Then, imagine the recession coming soon after and having to work ridiculously long hours every day, knowing full well that your division is no longer profitable but that your two superiors have fat, guaranteed bonuses in their contract.

And now, imagine getting laid off a few months later.

It’s enough to make a grown man cry – sort of like developing a receding hairline in your early twenties.

In this article, you’ll hear how our interviewee went through all this, landed up in an insipid, uninspiring government job and then somehow rose from the ashes to become a portfolio manager at a top fund management company.

Here’s what you’ll learn about his journey, and how you can do the same:

• How to network your way from the back office to the front office.
• What recruiting is like in fund management.
• What to expect in interviews and how fund management interviews differ from interviews in S&T.
• The challenges of getting a second chance in finance.

How It All Started

Q: You’ve had a pretty exciting career thus far, but before we get into the details, can you tell us more about your background?

A: I started off studying finance and economics at an Australian university. Back then, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to work in finance, but everyone I knew wanted to be an investment banker so I decided to tag along for the ride. It’s an Asian thing.

After I graduated, I started working in Interest Rate Derivatives operations for about 6 months at a major European bank, followed by a longer stint of over a year supporting a multi-strategy proprietary trading desk in the equity derivatives middle office.

Similar to almost everyone starting out in the back or middle office, I wanted to make the move to the front office. I guess you could say I was one of the lucky ones because after two years, I managed to finagle my way into the structured funds department as a junior fund manager.

Q: Looks like it’s also an Asian thing to be overly modest about your achievements.

I’m sure it took a lot more than luck to make the transition but we’ll get back to this later – do go on.

A: Well, the fairy tale does get a little rockier after the feel good start. The financial crisis hit a few months later and before I knew it, I was out of a job.

I took it easy for a couple of months and eventually settled down into a new role evaluating mutual funds for social security savings plans in a statutory board.

It was a pretty niche role and I spent a lot of time performing due diligence on external portfolio managers; if that seems even mildly exciting, trust me when I say it wasn’t.

There was hardly any challenge to the job, and saying it was exceptionally dull would be putting it lightly.

After sticking around for about a year, I managed to transfer to the Investment Management Department, which was much less painful than working on a statutory board.

I was involved with looking after insurance and in-house funds, money market placement, and recommending strategic/tactical asset allocations to the internal investment committee.

After working in Investment Management for another year, I was given the opportunity to join a respected fund management company as a portfolio manager and decided to take it up.

Q: That’s quite a lot of transferring. You seem pretty good at moving around within the company.

Why do you think that’s the case?

A: I guess it mainly stems from being fairly ambitious and constantly trying to make things happen. I don’t want to come across as some sort of über-networker because I’m not.

It’s just that I’m a firm believer in the adage that if opportunity knocks, you’d better jolly well answer.

Q: That’s true but you were consistently trying to create your own opportunities, while most others would probably be hanging around waiting for opportunity to come calling.

How did you manage to make the switch from the back office to fund management to begin with?

A: I don’t want to get all philosophical on you but I believe there are 4 different types of employees:

1. The Doom and Gloomers – You know the sort. The ones that hate their jobs but would rather spend their entire lives grumbling about it as opposed to actually looking for a more suitable career.
2. The Fate Believers – These guys aspire towards something better but choose to believe it’s their lot in life to follow through with a crappy career.
3. The Soul Searchers – Employees who take time to go through the motions of finding their best fit in whatever specific job function/sector/industry they want to be in.
4. The Blessed – The lucky ones who miraculously end up doing something that resonates with them immediately. If what they do pays well, then they’ve got the best of both worlds.

I like to think that I belong to category 3. I had spent enough time working in the back and middle office to know that it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life;  I’ll be tactful here and say that it just wasn’t the right fit for me.

I knew I wanted to do something else within finance but I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.

You could say that my networking efforts were a lot more organic. I had been working for about 2 years and because I’m a friendly chap, I knew pretty much everyone in the company.

I never set out to network specifically to break into fund management – I only knew that I didn’t want to work in operations, so I spent a lot of time finding out more about what every other department in the company was doing.

This actually also helped a lot with my operations job because it became so much easier to work with people after building relationships.

Q: Let me just interrupt you there for a second. Can you tell us a little more about how you managed to build up these relationships with people from other departments?

A: If you’re asking for a specific process, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t have one.

I didn’t think of it as strictly building ‘friendships’ for recruiting purposes. I was just genuinely interested in finding out more about what other people were doing at the bank.

