"How do you get a quant job on Wall Street?..."

"...Code, code, code"
From Quartz:

 By David O'Boyle — 4 hours ago

David O'Boyle is a senior research analyst at IJC Partners, a recruitment firm for the financial services industry.

 The conversation that follows occurs all too frequently when in talks with master’s students:
What do you want to do?
Be a quant at a buy-side firm.

Do you have a PhD?
No. (Strike 1)

Do you have any full-time financial industry experience?
No. (Strike 2)

Do you code?
I’m not a computer science major but I’ve taken some courses and can quickly come up to speed. (Strike 3)

For those of you who don’t know baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out. Those answers will not get you a job as a quant (that’s short for quantitative analyst). I don’t care if you are a math Olympiad from an Ivy League school and you took one class in C++. Yes, you can probably come up to speed quickly. No argument here. But guess what—the guy a chair over from you is also interviewing for the same role, and he is already up to speed. On day one, he can hit the ground running. Who do you think is getting hired?
So let’s brainstorm some solutions.

Let’s first consider the PhD. By all means, get it if you can. It’s a tremendous intellectual achievement, a true test of discipline and resolve, and it also makes it much easier to land a job. But it also takes close to a decade of sacrifice to finish and for some that’s too much. So what do you do? Tip your caps to the doctors and then mark them as your competition here on after. As an underdog, you will have to focus on developing yourself so you can eventually give better answers to the other two remaining questions...MORE

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