OT: Career advice Part II

[SnowblindNYR]

Fair enough — I’m actually an energy markets quant, and I interview candidates for other quant positions. It’s just disappointing (sometimes infuriating) when someone claims to have accomplished X and, it turns out, only managed someone who did (for example) or that they have hands on experience with stochastic calculus … 10 years earlier. Funny enough, I had a guy walk out mid interview, saying “this isn’t a good fit” after I caught him lying about his knowledge of options markets: you need to know more than the definition of an option to make such a claim.

I feel like this is where quant positions are different than the arithmetic business positions, lol. In a job where you add, subtract, and multiply for a living as an analyst managing someone who has added, subtracted, and multiplied is considered a bigger achievement and someone further along in his/her career than actually doing the adding, subtracting, and multiplying.

 

[CasusBelli]

Wait wait wait...

Two sides of this:

I don't lie or misrepresent myself in interviews. And I do not suggest this. There really is no point. You're just wasting everyone's time. But these days you may as well not apply for positions if you don't have every keyword requirement necessary. A human won't even look at it. I want to get my foot in the door. I'm terrible dealing with people. But, I'm pretty confident in my abilities within my field. Once I get an interview, I can usually get an offer.

Other side:
I've done my share of being at the whiteboard for interviews. I've been grilled on math problems, actual production problems, and even had an interviewer ask me to write 100% syntactically correct code at a whiteboard (this is dumb).

I don't take those jobs. They are never fun places to be for long.

I’m probably more on the other side. I could see why that might be the case at some places. But I need someone who can ideate and create — who can come up with smart trading strategies, test them, and present them to the C suite. He needs to be able to answer the most technical questions in the simplest and most technical ways. But he will have total freedom to explore uncharted waters, with full support throughout and (if successful) all the accolades. I don’t think that’s such a bad environment — it’s the culture in which I excel at least.

I feel like this is where quant positions are different than the arithmetic business positions, lol. In a job where you add, subtract, and multiply for a living as an analyst managing someone who has added, subtracted, and multiplied is considered a bigger achievement and someone further along in his/her career than actually doing the adding, subtracting, and multiplying.

All fair points, good sir.

 

[LokiDog]

I feel like you just described sales in 2024 for a legit organization. A reputable place in 2024 won't be Wolf of Wall Street.

Absolutely, and understandably so. My issue is a personal one, not necessarily an indictment of reputable company structures. If I was 27 this would be fine; work your way up and get there. Unfortunately I spent a decade in the military in such a niche role that it’s essentially a 10 year gap on my resume, so I’ve got a lot of sales experience, and a lot of military leadership and management experience, but no intersection thus far. And that’s fine; I’m willing to work my way up to it, I just need to at least strike a balance to where I can pay to support Henry and still cover my own rent and bills, and hopefully even nestle some little bit away. Beggars can’t be choosers, but out of necessity I also have to be slightly picky. More job hopping at this stage doesn’t help me any. I’m hoping this new role can strike the balance between making things work, even if it’s a bit of a stretch at times and being rewarding and high potential enough to really turn the ship around in the next year or two. Who knows.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Absolutely, and understandably so. My issue is a personal one, not necessarily an indictment of reputable company structures. If I was 27 this would be fine; work your way up and get there. Unfortunately I spent a decade in the military in such a niche role that it’s essentially a 10 year gap on my resume, so I’ve got a lot of sales experience, and a lot of military leadership and management experience, but no intersection thus far. And that’s fine; I’m willing to work my way up to it, I just need to at least strike a balance to where I can pay to support Henry and still cover my own rent and bills, and hopefully even nestle some little bit away. Beggars can’t be choosers, but out of necessity I also have to be slightly picky. More job hopping at this stage doesn’t help me any. I’m hoping this new role can strike the balance between making things work, even if it’s a bit of a stretch at times and being rewarding and high potential enough to really turn the ship around in the next year or two. Who knows.

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I think in 2024 at a reputable firm you won't be doing obnoxious pushy sales.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

I connected with my former boss and found out he's been out of a job for over a year. Dude's brilliant and a great leader. Kind of a scary thought.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Trying hard to stand out. I will add a work sample in my resume. Just a model that I built. Something tells me no one in finance will give a shit about it, like they didn't give a shit about my analytics blog but this will be more relevant.

 

[NickyFotiu]

I’m best at management roles because of my military time, and I guess my personality. I organize, delegate, time manage, etc. very naturally. My problem is my resume is light on the civilian side and you can’t get to a management position without working your way up the ladder, but I also can’t afford to be in an entry level position at this stage of my life, so I basically have to crush it in sales and hope that it can eventually lead to a management role above a sales team. I’m good at sales as well, but I don’t enjoy it because I don’t like pushing for the deal that isn’t there. I get a lot of deals naturally by being personable and in the right place at the right time. I can close you, but I don’t like when I’m supposed to push to close people when the fit/need isn’t naturally there. I only like sales in a consultative, partner fashion… in a pushy, quota driven environment it isn’t for me.

Sales are a part of many industries but not for everyone. When I was in college all I wanted to be was a stock broker. I didn't realize that it was just another sales job. While I was somewhat good at sales it never fit me well personally. Soon after I realized it wasn't for me and moved on.