I didn’t do the entire ‘talking to senior traders and trying to impress them’ bit. Most of my ‘networking’ was originally with the junior staff of the different departments.

Since we were roughly around the same age, it was pretty easy to strike up conversations around the pantry. After a while, this led to drinks after work. As time passed, this led to drink sessions with different groups of colleagues.

Eventually, I seemed to be on friendly terms with more or less everybody. It probably also helped that I hardly turn down an invitation to get a drink. I was actually trying to pursue a few other opportunities within the bank when an opening popped up in structured fund.

I had good references from my boss (or maybe he just wanted to get rid of me!) and I was already friendly with most of the people in that department so the question of ‘fit’ didn’t even come into play.

I still had to go through a semi-formal interview to get the job but I was pretty confident about my chances even before I got accepted.

Q: It actually sounds like you didn’t have a very difficult time making the transition.

What was the culture like regarding internal transfers within the firm?

A: I guess you could say I was at the right place at the right time, but please don’t think that my situation was an everyday occurrence.

It was slightly easier pre-crisis and things have definitely become a lot harder – but even back then, moving from the back office to the front back was still rare.

Internal transfers were a lot easier when moving across different areas of the same function, but I was probably the first person I knew of to make the switch from the back office to fund management.

It was pretty funny, actually – I think most of the people I was working with in operations were brainwashed into thinking that it was impossible to make the switch to the front office internally.

There was a widespread misconception that you could only inch slightly closer to an ideal dream job through a change of employer. I actually think hardly anybody else within the company applied for that job in structured funds.

So whatever you do, please don’t overestimate the competition.

Q: That’s a great argument for why conventional wisdom is usually wrong.

Care to share some unconventional advice on how to make this back office to front office move?

A: I really don’t think there’s a magic formula for making these types of transitions. It depends on how willing you are to put yourself out there and, dare I say it, a little luck.

You have to be willing to persevere and constantly make contact with people in the jobs that you’re interested in. This might sound like a motivational pep talk, but most people don’t even get started.

In Asia, there’s this ridiculous thing about not “losing face.” Everybody wants something better for themselves, but nobody wants to openly admit it and ask for help.

So if you’re looking to make that type of move here, you have to go against the culture and be direct – even when other people question your motives.

What’s even worse is getting started and then giving up when your first two leads don’t materialize in a job offer. You’ve got to be able to tough out the many rejections that will inevitably come along. Perseverance is the name of the game here.

Recruiting For Fund Management

Q: Right, so how was the recruiting process different between for operations-type roles and interviewing for fund management positions?

What were the actual questions like?

A: The interviews for back office and middle office roles were pretty simple because I graduated at a time when global banks were expanding aggressively in Asia for operational roles.

You didn’t need to have a whole lot of experience, and interview questions were all about ‘fit’. Hardworking, motivated graduates with can-do attitudes were the flavors of the day.

On the other hand, while I wouldn’t go as far as to say my fund management interviews were as technical as some sales & trading interviews, they weren’t a walk in the park either.

I got a lot of questions about what asset classes I found interesting, the expected returns for random asset classes, and the outlook for these random asset classes for the coming month/quarter/year.

So you need to do some research upfront there and walk in with at least 2-3 solid ideas. And if you’re not interested enough to do the research, it’s not the right field for you.

Q: So the interviews were just a lot of pitching of ideas? What advice would you give someone who was going for a fund management interview today?

A: That’s one way of putting it. You definitely have to be able to talk about the markets if you’re going into fund management.

Have views on everything: bonds, commodities, stocks and currencies.

And if you don’t know something about one of those, research it and figure out what to say: there are so many news sources and blogs out there that it’s not terribly difficult to find the information these days.

It’s important to be able to organize your thoughts and views of the industry into something coherent. Most people tend to ramble on and on without making any real sense.

See: More on how to intelligently discuss investment ideas, and how to structure your thoughts when pitching stocks.

Q: What about the all important CFA? How useful do you think it is for someone looking to break into fund management?

A: Well, it definitely wouldn’t hurt to have it. I don’t think it automatically opens the door to the industry as so many people are inclined to believe though.

Completing your CFA takes up a minimum of at least 3 years of your life. If your sole aim is to get a job in asset management, I honestly think most people would have much better results using half that time to get to know people in the industry.

Maybe I’m feeling mildly threatened because I don’t have a CFA, but I know plenty of people who slogged for years to get the accreditation and it never got them further than an interview.

