But the career agencies just asks for CV. Difficult when one has been watching the screen for many years. Why do banks and funds outsource to them? In my mind they have no understanding what trading is about. But i guess these days it´s just quant and high frequency that matters..
They provide a filtering process based on the firms criteria. The process favors individuals that can write well and have a background from a large well known institution and well respected University. They will miss a lot of "better" candidates, because they will not interview them.
Hiring managers will hire someone whom they can convince their boss was a good hire. Basically, in finance terms, hiring managers are short a put (especially in finance where the hiree has a lot of power to cost the firm money). A hiring manager needs a filtering criteria to ensure that if/when something bad happens he can say, "But the guy seemed smart. He worked at Goldman and went to Harvard." This is more important to the hiring managers than finding the best candidate. It's a shame, but it's true.
Why would an experienced successful trader go to a bank or fund? Banks and funds outsource traders because they cannot grow them internally. What goes on in banks and funds is a search for some method that will make money on market anomalies and imbalances. (Search "unregulated new instruments") Now the think part. Money is most easily extracted from huge pools by dealing with price change effectively and efficiently. The huge pools are built by obtaining as many clients as possible and using the capital to skim off some excesses that the OPM will permit the bank or fund to do by agreement. Clients agree to pay specific amounts regardless of how their capital is used by the bank or the fund. These specific bank and fund incomes have to be able to support thestaff and the expenses. That is why bonuses are handed out on relatively low salaries at banks and funds. Look at an outsourced person's potential salary and bonus. Compare it to what the pools offer in terms of price change in the pools. All of these people who work for or in or are outsourced do not "take home" much of the market activity. Neither do the clients. Now do a marginal analysis of the situation. Who is really getting all the additional pool's offer. A small group of parasites usually unknown to the funds, banks and those they outsource. The parasites only need the funds, banks and outsourced enployees because of the reliability (and consistency) their conbined operations provide. One group knows what the other group does not know. The value of the parasite's knowledge is worth a lot more than the funds and the banks can pay. Occasionally, the clients of the banks and funds figure this out. So sooner or later the parasites have a problem of too much money knocking on the door. Parasites can only trade price movement at a limited multiple of the market's capacity. Funds and banks only trade the presumed anomalies of the markets. Parasitic traders of price movement ultimately have to find workers to help them out (in addition to their ATS's for various markets). These organizations can pay anything that is asked for by their helpers simply because of the huge size of the market's offer extraction process. The deal in this territory is struck by an offer to the helper in terms of how much capital he will accept to trade. It is a capitalization size discussion. Thus the high velocity money makers who are helpers to parasites do size deals which have a payout to the parasite that satisfies the need of the parasite's clients and also pay a goodly profit to the parasite who has the surplus capital problem. The helper deal is the one you could consider getting and taking. It is realatively simple to handle. The parasites FIND you by keeping their ears open. So you make your noises in parasite circles. They tell you their problems. You decide how much of the problem you can handle. Both of you fill in the split of the profits. The parasite asks for x and you keep the rest. As you can see easily, you can make more than the "rest" by at least x so the descision comes down to do you have to do any work. You do not simply because you have everything running everywhere using ATS's You do deals as long as there is room for more capital in your various markets partial fill strategies in the given trading window time slots. Your needs today are: 1. You don't circulate in parasitic circles. 2. You didn't convert your current success to ATS's. 3. You are not familiar with about 100 market's and their offers and their variable capacities. 4. You are a solo artist. No one can speak for you or work under you. 5. You haven't figured out that there is little talent in the banks and funds and that they will conive anyway they can to screw anyone they run into. (Search: financial crisis and Depression) Footnote. Regulators have no idea how much money can be made in the markets and when your accounts show a very high money velocity, they are all over you with the wrong suspicions. You have to stay under the radar or have good people facing mediocre regulators. It is always a good idea to read something occasionally that is way beyond you understanding and knowledge. Pick a variety of fields to stay alert mentally. Stop an ill conceived public or private project every once in a while (Use your own surplus money to do it).