UK
“I have read so many articles which mention that networking is the way to get a great job, and it is “not what you know, but who you know”. The theory is fine, but I am not convinced it has any practical application to me. I have a good job in the middle office of an investment bank. I am as academically smart as most of the front office people, but I get paid a fraction of what they get paid. So yes, of course I want to move to the front office.
I appreciate that trading is difficult to get into because you have to be super-numerical and smart, and because banks are not focusing so much on proprietary trading at the moment. Maybe sales or structuring could suit me. Or research would be good, and I may as well consider asset management. Operational risk management is not so appealing, but I know that credit risk management is very highly paid, and market risk management is pretty good as well. I’m not so sure about corporate finance and IBD: they appear to hire everyone at entry level.
I’ve already tried networking, without success. None of the front office professionals want to help you. My own bank does not want to facilitate my move to the front office. Recruitment agents just want to refer me for other back or middle office jobs. They know that if they refer middle office people for front office positions, they will not get selected for interview. I can either stay where I am and make the best of it, or take a risk and go to business school. Hopefully 10 years from now I will not look back and regret not doing anything to get the job I know I deserve.”
Familiar story so far?
Now let me tell you that you can make the move to front office. But you will need to go about it in the right way.
First of all, you will need to be specific. It’s not good simply saying that anywhere will do as long as it’s in the front office. That won’t work. You need to choose two or three specific business areas. So let’s assume you choose, say convertible bonds.
You now have to acquire technical information about convertible bonds that will make you sound as if you know what you are talking about. I think that will take you 20 hours. You probably need the help of an insider to know what’s important and what isn’t.
Then you need to set yourself a target. 100 professionals. You are going to contact 100 of the right professionals. I guarantee you will have a job offer within 6 weeks of contacting your 100th professional. Many readers may be sceptical, but this is based on my experience as a salesperson at Goldman Sachs for seven years and my experience for nine years in helping people get front office jobs in investment banks.
Now here comes the hard bit – motivation and time. Do you have the time to find the names of 100 of the right professionals, and customise an email for each person?
The email should not be longer than 200 words, and shorter is better. The golden rule of the email is to never ask for a job unless you know they are hiring. They will simply refer you to Human Resources.
After sending the email, you will then need to wait a few days before getting in touch by telephone. To begin with, you reiterate the reasons already stated in your email for getting in touch with them (eg. They’re a leader in the market etc), and then you shut up and listen. Whether the person will talk to you depends upon how busy and stressed they are, and also on how helpful a person they are.
Our extensive experience in helping clients with this networking has shown that just over 50% of professionals you contact are genuinely nice and fairly helpful. They are normal people – they respect the difficulties you face and want to help, without consuming too much of their time. 10% of people are just unpleasant and unfriendly. They will probably never help you. The remaining 40% are nice people but they know that you want something from them but have very little to offer, so they are just not going to take the time to talk to you. They will politely just try to get rid of you.
So if you target 100 professionals and 50 of them are genuinely nice and fairly helpful people, you will be able to build relationships which will lead to some interviews – guaranteed. Trying to get personal immediately with someone you do not know will never work, but starting to talk about the business and then asking personal questions within a professional context (How did you get started in the business? Did you always know you wanted to work in Fixed Income Trading? What other careers did you consider?), is the right way to do it.
Naturally if a team is not hiring, then you are not going to get an interview now. But one day the team will be hiring, right?
Peter Harrison, <a href="mailto:peter.harrison@harrisoncareers.com "peter.harrison@harrisoncareers.com is founder and CEO of HarrisonCareers.com. A Chartered Accountant, he graduated from Kellogg Business School, summer-interned with McKinsey London, and worked for 7 years on the Convertible Bond desk of Goldman Sachs London, where he was an Executive Director.
With Peter having built a second, very successful career out of all this, it is in his interest to market his not especially cheap product in a positive light. However, I can’t help but feel his approach is not only more than a little dated, but fantastically out of touch with reality. It may have worked like a charm in the late 1990s or even earlier this decade, but these days either get your foot in the door on a graduate programme or through a personal contact or use Peter’s approach and hope you’re one of the 1 in 1000 or so using that approach with some success to show for it. Alternatively, come thundering back to the real world and apply for a job the traditional way like everybody else and get hired partly on merit and partly with luck on your side. Nobody likes those who pester incessantly and the City soon gets wind of names…
Don’t mean to dishearten you all, just telling it like it is.
some reasonable points in the article, but as many firms are not hiring, how do you manage to keep the ball rolling as time goes by…what can the candidate add to stay in the picture?…it may have been different 7 years ago?
I don’t know who wrote that letter to Peter, but why is everyone so fixated on front office PROP trading jobs at I-Banks? If you want to trade, there are probably 500 firms in Europe who will give you a good profit split without any of the arse-kissing, back slapping and Machiavellian manoevering you must do to get a decent payout at a bank. All you need do is make money every quarter.
Now, if your goal is non-prop (institutional trader, agency trader, market maker, salestrader), its tough to blame you for wanting an F.O. job. Where else can you make 6 figures for being an execution monkey while taking no actual risk to your own capital? But then again, you’re not really a trader. Neither do you need to be “super-numerical and smart” to do those jobs. Its win-win!
i don’t agree with johnny’s point about non-prop sales and trading.
if anything, i think dealers take too much risk for their own good. for example, fixed income derivative books of the major houses routinely take far more risk than the average hedge fund or prop desk. in addition, since dealers routinely get dumped crappy risk positions from their prop desk / hf counterparts, by darwinian theory the ones that last have to understand every element of market structure.
As someone who benefitted from Peter (and his teams) advise, I can say that it is very helpful to be guided in your search for FO jobs. While I got my trading job through mixture of contacts and recruiters, it pays to have a team that keeps you focused on your goals and supportive of your overall aim with a touch of reality.
Keep up the good work Peter!!
Thank you for that article Peter is it definitely very insightful and will be very useful to me!
Johnny Moondog is spot-on.
Where’s the challenge in being an execution-only trader, monkey is the right description plus, with the increasing execution-automation who will need a body at a ask desk filling matching buy & sell orders & claiming to be a trader, wake-up.