Want to be a quant? Here’s how (and how not) to get hired

Stay curious, be a team player, speak well – and don’t be big-headed

Key points Summary Q&A

• The Tomorrow’s Quants series explores essential skills for new quant recruits through 39 employer surveys and interviews with university course directors.
• The data shows that employers place significant importance on soft skills, such as communication and teamwork, alongside technical abilities.
• Curiosity, the ability to learn quickly and a willingness to collaborate are ranked as the top traits of this type for aspiring quants.
• Hiring trends indicate a growing demand for junior quants in quant investing, while model validation roles may see less recruitment activity.

These summaries are generated by an LLM, but edited by humans.

The Tomorrow’s Quants series examines the skills and traits required of new quant recruits via a survey of major employers – and how universities are preparing them for the workplace, via a series of podcast interviews. A previous article looked at the technical skills that new quants will need.

A senior quant in the QIS team at a European bank challenges candidates for junior roles with simple questions on basic financial knowledge. He’s looking for depth. Candidates that recite the Black-Scholes formula gain few points. Those who can explain where the formula comes from, or the flaws in its underlying assumptions, score highly. That takes curiosity, he says.

Abdelaziz Lamaaizi, head of quant structuring at Amundi, where he manages a team of 20 quants, takes a different approach, preferring to ask more technical questions. Lamaaizi wants to see how a candidate approaches a hard problem, he says – and how they handle pressure. He wants to find out how they think and respond when things are going badly – “when they start with the wrong idea and are given a hint – their ability to change their point of view and try to explore another way to solve the problem”.

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The two styles have something in common: the interviewers are trying to learn about the candidate’s character and personality as much as to identify what the candidates know. A simple question can expose a lack of true interest in the field. A tough one might reveal the kind of stubbornness that can affect a quant’s ability to learn or to work as part of a team.

The previous article in Risk.net’s Tomorrow’s Quants series highlighted the importance of technical skills such as coding and a foundational understanding of finance in securing and prospering in a junior quant role. This instalment presents findings on softer skills: communication, teamwork, attitude, and so on. The series draws on a survey of 39 senior quants at bank and buy-side employers together with interviews with six master’s programme directors.

Firms receive hundreds of applications a year. The Tomorrow’s Quants data shows that an exemplary list of qualifications and achievements is no longer enough to secure a position.

All but one of the respondents rate the candidates’ people skills as important. More than half regard such skills as very important. And roughly two-fifths say people skills have become more important in their firm in the past five years.

Technical ability matters, of course. But soft skills are “equally important” in determining who will make a successful quant, says Petter Kolm, director of MS in Mathematics in Finance at the Courant Institute, New York University.

Jack Jacquier, director of the MSc in mathematics and finance at Imperial College London, says: “All the practitioners that come and talk to students want to hire strong students. But they try to put the human side on the table, as well.”

Top traits

Risk.net asked participants to rank by importance a list of 10 traits when considering new candidates, with the highest-value attributes ranked 1, and the lowest scored 10.

Curiosity tops the list with an average of 3.5, ahead of the ability to learn quickly, with 3.8, and a willingness to collaborate at 3.9. Charisma ranked bottom, scoring just 9.4.

What respondents say when asked to state – in free-form – the positive traits that are becoming more valuable in the industry provides an insight into their notion of an ideal candidate.

Hirers are looking for individuals with a genuine interest in the field they wish to enter. “You want to work with open-minded people – people you learn from,” says Jacquier.

Prospective quants must be team players, demonstrating a willingness and inclination to work with others. “You’re going to end up spending more time with your colleagues than with your partner and your family,” Jacquier tells Risk.net.

People who are perfectionists and cannot accept that some things don’t go well, they cannot bounce back

Vladimir Lucic, Marex Solutions

Teamwork is prized. New quants are valued when they “want to help others succeed”. It’s a far cry from the winner-takes-all competition often associated with financial services firms.

Hirers want hard workers, of course. Entry-level quants should join with a “can-do, will-do” attitude, says one survey respondent. Another says they are looking for candidates who are simply “willing to work hard”. Yet another wants their recruits to be “resilient”.

Respondents also see as positives qualities of independence and personal responsibility such as “autonomy” or a “sense of ownership”.

 

A notable takeaway from the survey is how far senior quants value the ability to speak and write clearly.

All but three of the survey participants rate a junior quant’s writing abilities as important or very important. “People who can write and document work clearly and cleanly have better chances to become somebody at our bank,” says a head quant at a major US firm.