So think about it, but don’t devote 100% of your time to the exam.

A Fairy Tale Gone Awry

Q: Now we’re coming to the slightly more sensitive part of the interview. I don’t want to stir up any bad memories, but can you tell us what happened to you during the financial crisis?

Maybe you can also tell us how you felt about the entire situation?

A: It’s not a problem. My situation was fairly unusual because I actually volunteered to be laid off.

This was during a time when everybody else was desperately clinging onto their jobs; it was the height of the financial crisis and the bank was fighting just to survive.

At that point, structured investor products had gone from being wildly profitable to barely squeaking by. I was working like a dog, but didn’t even receive a bonus for the year.

The bonus pool was mainly used to pay off two large guaranteed bonuses for the seniors.

I wasn’t too pleased about that, but it wasn’t the main factor that compelled me to leave.

I actually suggested leaving because passive investing didn’t turn out like what I thought it would be.

The work was a lot more fulfilling than being in the back office, but I still wanted more out of my career.

Taking this layoff also guaranteed me a pretty sizable severance package so I decided to go ahead with it. Every once in a while, I do question whether it was a good decision.

Mostly, though, I think it was one of the smartest things I ever did.

Q: That’s good to hear. It’s still a pretty bold move, considering that the economy was in the doldrums and that finding job opportunities would have been difficult.

Did you have problems getting back into the workforce after getting laid off?

A: Yes, it certainly wasn’t easy. I took a break for a while to ‘recuperate’ from banking.

When I started looking for jobs again, it was pretty rough. It took some time to land a job that I felt would be a decent fit for my skill set. I was adamant about not taking any ol’ job but I had to be realistic about my opportunities.

Given the unfortunate economic situation at the time, the role evaluating mutual funds for social security savings plans in a statutory board was the closest fit I could find.

It was far from the perfect job but I just wanted to get back into the workforce again.

Q: Hey, all things considered, I think you ended up doing pretty well for yourself. This brings us to the end of the first part of our interview.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. I’ll be coming back for seconds soon.

A: Sure thing. Anytime!

Fund Management: Part Deux

Not all sequels suck. For every Ocean’s Twelve and Matrix Revolutions, there’s a Godfather Part ll.

In Part 2 of this interview (hopefully more like a Godfather kind of sequel), you’ll find out more about the pros and cons of working in asset management, a day in the life, salaries, and exit opportunities.

Stay tuned for all of that and more!

Shen Han Lee lives in Singapore, where he drank copious amounts of coffee and worked as a stock broker for 4 years before taking off on a whirlwind tour around the world, which you can read about on www.knackpacker.com.

Oh, and none of my debit cards worked correctly either.

Luckily, all places that offer bottle service (which served as my meal 3 times per day) accepted credit cards so it turned out OK.

But this little trip confirmed something that I already knew: finance in Canada is a much different world.

And I’m not just talking about ATMs.

Everything from the finance industry itself to exit opportunities to compensation and deals is… more different than you’d expect.

So today you’re going to learn all about how to gain secret, ninja advantages in interviews – directly from a reader who currently works in investment banking in Canada, and who’s had experience in venture capital and related industries there.

And you might just learn how to make the move from restaurant manager to financier along the way, too.

From Culinary School to… Venture Capital?

Q: Let’s start with your story, since it’s a good one. Walk us through how you got started in finance.

A: Sure. To begin with, I had a ton of family members in the industry – dozens of my cousins were working the finance in some capacity, and the rest were all PhD’s, doctors, or lawyers (which were boring and lower-earning professions, and therefore unappealing to me).

So I was exposed from an early age and each time I attended a family member’s graduation, I became increasingly interested in business.

I went to a top-tier Canadian university (one of the few that banks target here), but completed a biochemistry degree because I hadn’t yet liberated myself from the pre-med path that my parents had brainwashed me into following.

I didn’t want to live at home, so I paid for living expenses myself by working crazy hours at restaurants, ultimately becoming 2nd in command of the kitchen at one restaurant.

But as a result, I didn’t have nearly enough time to study and barely got through university – I passed with a sub-3.0 GPA.

Q: So I’m guessing that The Cooking Channel was a more likely future outcome for you than investment banking when you graduated?

A: Funny that you should mention that, because right after graduating I decided to attend culinary school – after which I ran the kitchen of a very successfully restaurant (one of the most prestigious and popular in my city – the equivalent of Per Se in New York).

