“It’s something very personal, a very important thing. Hell! It’s a family motto. Are you ready Jerry? I wanna make sure you’re ready, brother. Here it is: Show me the money. SHOW! ME! THE! MONEY! Jerry, it is such a pleasure to say that! Say it with me one time, Jerry.”

-Rod Tidwell, “Jerry Maguire” (1996)

If you’re anything like Rod here, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to Part I of “Breaking And Entering Into Finance”, a series on how to get into finance from a non-finance background. I find myself answering this question a lot, possibly because I’m from a non-finance background myself. Or maybe just because everyone wants to get into finance.

Today I’m going to focus on the engineer. How you can leverage your technical background to land the job of your dreams as a monkey in the jungle of finance and secure those awesome investment banker salaries? As a technical person right out of school, you have two ways of breaking in:

1. Get an investment banking analyst position in the technology or TMT (Technology, Media & Telecom) group of a bank. You will use none of your quantitative/analytical background (in the interview and in the job) and instead use your interest in the industry/work ethic to get in.
2. Get a highly quantitative job at a hedge fund or doing trading/fixed income at a bank. You will leverage your quantitative and probability skills to get in.

Of the two, the second is easiest for most engineers. Wall Street has never been more quantitative, and it’s only getting more and more quant-focused each day. Even with some recent problems this is a trend that won’t stop anytime soon.

Hedge Fund And Related Jobs

On-campus recruiting for these positions is less common than it is for banking analysts, but it’s there if you seek it out. Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, does undergraduate recruiting for its rotational program. Another one I know of that recruits at the undergraduate level is Jump Trading.

The good news is that if you’re an engineering major at a top university, you have a very good chance of landing one of these jobs, even with no previous finance experience. If you’re in this position and go through on-campus recruiting, you need to emphasize your interest in finance because this is basically how they select candidates. Here’s a direct quote from a Citadel recruiter:

“To be honest, we know you’re all pretty good quantitatively… after all you got an engineering degree at one of the top programs in the country. You need to show us that you’re interested in finance and why specifically you want to do this job, because that’s what differentiates you.”

During interviews they will ask you quantitative questions but it’s crucial that you show them you want to be Gordon Gekko. Have some good stories prepared, especially on personal investing and why you’re particularly well-suited to be a trader. For more, see our guide to getting a banking job - although I say banking, many of the tips in there apply to finance jobs in general.

For trading jobs the “fit” part of the interview is even more important than it is for banking. If you don’t trade stocks in between classes and wake up early each morning to read financial news, gambling is a good hobby to mention. I was actually asked if I played video poker/online poker and other casino games when interviewing for hedge fund jobs. You want to emphasize hobbies/interests that show you can think about risk vs. reward.

No Thanks, I Really Want To Be A Banker

Full disclosure: you can do this, but the hours are going to be far worse than the options above, the pay won’t be much better and you’ll have to do truly menial, low-value-add work. The advantage is you do have a wider variety of exit options - doing engineering and then banking sets you up very well for venture capital, for example. And the perks are nice.

“Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I’d either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies.”

-Henry Hill, “Goodfellas” (1990)

You may not get free keys to a dozen hideouts all over the city like Henry Hill here, but you do get some pretty nice perks as a banker that you wouldn’t get a tech company other than Google. Like free rides home, free $30 dinners each night, free cell phone subscriptions and the ability to be very creative with what you expense (not that I’m recommending this or anything).

As a technical person, you have several things going for you right away: no one will question your intelligence, and they probably won’t ask you brain teasers or math questions. If you can get a degree in Electrical Engineering, you can do Excel calculations in your sleep. And no one will question your attention to detail (or at least not as much as if you were an English major). If you can make an operating system work correctly there’s no way footnotes in a presentation will be wrong.

What you will need to focus on in recruiting and interviewing is demonstrating your 1) interest in finance and 2) ability to handle the hours/stress of the job, which are considerably worse than those of an engineering/tech company. For both these take a look at our guide to getting investment banking jobs.

A few more specific tips: when you discuss your interest in finance you need to mention tech companies if you’re applying to a tech group in a bank. And don’t just mention Google or Facebook. These are the most visible tech companies by far, but anyone can learn about them by reading TechCrunch or by listening to friends.

You need to show real interest in the sector, which means taking the initiative and talking about less well-known companies. Before my superday interviews at tech groups in banks I made a list of less well-known startups/other companies I found interesting and had a story prepared around each of them. You should do the same.

As far as the second point about handling the stress/hours, as an engineering major you should have had many extended project classes… these are all good to mention, as are any internships where you launched a product that required “crunch time” at the end.

But What If I’m Not A Student Or Engineer?

Coming up later this week: getting in when you’re not a student and getting into investment banking from law, accounting, and other backgrounds. Stay tuned.

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Posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 5:00 pm.