INFORMATION ABOUT VERBAL SECTION OF GRE

The Verbal section of the GRE is designed to test your verbal reasoning abilities. This chapter will explain what types of questions ETS uses to accomplish that. You’ll also see how the concepts of Personal Order of Dificulty and Process of Elimination apply to the Verbal section.
Finally, you’ll learn what role vocabulary plays in achieving a good score on the Verbal section.
What’s On It?

THE CURRENT JOB MARKET

At the time of writing,October 2012, the quant job market is very tough. There is a lot of uncertainty driven by the potential defaults of Euro zone members. There are some jobs but not very many, and some places seem to have adopted a “do no hiring till everything settles” policy. What does this mean for candidates? First, make sure you have really done your preparation properly. You can’t treat the first few interviews as a learning experience since they may be all you get. Second, consider whether you can delay your entry to quant by doing more studying or sticking with what you are doing. Third, don’t be picky – if you can get an offer doing something, you are doing much better than most people.

INTERVIEWING; WHAT YOU SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO!

Here are some dos and don’ts that will reduce your chance of messing
up unnecessarily.

Don’t be late.
Don’t be early; this annoys the interviewer. Get there early, go to a cafe and have a lemonade and turn up dead on time.
Do eat a good meal beforehand; sugar lows destroy thinking power.
Don’t argue with the interviewer about why they’ve asked you something.
They’ve asked you it because they want to know whether
you can do it.
Do appear enthusiastic.
Do wear a suit.
Do be eager to please. They want someone who’ll do what they want, you must give the appearance of being obliging rather than difficult.
Don’t be too relaxed; they may well conclude that you aren’t hungry enough for success to work hard.
Don’t tell them they shouldn’t use C++ because my niche language is better.
Do demonstrate an interest in financial news.
Do be able to talk about everything on your cv (resume in American).Have a prepared 2 minute response on every phrase on it.
Do bring copies of your CV.
Don’t expect the interviewer to be familiar with your CV.
Don’t say you’ve read a book unless you can discuss its contents; particularly, if they’ve written it.Do be polite.
Do ask for feedback and don’t argue about it. Even if it’s wrong try to understand what made the interviewer think that.
Don’t say you want to work in banking for the money; of course, you do but it’s bad form to say so.
Do say you want to work closely with other people rather than solo.
Don’t say that you think that bankers are reasonable people – they aren’t.
Do take a break from interviewing and do more prep if more than a couple of interviews go badly.
Don’t use a mobile for a phone interview.
Do be able to explain your thesis – work out explanations for different sorts of people in advance.
Don’t expect banks in the UK to pay for interview expenses. If they do agree to pay, make sure they are  willing to pay what your ticket will cost. eg don’t get an expensive ticket if they say they’ll pay for a cheap airline.
Do ask about the group, you’ll be working in. e.g. turnover, where people go when they leave, how many, when can you meet the rest of the group (only if an offer appears imminent), how old the group is, what’s the team’s raison d’etre, is it expanding or contracting. What would a typical working day be?
Don’t get on to the topic of money early in the process. A general comment is that quant has the reputation of being a hard
area to get into, but if you talk to any hiring manager they’ll tell you that they interview lots of candidates and most are terrible. It’s rare to be forced to choose between two good candidates; it’s much more common
to be relieved that you’ve finally found one who’s good enough. The moral is that most candidates are failing to reach the required level. If you are good at maths and do your preparation, you can be at that level and get a job. Good at maths and do your preparation, you can be at that level and get a job.

How hard does a quant work?

How hard does a quant work? This varies a lot. At RBS we got in between 8.30 and 9 andwent home around 6pm. The pressure varied. Some of the American banks expect much longer hours. Wall St tends to be more demanding than the City. In London 5 to 6 weeks holidays is standard.
In the US 2 to 3 is standard.

How much does a quant earn? what is a quant salary?

How much does a quant earn? A quant with no experience will generally get between 40 and 70k pounds. The lowest I have heard of is 25k and the highest is 70.. If the pay is outside the standard range, you should ask yourself why? Pay will generally go up fairly rapidly. Bonuses are generally a large component of total salary, and should be taken into account when negotiating pay. E.g. you may be able to get a guaranteed bonus if the base is lower.
Do not get too focussed on what the starting salary is. Instead examine what the job opportunities will be, and what the learning experience is likely to be. How much turnover is there in the team? (some managers get touchy if asked about turnover so it may be better to try and ascertain this indirectly) and where do the people go?

APPLYING FOR A JOB

All of the finance forums have their own jobs advertising boards. A lot of adverts are from recruitment consultants rather than from banks.It is important to realize that the job may not even exist – the consultant
wants to get decent candidates that he can then try to place them in banks. The consultant gets a commission from the bank if he can place you. They tend to have short attention spans. if you do well at the first couple of interviews then they will work hard to get you a good job but if you don’t they will quickly lose interest. Also, be aware their agenda is to get a good commission rather than to help you so they will push you at jobs on that basis. (A typical cut is 25% of your first year’s package so whether you say “yes” to a job makes a difference of ten thousand pounds to them.) If you want to understand them, think of estate agents.
In fact, going via a recruitment consultant is the standard way to get a job. Quants are generally not hired as a part of the on campus recruitment process but instead hired as they are needed by the team. That said it is worthwhile to go to presentations and to meet the people, and get their contact details for later. Because of this it is not a great idea to start applying a long time before you want to start. Banks tend not to be into
paying expenses for interviews. One therefore needs to go to London or New York and attempt to get as many interviews as possible as quickly as possible.
If you have personal contacts, you should use them. Employers prefer not to use headhunters if they can  avoid it. If you are finishing a maths or physics PhD from a top university you will be a hot property.  Employers will be keen to get you before someone else grabs you, so make use of this.
Recruitment agencies vary tremendously and are discussed at great length on all the online forums.One which seems to know what they are doing more than most, andwhich has its own much more extensive guides
is paul and dominic.
If you get offered a job that is not in your ideal area do not be too worried.
It is the first job that is hard to get. You can move on. The main thing is not to spend more than a couple of years in an area where you do not want to be. Quants are most employable with 18 months to 2 years experience. With more than that they tend to be too well paid and get pigeon-holed.
Fromtime to time, I hear of someone being offered a job and being told they must accept immediately or within 24 hours. This is unreasonable and you should question why they are doing this, and do you want to
work with someone who treats you this way? Possible responses are “Why?”

• Does that mean the offer will go away if I don’t accept immediately?
• “Oh I get it, you are testing my naivety” and laugh.
• Mark Joshi’s guide says never to accept an offer made under such
• circumstances.

If you are interviewing with other places, call them first and tell them the circumstances, they will find this less annoying than you telling them you accepted a job under pressure.

Programming and coding with C++

All forms of quants spend a large amount (i.e. more than half) their time programming. However,  implementing new models can be interesting in itself. The standard programming approach is object-oriented
C++. A wannabe quant must learn C++. 1 Some places use MatLab and that is also a useful skill, but less important. VBA is also used a lot, but there is a general attitude that you can pick it up on the job. If a job is
very VBA focussed that’s generally a bad sign.