And through that experience, I met lots of important people who were regular customers. I saw bankers coming in for closing dinners all the time, and realized then that I also wanted to get into the industry.

So I pursued my MBA with a focus in finance – and then graduated into a horrible recession, with very little going for me in terms of previous experience or credentials.

I thought about using my knowledge of the food & beverage industry to move into a consulting role there or to join a large company doing corporate finance, but hardly anyone was hiring.

Q: At which point you decided to open your own restaurant instead, right?

A: Nope. I decided to leverage my Rolodex rather than going through official recruiting channels, and contacted some of the bankers that I had met back at that kitchen I worked at.

They didn’t have anything at their firms, but they set me up to interview at a local venture capital firm that was looking to expand.

So I joined as an associate and worked for a decent firm with a decent amount of capital (“decent” meaning good for Canada, since the industry is so much smaller here).

It wasn’t a true VC firm because it was actually a very, very wealthy family who invested in everything from startups to huge companies to bonds and equities – so I did a bit of everything there.

I worked there for a while, but then left the VC firm after about 18 months because hiring at banks was picking up once again, and my old banker contacts from the restaurant “poached” me and set me up with an interview there.

They figured that since my old restaurant job involved working 70-80 hours per week and dealing with constant stress, high-maintenance customers, and running an entire organization, I could handle the rigors of banking as well!

Big 5 vs. Bulge Bracket: Death Match

Q: That makes a lot of sense – I think working at a restaurant is actually much closer to what you deal with as an analyst or associate than most normal office jobs.

What about the recruiting process itself? How does it differ in Canada, especially at the Big 5 Canadian banks (RBC, TD, Scotia Bank, BMO, and CIBC)?

A: The biggest difference is size. The industry is so much smaller here that even a top bank like TD sometimes hires fewer than 5 associates per year.

Altogether, you’re looking at maybe 60 – 70 new associates per year at boutique and bulge bracket banks across the entire country.

Another difference is that the hierarchy can be stricter here – analysts are pretty much always undergraduates, and 95% of associates are from the MBA pool.

In terms of the recruiting process itself, here’s what I went through at the Big 5 banks here:

• 5 rounds of interviews, where they tell you the number of people in each round.
• Round 1 consisted of 1,000 people applying for 4 positions, and they gave each person a 5-minute interview.
• Round 2 consisted of 500 people and each person had a 10-minute interview.
• Round 3 had around 150 – 200 people, and each person got a phone interview focusing on why they were interested in that bank, what role they wanted, and what industries they liked.
• Round 4 was very technical and they dove into financial statement questions and the valuation of gold mines and similar natural resource assets. You had 3 chances to answer these types of questions correctly before they booted you.
• Round 5 was similar to the “Superday” interviews you see in the US – around 20 people were left at this point for the 4 remaining positions. Most of the interviews were fit-focused, you would speak with a bunch of Partners, and they had a dinner event for everyone afterward.

Q: It sounds intense – I really want to make a reality TV show about the investment banking recruiting process one of these days and Canada would be a great setting for it.

So just out of curiosity, what types of questions about the valuation of gold mines did they ask you?

A: They said, “If I asked you to value a gold mine, what’s the first question you’d ask?” They gave me 3 chances to get it correct.

I said I would ask what the Proved Reserves are, which was wrong, and then I think I asked what the daily or annual Production was or what commodity prices were – all of which were wrong.

Q: So what was the answer they were looking for?

A: The CapEx of the project. I don’t know their exact rationale, but they claimed it was the most important factor.

And it only got more technical from there – they got into crazy questions about special cases for NAV models, valuing different types of resources, and so on if you passed the first set of screening questions.

Q: So how do you actually prepare for that?

A: The 4 guys that ended up winning those positions all had finance backgrounds. Actually, the top 20 candidates that made it to Superday all had finance backgrounds and had been investment banking analysts before even completing their MBAs.

To compete you need to have a high GPA from one of the top-tier schools for finance here, plus experience working as an analyst at one of the Big 5 banks. A few friends who were engineers before business school also got in, but they were applying to tech groups and knew the industry inside and out.

If you’re targeting the many Metals & Mining groups here, you don’t have a great shot without a really strong finance background.

And to answer the questions themselves, you need to get out there and network with people in the industry – you won’t find answers to these types of questions in books or training programs.

Q: And I’m guessing no banks had food & beverage sectors that matched your background?

A: Nope. So I was up against tough competition, and I broke in mostly because I networked so aggressively with the bankers I had met before business school.

