A great setback to my dreams!! - interview feedback

Tradenator · Post by **Tradenator** » Mon Feb 18, 2013 1:20 pm

I know a story I believe to be true where a person approached a buy side firm and volunteered to work for free, and was accepted and became very good at it very quickly. They had a second job eslewhere as a cleaner (?) after hours so they could eat, and this was all done without complaint. After some time, the firm concluded that the time taken elsewhere at the cleaning job was impairing performance so it was in their interest to formally hire the person. Last I heard, they were pretty senior in the firm.

I am not claiming that all people or roles can lend themselves well to this sort of thing, I am just saying it is possible in some cases.

katastrofa · Post by **katastrofa** » Mon Feb 18, 2013 2:59 pm

Rule no 1 of work life: if you do it for free, they won't respect you.

buddyforall · Post by **buddyforall** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 9:25 pm

I know which firm you are talking about. It has a few 'F' s in its name. If that is the firm you are better off not joining them. They fire people at will and the work is just who can make maximum number of executions/day with little room for strategies. That's the reason they are looking for people who can trade a lot.

priyankalva · Post by **priyankalva** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 2:31 am

Some coincidence, met the head trader who took my final interview at the firm. To my surprise he agreed to give me a feedback on my interview. It was somewhat on the lines: " Hi ******, the reason why you were not selected despite being good at math and aptitude is because you have a lot of equity research and fact based investing on your resume, and I believe you are a strong proponent of proof/logic based trading which might not be the case in intraday trading. Infact such methodology goes against the mind/ gut feeling while making quick decisions in trading".

Although I hate saying this, but the guy sound convincing. Is it true to a certain degree that more reliance on facts/ numbers and information hampers the process of becoming a natural trader. For most of the people selected for the Euro-Dollar desk at that firm, don't even know what a spread is. Are such types of recruitment procedures common in most prop trading firms?

WayconKidd · Post by **WayconKidd** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 4:43 am

Sounds like they didn't want a quantitative trader.

Peerless · Post by **Peerless** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 11:21 am

I know Optiver asks for numerical skills. The few traders I have met

there had studied mathematics or engineering science.

Why did they interview you if they knew from your resume you would

not match their criteria?

edit: an important detail about Optiver is that though they ask

for numerical skills and seem to prefer scientific background, the core

of their business is not automated (well, it is what I understood).

Baltazar · Post by **Baltazar** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:03 pm

optiver is, mostly, an option market maker.

This usually requires more mathematical literacy than cash trading. Also you need to be able to check the calculations given by your pricer.

They have their root in floor based option trading I believe and traders needed to be able to calculate by head prices of strategies, price of options with change of underlying and things like that.

I know from other option market makers in Amsterdam, they like if you can respond a quote to a broker immediately.

Agreed with rogueman: all the pricing is done by machines there but they still value these skills, they think it correlates well with good traders skills. Not everybody agrees though.

etravo · Post by **etravo** » Sun Dec 15, 2013 1:47 pm

i agree with Baltazar

from my experience in Sydney :

Smaller proprietary firm and market maker like Optiver and liquid capital ask more head mathematics questions, than bigger firm like Citi UBS.

obvious but you need to adapt and prepare yourself depending on how they asses canidates, only way to know is research on internet and try.

TSWP · Post by **TSWP** » Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:49 pm

Priyankalva, curiosity: what is the point of being a trader?

Machines do that job better than a human.

The role of the human is to create and program the trading strategies, then the computer will execute them.

Why would you ever want to be a... 'trader'?

Tradenator · Post by **Tradenator** » Fri Dec 20, 2013 1:05 pm

"Machines do that job better than a human."

That is very debatable and highly dependent upon the context.