if you want a job as a "trader", be a trader and make money. if you don't know how to trade, needing a paycheck from a corporate for your lack of skills, you are backoffice. do not call yourself a trader.
If you guys answered no, I did had an interview as a TA analyst. The job was at a brokerage firm in my country. Problem is in this trading and finance world, theres only buy or sell side. If you go to libraries and internet, you realize TA is just BS for retail traders. I dare challenge anyone who do this 18 hours on Asia/Euro/US Futures markets on TA based on this month's Aug - Sept 2011 high vix environment. Back to the job -> The reason I somehow was turned off during the interview was when I realize im generating TA signals to sell them to retail traders. My work is to generate 3-4 reports on TA on any hot stocks, in 1-2wk timeframe, so as to bring in higher volume of sales thru comms. For those of you who rely on brokerages news, it is generated by them to boost sales, thats the job. There's no true making money thingy out there. Believe it or not.
I remember doing IT support at The Big Car Company about 10 years ago. I got to know the traders in the finance department. They have the big screen TV on (no sound) watching CNBC and Bloomberg on their computers. I asked the senior trader what they trade, he said money market funds. That's about all they are allowed to trade. Rarely they might buy natural gas or copper futures contracts as a hedge. But that's it, money market funds. They went to MBA schools to buy and sell money market funds by telephone.
I was working at a big automobile manufacturing company. I had the opportunity to meet the traders in the finance department. I was surprised that they are so limited in their trading. I remember interviewing at a company associated with one of the market wizards. I might have done computer modeling there. I think those guys traded about 20 different futures contracts long term.
He may have a shot at BK afterall since he apparently doesn't know the difference between their and there.
Brokerage Salesman or Analyst pushing ideas to clients in order to generate commissions and fees. No serious IB or HF is going to let you scalp 5000 lot ES based upon your TradeStation Oscillator divergence setup, or your 3 period to 10 period MACD cross using one minute data.