US vs. Canada: Got Respect?

Q: Another common question on recruiting in Canada: how easy it is to break in coming from a US degree program compared to a Canadian one?

What’s your take on this? If you have the option, should you complete a US degree or Canadian degree?

A: At the undergraduate / analyst level, there isn’t a big difference between Canadian and US degrees. And they won’t help you out much with visas at that level either.

At the analyst level, it is much easier to move from the US to Canada than to do the reverse because the visa situation in the US is so difficult.

To win over the US government, banks have to prove that the Canadian person applying is more qualified than anyone else they could possibly find in the US – which is almost impossible to show, especially at the analyst level where everyone’s just a monkey.

It’s easier to move over once you have some experience, and I’ve seen a few people do that. But straight out of undergrad it’s tough.

The NAFTA-related TN1 visa is great for computer scientists or PhD’s, but it’s horribly useless for anything in business.

So you end up needing the H1-B visa, which is super difficult because they’re capped and they mostly go to highly-qualified Master’s and PhD graduates in technical fields.

Q: You mentioned that there isn’t a huge difference between US and Canadian schools at the undergraduate / analyst level – what about at the MBA level?

A: There, you have more of an advantage if you have an MBA from a top US school. I’ve seen lots of people get into the Big 5 banks here by doing that.

I don’t have a rational explanation for it, but the very top US programs (Harvard, Wharton, etc.) are more respected and better-known than most Canadian MBA programs.

Q: So what’s the best way to break into investment banking in Canada if you’re coming from a lesser-known school or you don’t have an impressive internship?

A: At the analyst level, banks only focus on 5 universities here – McGill, Ivey, Queen’s, Rotman, and Schulich. If you’re a native French speaker with a mastery of English and you want to stay in Quebec, Concordia would also be on that list.

If you’re not at one of those schools, it’s very, very difficult to get in without some kind of special edge and/or exhaustive networking.

So if you’re already set to graduate and you can’t transfer or you’ve already graduated, I would just work in an industry you’re interested in, become an expert, get some exposure to M&A, and then go to a top MBA program.

I think it’s generally easier to ninja your way into finance in the US or UK since the finance industry is so much bigger in both those places.

Q: Interesting to hear that one.

Switching gears, I wanted to go into how the finance industry itself is different and talk about some of your experience in venture capital and investment banking in Canada…

A: Wait, isn’t that what part 2 of this interview is for?

Q: Good point – stay tuned until then!

A: Will do.

Finance in Canada – Series:

• Investment Banking in Canada – Overview
• Break Into Investment Banking in Canada (Part 1 of Interview)
• Investment Banking in Canada: On the Job and Exit Opportunities (Part 2 of Interview)

Oh, and you’re set on going to a bulge bracket bank.

As Aleksey Vayner might say, “Impossible is Nothing” – a bad idea for his infamous video resume, but a good idea for our interviewee here, who was smart enough to apply the sentiment, but not the execution, to his recruiting efforts.

Here’s how he made the leap from visa-less foreigner and non-target student to sales & trading at a bulge bracket bank, and how you can do the same – plus:

• The top challenges you’ll face as a foreigner breaking into finance in London – and how to overcome them.
• Whether or not there’s a glass ceiling in finance if you’re not from the country.
• What to expect in Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities (FICC) recruiting and how to prepare for interview questions.
• A day in the life of a FICC junior trader.

Let’s dive right in:

Stranger in a Strange Land

Q: So how’d you end up in the UK to begin with? Can you walk us through your story?

A: Sure. I’m from an “emerging market, think BRIC” – I’d rather leave it at that or I would be too easy to identify – and went to a good university there to study engineering. By “good university,” I mean that it was good locally, but no one outside of my country had heard of it.

Halfway through my studies, I realized I didn’t want to spend my life being an engineer – so I decided to do something else.

At that point, I went to Europe for a summer holiday – it was for 2 months initially, but I wanted to get a job and then travel around to each country there, which would take longer than 2 months.

Q: Right, but I’m guessing that you ran into visa trouble there before you even got started finding this job – how did you get around that?

A: I started applying to English courses (even though I didn’t need them) and found a school that had an offer for a 12-month course for the price of 6 months.

I applied to that, got a student visa, and then went to the UK and decided to stay longer-term after a few months there.

Around that time, I realized I wanted to go into finance and went to complete a degree program in development economics, and then another degree in math and statistics at two of the top schools for finance recruiting here.

