Relevant work experience / exposure to finance

There are a number of prospective FE students without any relevant work experience. Some of them have not even had any exposure to finance. My suggestion for all of you is to target schools which have formal internship programs. It becomes very difficult to get interview calls if you don’t have relevant under-graduate degree/work experience. Most of the FE batch comprises people from the Engineering background. You might be have done great work in chip designing or fracture analysis but it usually fails to impress recruiters who spend 15 seconds scanning your resume.

~ by financialengineer on November 26, 2007.

Posted in Financial Engineering

5 Responses to “Relevant work experience / exposure to finance”

  1. Great that you are sharing your views and experiences. This is something I found hard to get from people in general!

    Arjun said this on December 4, 2007 at 5:13 am

  2. Hello again Amber,

    Have finished my application process with Columbia….now its in
    god’s hands ( or should I say the Admn committee’s hands).
    I was wondering if you could help me out with another issue. Now that the die is cast and I am definitely going into quant finance…whichever school it maybe…I am thinkin about charting
    out a career plan. Did you do anything of this sort? Kind of like a 5 year plan…if u did, then what materials did u base ur projections on? I am looking to get into entry level ‘Research
    Wing’ of a investment firm, and work my way up to investment committee. Also planning on a CFA.
    Would you mind giving me any thoughts on this….and also if possible any ideas on where to research on quant careers.

    Rudra Guha Biswas said this on January 7, 2008 at 2:48 pm

  3. I did not do anything like this. But I would suggest delaying that a little.Do that once you get a good flavor of the courses and get to know more about the work

    financialengineer said this on January 10, 2008 at 12:41 am

  4. Hi amber,
    this is ankit. I have received admit from columbia. I don’t have any relevant work ex(2 and half year IT work ex) but I am a CFA Level2 candidate. would you recommend joining any FE program in this market scenerio this year. or do you suggest to gain some work ex with some bank in india.
    Secondly, is placement stat really bad for MSFE at columbia. i heard that only 15 out of 66 are placed till now.
    Thanks

    Ankit said this on February 17, 2008 at 2:18 pm

  5. I just wrote a new post which answers your questions.

    financialengineer said this on February 18, 2008 at 8:13 pm

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