I finished my Physics PhD in December and just started looking for quant finance jobs - starting with posting my resume on quantfinancejobs, next morning I got a call at 7 (!) am EST when I was still happily asleep enjoying my unemployment vacation from a SelbyJennings HH. Is it a normal speed of HH reaction to any new theoretically profitable opportunity for HHs?

As a newbie, the more the merrier!

Yes. If the HH places you, then they get their bonus and commission, so when a HH sees someone with a Ph.D. that wants to get into finance, it's like those old cartoons in which someone blinks and his eyes are replaced with dollar signs. This is especially the situation now, when HH's are being laid off.The bad news is that only a small fraction of these call leads to real leads. I'd guess that about half the HH I spoke to, never called back after the first contact, and then only about a fifth of the HH turned into any real leads. That was two years ago when the job market was still decent. One thing that HH's won't mention is that they need you more than you need them. There are more HH's than physics Ph.D.'s which means that you can (and should) be a little picky about who you work with. In particular, if you find a headhunter pushy and annoying, it's likely that the employer will also. There have been times in an interview where I've been tempted to tell the candidate that they probably should find another HH (although I never have), since the one that they have isn't that great.

Why have you never told someone with a crap HH that ?Back when I was a hiring manager I did. You might ask why I did business with that firm at all ?Fact is that at some banks you simply cannot go outside the "approved" list.About once a week there is a thread about the low quality of service delivered by some HHs, and Shyurik has no doubt picked up on the situation.But things will not get better until HHs who do bad things lose business because of it.I got one CV for a candidate that clearly had the right skills to work in my team, and had gained one rare skill at same place I had.Strange that I did not remember them, since the dates overlapped.Actually I had seen this person before, it was in the mirror.But the CV was so changed, (with a couple of striaght lies) that I did not immediately recognise my own profile.So the agent had changed my CV, and sent it to a firm without my permission, and had lied.HR thought it was funny, and did nothing to remove them from the list.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ShyurikI finished my Physics PhD in December and just started looking for quant finance jobs - starting with posting my resume on quantfinancejobs, next morning I got a call at 7 (!) am EST when I was still happily asleep enjoying my unemployment vacation from a SelbyJennings HH. Is it a normal speed of HH reaction to any new theoretically profitable opportunity for HHs?If you're based in the US and you get a call from a HH based in London, then it happens. When I was looking for a job, I once got a call from a London HH at something like 5am and it wasn't just one call. I of course, got to the phone only around 9 or 10am and there were about 4 missed called there already with one or two messages left. I thought it was a little desperate, but the HH turned out to be good. So, maybe early phonecalls is a good sign.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ShyurikI finished my Physics PhD in December and just started looking for quant finance jobs - starting with posting my resume on quantfinancejobs, next morning I got a call at 7 (!) am EST when I was still happily asleep enjoying my unemployment vacation from a SelbyJennings HH. Is it a normal speed of HH reaction to any new theoretically profitable opportunity for HHs? Yeah, if you don't hear by day 3, you're cv's already stale and in the trash pile.