Q: So essentially to get around the visa issue you got a student visa from that English course first, and then you enrolled in university there to further extend your visa. And effectively you stopped out of your original degree program in your home country mid-way through.

How did you suddenly “realize” you were interested in finance?

A: Being in London, I kept hearing more and more about it and saw lots of share trading and investing courses – companies here would do 2-hour introductions and then offer weekend courses for 2,000 GBP.

I was not in a position to pay for those, but I applied for a 3-day course and won a free scholarship – so I learned the basics, opened my own trading account, and started trading online.

Around that time, I was finishing up one of my degrees – so that experience, combined with my interest in trading and personal portfolio, set me up for trading roles.

Got Work Visa?

Q: OK, so on the surface your story makes sense – but there are still a few details I’m skeptical over.

First off, how did you pay for all of this education? Using degrees to get visas is a good idea, but what about the money?

A: This was actually the biggest challenge. In the UK, you pay 3x – 5x more as a foreign student and my family was not supporting me or paying for anything.

Also, due to the way the UK system works, I couldn’t get loans or other financial support – so I worked throughout university doing random jobs like waiting tables and working in restaurants to support myself.

This would not have worked well in the US because tuition there is much higher to begin with. Plus, getting a visa there can be almost impossible due to the immigration policies.

Another good idea to save on money is to rent out a whole flat through an agency or landlord and sublet the rooms; there are risks if you get empty rooms for a while but in a decent location that never happens, and everyone else’s rent will cover your own. I lived rent-free for 2 years by doing that.

Q: So then once you figured out how to pay for everything, how did you actually break in as a foreigner?

What were the key challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?

A: First off, note that student visas are increasingly difficult to come by each year. So if you have any interest at all in working in the UK, apply as soon as possible because it’s only getting harder over time.

If you’re a foreigner and you want to work in the UK, you should:

1. Focus on bulge bracket banks – visa sponsorship at smaller firms is spotty, at best.
2. Do multiple internships, if possible – you can still complete summer internships even when you’re on a student visa. It’s easier to get these internships, turn one of them into a full-time offer, and then get the bank to sponsor you like that. It is nearly impossible to get a full-time front office position without an internship.

In my case, I completed internships at a few bulge bracket banks and ultimately won a full-time offer from one of them just before my final year.

I wouldn’t even bother with boutique banks unless you have an EU passport.

Q: So besides the visa and financial issues, did you run into other difficulties when applying?

A: People tend to look down on you if you’re not from the country or you don’t look like the stereotypical  banker / trader (i.e. blue eyes, blonde hair, Caucasian), so you need to bring a lot more to the table and be more impressive than the average candidate.

And then in addition to not being from the country, I faced a second barrier: my original undergraduate university in my home country was not a “target school,” so they were skeptical of my educational background.

I dealt with those by adjusting my own self-image and the way I thought of myself compared to others – I realized that a lot of the people who went to assessment centers were book-smart, but didn’t have any real-world experience trading, investing, or doing business of any kind.

The fact that I had my own portfolio was also a big selling point. When I was applying for full-time roles, I had already been trading for several years – so I actually brought all my positions, trading ideas, and strategies to interviews and showed them everything.

Anyone can say they’re “interested” in trading, but showing your track record over several years proves your interest and aptitude.

Traders are not into BSing and talking endlessly like some bankers are – they want to see results, and if you can make money, they don’t care as much about other factors.

Q: So you didn’t play the “emerging markets expert” card at all?

A: Not really. It didn’t make much sense because I was never trading securities that were related to my own country – they were always UK or Europe-related.

The “emerging markets expert” story would have been better if I had applied to banking or PE groups with an emerging markets focus, or banks that did a lot of cross-border deals.

But in trading, I didn’t find it terribly useful.

Landing the Interviews – Got Diversity?

Q: Right, that makes sense. What about getting all these interviews in the first place?

You attended some good schools in the UK, but there’s a lot more to it than that – what was your secret for landing interviews at bulge bracket banks?

A: Easy: diversity programs. You’ve written about them before on M&I, and they’re highly useful in Europe as well.

Q: But wait a minute, are you actually an under-represented minority?

A: I was from a country that didn’t have much representation in the UK, so technically, yes. I didn’t fit the definition of the typical groups they considered “under-represented,” but as you’ve pointed out before, it’s all about how you spin your story.

Once you get into such a program, the alumni and staff there will pull strings for you and help you get interviews at banks.

