating of the best journal in the field? The point I am trying to make is, that you should try to do some self assessment to see where you stand. Put in frank terms, do you see yourself competing with a good candidate with a bunch of finance courses with excellent programming skills? The academic world is much better informed about the prospects in finance than they were 10 years back, and most serious people are much better prepared than you. You would be soundly beaten by the competition at the current level.

QuoteOriginally posted by: jackdanielsQuoteOriginally posted by: humtumiitQuoteOriginally posted by: jackdanielsQuoteOriginally posted by: humtumiitThanks for your suggestions. Your comments are very important to me because it refers me to check where I stands to get quant job and do more work. Again thanks for your suggestions. Its a dynamic job because it totally depends on the market mood, changes dramatically within a fraction of seconds. So we have to keep updated with market. I have 4 international journals papers. Not a single one in national journal. All of my papers are in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer published by elseiver at www.sciencedirect.com. Last point is I am having a enthusiasm to learn mathematical Finance. Again thanks a lot for your comments and giving me enthusiasm to do hard work to get quant job.Quick question. Why are all your publications in this one journal? Is it because this is the best one out there and everyone is dying to publish in it? Or is your advisor on the editorial board?My adviser is not in Editorial board it all because of papers level. I don't have any link with anyone in editorial board. I sent all the papers in one journal because I find it a very good journal having Impact factor 1.47 ( assigned recently for 2006) that is one of the best journal or Heat and mass transfer community.humt. I cannot comment on the quality of the journal because I am from a different field. But 1.47 seems quite low. What is the rating of the best journal in the field? The point I am trying to make is, that you should try to do some self assessment to see where you stand. Put in frank terms, do you see yourself competing with a good candidate with a bunch of finance courses with excellent programming skills? The academic world is much better informed about the prospects in finance than they were 10 years back, and most serious people are much better prepared than you. You would be soundly beaten by the competition at the current level.It is the journal having high Impact factor in this field. Anyway thanks for giving me direction and suggestions to read more to be completive.