Quote from downtickboy:
Interesting perspective on the different levels of managment. Now that is some advice that one might not think of if you have not had to jump through those hoops before. Thanks. Most of my dealings have been with the correct people like CIO's or heads of the departments. My difficulty so far has been in selling myself in a way that is attractive enough for them to take a chance as most of the learning in on the job. However hopefully these classes I will be taking starting in Jan will help clean up some of this. I have some good opportunities in the works I just don't want to blow so I am trying to think of the best way to package and explain previous trading work experience so it shows some transferance of skills that a "real world" firm could use.
About the real estate industry I understand what you are saying. Although at least in the commercial side things here are still good and a lot of the firms are expanding who are positioned right and diversified. So there are still opportunites to get in on the commercial side (which is really where I want to be anyway). A big thing with some firms that are still expanding are the firms specializing in the TIC 1031 exchange firms. So there are still some good opportunities although I admit probably not as ideal as a few years ago. However I would like to get experience and more knowledge now to be able to position myself to take advantage of the next cycle but as a principal.
Since you mentioned specific growth areas (TIC 1031), and titles like CIO (I am not sure if you mean chief investment officers, or chief information officers), I assume you have some idea as to what the "non-trading" career you want to pursue. First of all, to find any job, an introduction is at least 10x to 20x better than just applying (which you will have to go through HR, etc). A couple of words of advice, one, reduce your trading experience to be minimum necessary, most firms do not look kindly to that type of experience, since their inclination will be that you are just going through a rough patch, once you got hired and trained, you will go back to trading anyways, and that's a bad start to you getting in the door. I believe I am familiar enough with the general hiring practices, since I was a manager (actually was a CTO for a couple of years) for 10 years.
Two, apologies for sounding general, but use words / phrases in your resume that are familiar to that industry, if I use "hedging" in my resume to a non-finance job, people will be scratching their heads as to what that means. Three, research the hiring firm and find out what they want, and tailor your resume for the opportunity. The general idea is that you have to submit a resume, make sure it goes through the HR keyword scan first.
Now, you are face to face with the senior executive, you got yourself in the door, now what? A couple of general observations, one, short answers are generally bad, you want to get a flow going, interview is not an interrogation session. Let's say him/her ask a stoooopid question like "how well do you know commercial real estate", never answer "yes" or "no", be interactive, relate with a little story (not too long), a little story hopefully that goes back to more than a few years ago, the senior executives are generally impressed with candidates that have done their homework and have the depth of knowledge. Say things like "wow, I was interested back in the late 90s, and the Texas / NY / Chicago markets have exploded since 2000, but the CA market have stagnated ... but I think they are due for a come back" (now, I know next to nothing about commercial real estate, and it shows!), this way, it shows you have at least 5 years of knowledge, and have a keen interest in the market place. One more, prepare a few questions (that are not really questions) that if possible, goes to the heart of what the department want to accomplish, for instance, (apologies for using a finance example, but that's mostly what I know), "I heard that Morgan and Goldman have developed automated trading systems for govvies (government treasuries), Lehman (the firm you are interviewing with) is a big player in the treasury market, is Lehman also in the process of developing an autoated trading system?" This type of question takes a lot of guts (it is possible to blow an interview if you have showed their weakness), but again, it show insight, and it goes to the heart of what the firm is trying to do, again you know the landscape, but, be prepared for the challenging next question "Well, what type of automated trading system do *you* think Lehman should be developing, arb? hedging?", if you can ace the follow up question (again, story with analytical insight helps enormously here), the job is as good as yours.
In other words, prepare, prepare, and then preapre some more, it is no different from being a very disciplined and aggressive trader. Good luck.