Don’t get me wrong: a diversity program is not a magical ticket into Goldman Sachs. You still need to do a lot of work, network on your own, be proactive, and make sure your applications are perfect.

But I highly recommend them – if you can use them – because they give you a big advantage.

Q: Any tips on applications for those diversity programs?

A: Assume that everything is an interview and prepare accordingly.

People get notification emails about “coming in for a chat” and think that it’s just a casual conversation – but it’s not. Every interaction you have with representatives from the program is an interview and they are judging everything you say and do.

The questions you get on the applications and in interviews are similar to what you’ve covered before, so I won’t re-hash all of that here.

Another tip is to approach as many people as possible, even if it’s seemingly random. One time I stopped a woman on the way out of a diversity networking event, and found out that she had been to a restaurant that I had worked at before.

We hit it off well, and she told me to contact her when I applied – I don’t know for sure whether that exchange actually helped me to get in, but it couldn’t have hurt.

Q: Yeah, I see lots of fearfulness around going up to people randomly and asking for help – hesitation is a big mistake.

Having gone through this process, what advice would you give to someone in an emerging market who wants to work in London or New York? Is it even worth their time, or should they stay home and work there instead?

A: It depends on what your goals are – if you just move to the US or UK right away and look for a job there, it will be close to impossible because no one will know your school and because the economy in developed countries isn’t so great.

The better plan is to do a 1-year Master’s program and use that to meet recruiters, network, and gain some credibility in the country you want to move to first.

If you go the education route, you need to earn First-Class recognition; 2.1 is only acceptable if you’re from a top-tier school, such as Oxbridge or LSE. Anything less than that, forget about it.

Some people plan to work in the UK for a few years and then go back home after working here – but in my experience, that’s tough because experienced professionals back at home can feel threatened when you go back and know more than they do.

So it’s not quite as easy as, “Go to London, get some experience, and go back home” – no one may even want you when you go back home.

All About Fixed Income, Currency & Commodities (FICC)

Q: Interesting to hear that – it makes sense that people back home might feel threatened, but you’d think they would be more professional about it!

We’ve been focusing on visa issues and how to break into finance as a foreigner, but I want to switch gears now and talk about sales & trading recruiting, specifically for FICC desks.

What should you expect, and how is it different from the existing S&T recruiting tips on the site?

A: Sure. So first off, there’s a big difference between internship and graduate program recruiting.

For internships, they’ll go through the usual brain teasers, math questions, and competency-based questions that you should expect in S&T interviews and at assessment centers.

For full-time positions, banks often fast-track candidates and may even skip assessment centers to “snag” interns quickly – they even hold networking events to recruit interns from other banks. If you don’t get an internship here, it is exponentially more difficult to land full-time offers.

And if you don’t go to these networking events, it’s almost impossible to move to another bank for your full-time role.

I went through around 15 interviews total across several banks; I had 7 interviews at the bulge bracket bank where I ultimately ended up winning the offer.

They’ll usually give you a pen and paper and start asking math questions right away – lots of interview questions for S&T desks were about options: how to draw delta, how you hedge delta, how to calculate gamma, how to draw diagrams for different positions, and so on.

If you don’t know much about trading, “delta” is how sensitive the option value is to the change in price of the underlying stock; “gamma” is the rate of change of delta with respect to the change in the underlying stock.

They asked very little, if anything, about my hobbies, interests, or “story,” and focused on technical questions.

In Fixed Income, interviews are probably more technical than in Equities because there’s more math involved.

And if you interview for something even more math-intense, such as the Exotics desk, be prepared to suffer: that was the hardest interview of my life, and involved multiple pages of diagrams by the end.

Q: Sounds intense. I like answering simple questions about the 3 financial statements better, but I guess that’s not hardcore enough for traders.

So how do you prepare for those types of interview questions? Any recommended resources?

A: To be honest, it’s much harder to prepare for S&T interviews because you have no idea what they’re going to ask you.

At least with banking it’s limited to a set number of topics, but on the trading side they could ask you an unlimited number of crazy math questions.

If you’re interviewing for options desks – or really anything in trading – I would recommend “Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives” by John Hull to learn the fundamental concepts.

I also read loads of trading blogs, forums, and similar sites because interviews are so unpredictable.

A Day in the Life of a FICC Trader

Q: Thanks for the tips there – trading interviews do sound much more intense.

Now that you’ve started working on the FICC desk of a major bank, what’s an average day in your life like?