Skill in presenting material in person counts especially. All survey respondents except one say the ability to present work is important or very important. Artificial intelligence language models might be able to assist in rephrasing written content, but presenting remains a human skill.

Red flags

Of course, not every aspiring quant is curious, open-minded, collaborative and industrious. What about the qualities disliked by those responsible for hiring?

The number-one trait here, quants say, is arrogance – which hirers also variously describe as “pompousness”, “lack of humility” and “overconfidence”. More than one-third of respondents identified this characteristic as a hiring red flag.

Having that ability to put things in a simple context at the level of the listener is super important

Petter Kolm, Courant Institute, New York University

Other qualities that make recruiters wary are a tendency towards muddled, “vague” or “imprecise” thinking, “sloppiness”, “lack of dedication to a problem” or “insufficient depth of work or thought”.

Variations on the theme of closed-mindedness figure prominently. “Dogmatism”, “lack of curiosity”, “stubbornness” or an unwillingness to accept feedback are all given as traits that will harm a candidate’s chances.

Elsewhere, something of a balance is at work. Quants value recruits who are self-starters. But being “secretive”, “possessive” or “territorial” is seen as a negative. They don’t want “lone wolves”.

One respondent mentions the inability to explain problems to non-expert figures as a key shortcoming. Other dislikes include junior quants who “wait to be told what to do” or “stop when there’s a problem, rather than trying to solve it”.

No egos

It’s clear that the quant career path is no place for big – or fragile – egos.

The job is full of “uphill battles”, says Vladimir Lucic, head quant at Marex Solutions.

Aspiring quants need to be passionate, determined and resilient, he says: “If they’re not persistent enough, if they discourage themselves, it will not be good. People who are perfectionists and cannot accept that some things don’t go well, they cannot bounce back.”

Working hard at a problem while also knowing when to change direction can be a tricky balance.

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The key, it seems, is to exhibit dedication in producing high quality work and equally to demonstrate resilience when facing setbacks, combined with a willingness to explore other avenues.

As for the focus on communication skills, this partly reflects a practical need.

Quant teams face pressure to keep track of decisions and procedures both for external and internal purposes. Externally, this can be to ensure regulatory compliance or secure model approvals. The consequences of bad practice are tangible. Poor documentation can lead to delays in a model’s time to production.

Equally, the Courant Institute’s Kolm says the ability to explain technical material in a simple way is vital within an organisation: “Typically, not everyone on the team is going to be a hardcore quant.” As new employees progress, they will start to interact with clients, he says: “Having that ability to put things in a simple context at the level of the listener is super important.”

Universities recognise as much. At ETH Zurich, in addition to a written assessment, students are required to present their findings in a presentation open to the public and attended by invited companies, says Walter Farkas, course director of the MSc in quantitative finance. It’s a way to exercise the type of soft skills the industry demands: “to present and convince an audience”, he says.

More edge

What else, besides soft skills, might help young quants secure a job? More than 55% of respondents say a candidate’s ongoing ties to their university – through collaboration on research or visiting lecturer positions – can be a plus.

The broader ties that universities hold with industry can be beneficial, too. More than half of respondents say their firm has a formal relationship with one or more academic institutions.

 

Almost half the respondents emphasise the ease of recruiting from affiliated universities, and say they are more likely to hire from those organisations. Thirty-five per cent nod to the efficiency of such partnerships, but say all applicants are equally favoured.

Many master’s programmes encourage or require internships alongside studies, with students using resources from industry firms or combining industry work with their thesis projects. The survey suggests this kind of exposure does play a role in a candidate’s chances of winning a full-time position. Nearly one-third of respondents report that all their graduate or junior quants possess previous internship experience.

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Programme directors endeavour to provide industry exposure in their courses by inviting professionals to teach modules, to demonstrate to students how quantitative techniques are applied in practice. Such initiatives rate as a top-three valued trait in a university course, according to the survey.

Risk.net also asked quants about how their hiring plans might change in the near future.

Quant investing teams seem to be hiring most, with 87% of quants predicting a growing number of juniors in this area in the next three years. One-third predict a significant increase.

 

Model validation, meanwhile, seems to be the field with the least momentum. Just over two-fifths of quants predict an increase in appointments of junior quants for this area. One-fifth reckon hiring for model validation will fall.

Buy-side quants seem more optimistic when speaking about their own part of the industry versus the sell side about theirs. More than two-thirds of buy-siders expect an increase in hiring of junior quants in algo trading, quant investing and front office strategies.

Among sell-siders, more than two-thirds of respondents expect no increase in employment in pricing and modelling.

Editing by Rob Mannix