The amount you must study before getting a job varies a lot from place
to place.
It goes up every year as it becomes more standard to do financial mathematics degrees. At the time of writing, I would advise knowing the contents of both my books well.
A lot of candidates go wrong by reading books instead of studying them. Pick a couple of books and pretend that you have to do an exam on them (this is essentially what happens in an interview,) if you aren’t confident that you’d get an A in that sort of exam, don’t apply for jobs. Interviewers tend to care more about understanding the basics well than on knowing a lot. It’s also important to demonstrate genuine interest in the field. Read the Economist and the FT or Wall Street Journal comprehensively.
It’s not unusual to ask basic calculus or analysis questions e.g. what is the integral of log x. Asking for a derivation of the Black-Scholes equation is very common too. They always ask you to explain your thesis so be prepared to be able to do this. Have a prepared 60 second speech on every phrase on your cv.
The interview is also a chance for you to judge them. What are they like as people? (You will be spending most of your waking life with them so this is important.) What do they care about, as evidenced by what they ask you? If most of the questions are about the minutae of C++ syntax then be wary unless that’s the sort of job you want. Generally, a PhD (or almost a PhD) is a necessity to get a quant job.
I would advise against starting before it’s awarded as it tends to be hard to get it done whilst doing a busy job. Having a masters degree in Financial mathematics but no PhD tends to lead into jobs in banking in risk or trading support but not straight quant jobs. Banking is becoming progressively more mathematical so the knowledge is useful in many areas in banks. Some people then manage to move into quant later on. In the US, it seems to be becoming more and more common to do a masters after a PhD. This still seems to be less the case in the UK. There is a general move towards more routine work and less research in banks making the job less interesting. This seems to be particularly the case in the US. One head quant told me that he regards research as something “to be contracted out to universities.”
It goes up every year as it becomes more standard to do financial mathematics degrees. At the time of writing, I would advise knowing the contents of both my books well.
A lot of candidates go wrong by reading books instead of studying them. Pick a couple of books and pretend that you have to do an exam on them (this is essentially what happens in an interview,) if you aren’t confident that you’d get an A in that sort of exam, don’t apply for jobs. Interviewers tend to care more about understanding the basics well than on knowing a lot. It’s also important to demonstrate genuine interest in the field. Read the Economist and the FT or Wall Street Journal comprehensively.
It’s not unusual to ask basic calculus or analysis questions e.g. what is the integral of log x. Asking for a derivation of the Black-Scholes equation is very common too. They always ask you to explain your thesis so be prepared to be able to do this. Have a prepared 60 second speech on every phrase on your cv.
The interview is also a chance for you to judge them. What are they like as people? (You will be spending most of your waking life with them so this is important.) What do they care about, as evidenced by what they ask you? If most of the questions are about the minutae of C++ syntax then be wary unless that’s the sort of job you want. Generally, a PhD (or almost a PhD) is a necessity to get a quant job.
I would advise against starting before it’s awarded as it tends to be hard to get it done whilst doing a busy job. Having a masters degree in Financial mathematics but no PhD tends to lead into jobs in banking in risk or trading support but not straight quant jobs. Banking is becoming progressively more mathematical so the knowledge is useful in many areas in banks. Some people then manage to move into quant later on. In the US, it seems to be becoming more and more common to do a masters after a PhD. This still seems to be less the case in the UK. There is a general move towards more routine work and less research in banks making the job less interesting. This seems to be particularly the case in the US. One head quant told me that he regards research as something “to be contracted out to universities.”
No comments:
Post a Comment