A: I usually arrive at 6:45 AM and start out by catching up on the news, looking at our book, and maybe coming up with trading ideas based on our existing positions and what happened overnight.

As a junior trader, you can’t do much when you first start because you’re not working with clients or trading the firm’s capital initially. So you’re mostly a bridge between the senior trader(s) and everyone in the back office – if the trader is having a problem, he’ll call you to sort it out and you have to ask the support team for help.

After the market opens, you spend a lot of time booking trades and hedges for the traders – so if the trader takes a position in a stock or bond, I record it and then find another trade to reduce the risk of whatever he just did.

Then you get to do grunt work like getting lunch and coffee for everyone – senior traders can’t step away from their 8+ monitors for even 30 seconds, so it’s up to you to do this.

I also have to send out market commentary to clients each day and explain what happened and how it affected their investments. And at the end of the day, I have to update our trading book and look at risk across the board. I might finish at around 6 PM and go home shortly after that.

Q: What about those trading ideas you mentioned before, and the technical work? You said that FICC has more math than equities, so what’s involved?

A: For both of those, it depends on which specific desk you’re on – I focus on bonds, so I know more about Fixed Income than Currency or Commodities.

We trade European bonds, which are the main source of financing for countries and organizations alike. The math involves the way that bonds are priced – it could be against the swap curve, against a benchmark (i.e. another more stable instrument such as German bonds), in cash terms, in asset swap terms, OAS spread, and so on.

We also spend a lot of time looking at the yield curves for different bonds and seeing whether the bond is currently cheaper or more expensive than the rest of the curve – and as those curves change over time, you start to see trading opportunities.

In terms of trading ideas, we come up with a lot of strategies based on how we think these curves will change over time and what bonds are currently cheap or expensive – and we pay attention to changes in yield, maturity, and so on.

So as a simple example, if the curves suddenly change and we think that one sovereign bond is now undervalued and another one is overvalued, we might long the undervalued one and short the overvalued one.

My desk focuses on vanilla products – no derivatives or structured products, only swaps – so there’s not too much intense math here. When you introduce derivatives and exotics into the picture, the quantitative side gets more complicated.

Q: That makes sense – I really want to do an interview on exotics one of these days, but I’m worried I might not be able to understand any of it myself.

What about the pay at junior levels on a FICC desk? And how does it change as you become more senior?

A: I just started recently, so I don’t have exact figures for you – but at the junior levels the salaries are the same as investment banking base salaries.

Bonuses sometimes aren’t quite as high as what you see in banking, but it depends on how well your desk and your firm are performing.

As you move up, it becomes more and more performance-dependent – even more so than in banking – and base salaries don’t increase by a huge amount. So past a certain point, it comes down to your P&L and how much you’ve made for the firm.

You don’t see too many people making millions of dollars or pounds anymore – post-crisis, banks are under more scrutiny, and the markets haven’t been spectacular.

And as always, the linkage between your bonus and your P&L is fuzzy at best – no one has ever been able to explain exactly how it works.

Unlike in, say, prop trading, where your performance is easy to track and office politics are minimal, bonuses in trading tend to be more discretionary and are based on what your MD thinks of you.

Ceilings & Exit Opportunities

Q: Earlier you mentioned how people may “look down on you” if you’re a foreigner trying to break into finance in the UK.

Have you seen any discrimination in the workplace?

A: Not really. Trading is very results-driven, so no one cares much about what you look like or where you’re from as long as you make a lot of money.

I actually know quite a few people from emerging markets at very high levels in my firm, so I don’t think there’s much of a glass ceiling once you’re actually working.

Q: What about the ever-shiny exit opportunities? And what are your future plans?

A: As you’ve pointed out many times before, you develop a very specific skill set in trading so your exit opportunities are more limited.

If you move anywhere, you’re most likely to move to another desk at a different bank or go to a hedge fund that trades similar securities.

The majority of traders here are on the young side, but you do see traders who are older – maybe in their late 40s or early 50s – but by that point they tend to be MDs and senior guys who are still trading.

The stereotype is that traders burn out early and move into another field, or they make so much money that they can afford to retire early. But so far I haven’t found that one to be 100% true, given that there are some older traders here.

As far as my own plans, in the long-term I do want to relocate back home or go somewhere else with better weather than London – but I don’t have an official 5-year plan or anything.

I just started, so I’m not about to leave early and go through the entire recruiting process again in yet another new country.

Q: Awesome! Thanks for your time.

A: Sure thing, enjoyed speaking!