From a value added resellers view, how up to date are your certificates? Today it's not what you know, it's are you certified. Do you hold a current CNNA or MSCE? Many companies won't even allow you printer repair without an A+ or better. 4 years off could mean you need updates through Cisco and Microsoft 2000, XP and Vista and so on. My experience in the IT field is if your certs are up to date, they really don't care whether you day traded or not.
for the past 4 years didn't you analyze, research, or program anything? you can describe how you traded or came up with a strategy. Unless of course you mindlessly sat in front of a screen all day watching numbers change and clicking buy and sell when you had a hunch. Also, the term IT industry and trading instry mean absolutely nothing; you need to narrow that down a lot.
I was in the same position that you are in now a few months ago, but in a different light (maybe). From almost the very beginning of my trading career, I formed a corporation to trade from. This gave me good commissions on futs. Also, I treated it like a business, which means I hired myself as a programmer to implement some of the relevant technologies that you may "need" in automated trading: - FIX - Threading - .NET - Databasing (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgress) - Socket communication (UDP, TCP/IP) - Object oriented programming - Patterns - Agile Developement - Distributed programming/Clustering - Backends software like position management/risk management - Used more than one language to program different aspects of the trading pieces to keep my programming skills in tact. Currently, I am well versed in C++ (.net) and C#, weak in Visual Basic but I can get by (if I can keep from vomiting), and shell languages. - Did some experimenting with Web Services and read up on SOA. - Basic System Administration of *nix machines and Windows Server. - Etc, like some Java front ends... I also did this in using the same discipline that I would be expected to use in a professional development environment. That means I used source control (Visual Source Safe), and did Unit testing. I strongly signed all my assemblies, etc... That kept my programming skills relatively in tact as I had to build systems to aid my trading. Although a great deal has changed in the last four years, an intense three month program can get you back in the swing of things. If a corporation thinks you are smart and disciplined, many of them will overlook the gap in your resume, knowing that you will be back to speed in a couple of months... I am in Chicago. I got about 150 calls from Chicago area recruiters (still getting swamped with calls, even though I took my resume down), and about 50 calls from NYC recruiters. If you live in NYC or nearby (Boston/Connecticut), there are about 10 job offers to work in the Financial industry in a technical role, as per every job in Chicago. It is intense on the east coast... Tell the truth on your resume and in your interview. If you daytraded, say that. If you did no programming or network administration in that time, say that. You are going to get interview by people that know if your skills are rusty or not. If someone hires you, they will hire you because they know that you are smart and that it will take you two or three months to get your skills back. The smaller the company, the more likely that you will be hired. Don't be afraid to get a "starter tech job" for a year, then if you are not challenged or are not being payed what you now can demand, you are back in the swing of things and can look again. Don't be afraid to fail. Use Monster and Dice to post resume. Best of luck. nitro
You're lucky you have IT background. IT is still hot right now and there are plenty of sleazy consulting firms that will build up your resume, find references for you, and get you placed in a well paying job so that they can collect the placement fee. If they don't place you into a permanent position then they'll be more than happy to place you in a temporary contract assignment where they bill $60/hr and give you $30/hr. These consulting agencies and recruiters have pretty much taken over a huge part of the labor market - its impossible for an employee or employer to avoid them. And they present a major conflict of interest acting on behalf of the employer and employee.
thanks for all the suggestions - worst case senario if i say i was a private equity manager or trader and no one responds i can always change my resume...
we both had shitty GPA from an Ivy League Institution. but my buddy faked his transcript, got a CS job at a company that has 150b market cap.
Yeah, my vote is with this one. It's totally 100% believable and just a shading of the truth (you still did the minor consulting) ... you can say that the market wasn't' as profitable as your analysis projected it to be because of the cost cutting of major businesses and the outsourcing of major projects to India! hah , make that game work for you! Best-O-Luck to you, and don't totally give up on the trading (if you got 1/2 of the software under your belt that Nitro has you would be well on your way ...). Good trading, JJ