QuoteOriginally posted by: roundandroundI am surprised to learn that anything other than Mathematical Finance may not even get an interview. On a related note, how is the market for entry level quants in the UK? I am open to taking up opportunities elsewhere in Europe or Asia (Hong Kong/Singapore) for a short time as well, if nothing works out in the UK, just to get my foot in the door. Why should a bank hire a complete newbie when there are hundreds of people who complete math finance MSc and PhD programs every year? Even 10-15 years ago, when very few postgraduate programs in quantitative finance existed, newly graduated PhDs who applied for entry level quant jobs were expected to study on their own and pass some pretty tough interviews. As for Hong Kong/Singapore, my understanding is that there are very few entry level positions there. QuoteOriginally posted by: roundandroundI have fairly strong research record (publications, citations, internships, few awards). In order to show "demonstrable interest in finance", I have been doing some reading from some standard textbooks in the area. I am also going to start a research project with a professor at my university's B-School who works in the quant fin area. I will try and get a publication out of it. Is this enough? If not, what else could I do to stand-out? I am ~6 months away from defending my thesis, so an internship possibility is not there. "Demonstrable interest" is not enough. In order to get and pass interviews you will need technical knowledge and the evidence of it. My advice:1. You said you wanted to move to the UK for personal reasons. If this involves a love interest, consider getting married, which will take care of the visa problem.2. Either do an MSc or get a job with a small-medium sized consultancy or software vendor, where you can start out as a developer and then slowly move towards a quant role. If you decide to go down the MSc route, don't go for a third rate university, as someone recommended, otherwise you may struggle to get interviews, at least with investment banks.

Of course, my suggestion about starting out as a developer assumes that you can program at a professional level in one of C++, Java or C#.

@Marco72 Thanks for your suggestions. I will just have to refrain from applying to IBs in that case then @dfeynman Thanks for sharing your experience. I am sorry to see you in such quandary. I have had some good feedback and suggestions from some HHs in UK recently. PM me if you want their contact info. One other thing that has helped me is getting a LinkedIn membership, and contacting the "right people" directly - quant leads, PMs, etc. as opposed to connecting with HRs of these companies. My experience is that HRs are really not that good at sending the CV to the "right people".

-- Sorry, got posted twice by mistake --

QuoteOriginally posted by: dfeynmanFrom personal experience: I have applied for some UK positions in the past months (I am an EU citizen), however most recruiters don't even reply. I don't know if the job market is bad or not, moreover the guys don't even provide feedback. I don't know if something is wrong with me:I hold 2 degrees (CS, exact science) and a MSc in physics, I already work as a quant for 1,5 year (medium to High freq), built from scratch a model (and then strategies based on it) that outperforms S&P, built execution algos for it, deployed it live, written OO code in 2 commercial and one institutional platform, also developed my own backtest platform in C#. Incorporated elements of Machine Learning, about to publish a paper for our novel approach to trend determination we developed. I haven't coded option pricing. I do not apply in banks, only in HFs.I don't know why I don't get responses from even Junior quant positions applications. Is it my age (35)? Is it a badly written CV / Cover Letter? My English skills? Are out there so many people (everyone perhaps???) better than me? I would feel better if someone tells me 'you need to know/code this and that' or 'you are rejected because of random_reply_here(string[] CV, int age, Rnd random) '.I do not advertise myself here. I find it irritating to kindly ask for career advices and/or application feedback and get nothing back from many UK based HHs and HRs.Hey man, sounds rough. Expecially since it appears you have great skills.Probably its a communication or presentation issue.I would not expect HHs and expecially not firms to give any meaningful feedback to you. There is little to no upside for them.Have you spoken with Dom?Stay positive.

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Thanks for the support neuroguy. I sent a PM to Mr Connor a few mins ago.@ Roundandround: thank you too. I really appreciate this.

QuoteOriginally posted by: dfeynmanThanks for the support neuroguy. I sent a PM to Mr Connor a few mins ago.@ Roundandround: thank you too. I really appreciate this.I got your PM, and sent you a response (a couple, actually). Did you get it? It is not showing up in my sent messages folder, so I was wondering. Can you enable your PM for a short while so I can send one to you instead of replying to yours as it is set up currently? That might work.

Done! Thanks again.

The Career forum is full of newbies spewing often unsolicited advice as they are some kind of experts .Get off this forum, head to LinkedIn, send 20 emails a days and start talking to real people for once.