Hi All, If I may describe my situation: having almost completed my PhD, I sent off my CV to all those recruitment companies that tend to post lots of adverts on the Wilmott jobs board. All of the posts were for quant jobs, with entry level experience, PhD maths, computing, engineering PhD, etc., etc. This was some months ago in September/October. Initially I got lots of initial calls, with promises of a good few potential jobs out there for which I could be appropriate for in terms of background (a mixture of physics, maths, CS and AI). However, the rate of calls just tailed off to the odd one in December. I only got called to one interview at an IB, which I thought was a little inappropriate and a waste of my time. Still, it was some experience.My questions are:1. Once I send off a version of my CV to one of these companies for a specific posting, say in a certain month, and then a few weeks later I see a similar advert, do I send off another email with my (same as before) CV attached saying "I would like to be considered for this position you have advertised, blah, blah" or do I just send a "reminder" email, telling them to consider me for the post with the CV/resume they already have on their records ?2. How much follow up should I do with these companies - several times, they have said things like, "Oh yes, there is an IB and Hedge fund position going, and we will contact you later on in the week, blah, blah" and they never do.3. For example, do I ring them every 2-3 weeks and maintain a cordial relationship, to keep my application in their "mind" or do I just let things go and allow them to contact me as and when they think there is something appropriate.When does proactivity on my side become an irritant to the other side ?! I must say, so far I am a little disappointed with the whole process. Any useful advice would be much valued.Cheers.

QuoteOriginally posted by: TreeToxHi All, If I may describe my situation: having almost completed my PhD, I sent off my CV to all those recruitment companies that tend to post lots of adverts on the Wilmott jobs board. All of the posts were for quant jobs, with entry level experience, PhD maths, computing, engineering PhD, etc., etc. This was some months ago in September/October. Initially I got lots of initial calls, with promises of a good few potential jobs out there for which I could be appropriate for in terms of background (a mixture of physics, maths, CS and AI). However, the rate of calls just tailed off to the odd one in December. I only got called to one interview at an IB, which I thought was a little inappropriate and a waste of my time. Still, it was some experience.My questions are:1. Once I send off a version of my CV to one of these companies for a specific posting, say in a certain month, and then a few weeks later I see a similar advert, do I send off another email with my (same as before) CV attached saying "I would like to be considered for this position you have advertised, blah, blah" or do I just send a "reminder" email, telling them to consider me for the post with the CV/resume they already have on their records ?2. How much follow up should I do with these companies - several times, they have said things like, "Oh yes, there is an IB and Hedge fund position going, and we will contact you later on in the week, blah, blah" and they never do.3. For example, do I ring them every 2-3 weeks and maintain a cordial relationship, to keep my application in their "mind" or do I just let things go and allow them to contact me as and when they think there is something appropriate.When does proactivity on my side become an irritant to the other side ?! I must say, so far I am a little disappointed with the whole process. Any useful advice would be much valued.Cheers.Heh I have exactly the same issues with headhunters.

Guys with your skills are in demand and headhuters should be getting you at least one interview per week. I estimate that it takes about 3 months to find a job.If a headhunter fully understand what you are looking for they should be able to get you an interview.It does not harm to call your head-hunter once a week or to get them to call you once a week. If they have nothing on their books or you get a feeling that then are not responsive just forget about them.After all the headhunter charges a hefty premium and there are plenty of them about. Yes it is a problem finding the one that is right for you.Do not let headhunter's lethargy kill your proactivity !

Ah yes. The "trough of despair". I've been there. Send out 200 resumes, get 25 calls, and then nothing........Also part of it is seasonal. Things tend to grind to a halt in December. No one leaves in December because that's when bonuses come out. In January, people come back from vacation, look at their bonus checks, get annoyed. Then in February there is this massive game of musical chairs. If A leaves for position B, then that opens up a position for A. (At least this is what people tell me.)> When does proactivity on my side become an irritant to the other side ?! These are mostly people from NYC. If you are being annoying, they won't hesitate to let you know. My impression is that people are generally busy, and if you don't move your stuff up to the top of their todo list, it will tend to fall to the bottom. Preventing that from happening requires pretty constant effort on your part. Also being on the opposite side of the table, headhunters are annoyingly persistent at contacting you when you have an open job. They have to be. Else things get lost in the shuffle.

QuoteOriginally posted by: TreeToxHi All, If I may describe my situation: having almost completed my PhD, I sent off my CV to all those recruitment companies that tend to post lots of adverts on the Wilmott jobs board. All of the posts were for quant jobs, with entry level experience, PhD maths, computing, engineering PhD, etc., etc. This was some months ago in September/October. Initially I got lots of initial calls, with promises of a good few potential jobs out there for which I could be appropriate for in terms of background (a mixture of physics, maths, CS and AI). However, the rate of calls just tailed off to the odd one in December. I only got called to one interview at an IB, which I thought was a little inappropriate and a waste of my time. Still, it was some experience.My questions are:1. Once I send off a version of my CV to one of these companies for a specific posting, say in a certain month, and then a few weeks later I see a similar advert, do I send off another email with my (same as before) CV attached saying "I would like to be considered for this position you have advertised, blah, blah" or do I just send a "reminder" email, telling them to consider me for the post with the CV/resume they already have on their records ?2. How much follow up should I do with these companies - several times, they have said things like, "Oh yes, there is an IB and Hedge fund position going, and we will contact you later on in the week, blah, blah" and they never do.3. For example, do I ring them every 2-3 weeks and maintain a cordial relationship, to keep my application in their "mind" or do I just let things go and allow them to contact me as and when they think there is something appropriate.When does proactivity on my side become an irritant to the other side ?! I must say, so far I am a little disappointed with the whole process. Any useful advice would be much valued.Ok. Um. Here goes... Shave off your beard .

One piece of hard earned personal advice is to be very, very careful about sending your resume to HR or to submitting your resume to bank databases. I've gotten burned by this twice, to the point that I'm really paranoid about sending my resume directly to any employer. The problem is that once HR gets a hold of your resume, your recruiters can't submit it any more, and HR is simply not geared to processing resumes of prospective Ph.D. hires. As far as I can tell all of them to into this big database that managers are supposed to look at but, as far as I can tell don't. Having been in a non-QF hiring position, I cannot imagine any of those databases being actually useful.The nice thing about a recruiter is that they can and will tell you when the client isn't interested, and they are very user-friendly, since that is their job. Something that I have gotten in the habit of doing is that if I see a promising post on a website, I call up a recruiter and see if they can put my resume for that position.I suppose this is karmic punishment. The reason for my disclaimer is that at one point when I was more naive and callow about these things, I posted something suggesting that one ought to submit one's resume everywhere. A few recruiters contradicted this pointing out the above scenario. I defered to them. As luck would have it, the *very next week* I got dinged.SLAP!!! SLAP!!!I had to hit myself to keep me from starting to rant on this in a way that is probably not good for me either psychologically or career wise.To make this a positive discussion: Who here has have *good* experiences with online direct submission to employers? Also, which investment banks have particularly *good* HR departments (or at least ones that you shouldn't run screaming away from)?

Well, thanks for the feedback you've given me, especially the private messages - I'm still not too much wiser, but I'm gonna hassle those Recruitment Agencies till something happens ! I generally gather that HR Departments and Recruitment Agencies can sometimes even be a bottleneck in the application process.