Near the End of A PhD and Have No Job

[Astro_Dude]

I'm really at the end of my rope.

For months I've applied to jobs in industry, gov't, and even academia with little to nothing in the way of responses. I've gotten on the order of 1-3 responses back, and almost all three said that they'd "might have" hired me if they didn't get unexpected cuts.

For background, I have a M.S. in physics, B.S. in Physics & Mathematics, and will soon get my Ph.D. in physics this summer. Sounds like I totally have a great resume right? Well, it turns out that I made a horrific decision in wanting to do my thesis in observational astronomy. So while my degree says Physics, much of my research experience isn't very transferable outside of academia... which I have grown to despise. I don't want to be in this environment anymore. I don't want to move 3 more times in the next six years before even having a hope of a permanent job. I want to be able to start my life... I'd love a job in industry (particularly in defense)... but I can find very little in the way of openings I even vaguely qualify for.

I don't have the vigorous theoretical background to do high-end finance, even if that would be of interest to me. I have some computational skills, but virtually everything I find computer based in jobs requires much more skills than I have (e.g. specific databases, language or engineering programs). What I do have is the PhD to prove I'm a good problem solver, and a smart driven person. I have authored many papers, can (and have) taught others how to use astro tools, and I am above average in scientific statistics. I have scripted a few basic monte carlos in Python, but that's really the extent of my coding skills.

Still, everything I find wants ridiculous requirements, and generally the response I hear back for jobs I do qualify for is "...but you don't have an engineering degree". I'm losing my mind in that I can't find very many jobs that I qualify for, and those that I do stick their nose in the air because my degree says Physics and not Engineering.

My best luck in matching my skills has come from looking at Systems & Research engineering, but I generally never hear back from those positions. I suppose mostly because they are either entry level or require knowing every engineering program the company uses. While I'm on the subject, I've never really figured out whether I should sell myself as an entry level person with a lot of skills or a qualified person with no experience?

I guess I'm just posting to figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong. I just am so darn frustrated... I feel like I've wasted my time, and I should have just gone straight into the workforce out of my B.S...

EDIT: I also try to sell my very limited experience with radios and Jackson E&M as being relevant for signal analysis and such...

 

[DesmondShark]

Where did you go to school?

whats your thesis topic?

 

[eri]

I did the same thing - PhD in physics, observational cosmology topic. Got lucky with a postdoc, and just got a visiting prof job. But I also applied for industry jobs. Did you try posting your resume on Monster? I got a few hits that way - not all companies post jobs there (although some do, so check that out too, even for PhDs) but many read through resumes. Friends of mine who got into industry earlier than me showed me plenty of job ads they said I was qualified for even if I couldn't understand half the ad. There are lots of contractors out there that will hire you just because you're smart - a friend of mine working for Raytheon said they'll hire anyone with a PhD who knows Matlab. Having a PhD in physics and being capable of getting a high-level security clearance is all you need for some jobs with the NSA and defense contractors.

 

[twofish-quant]

For months I've applied to jobs in industry, gov't, and even academia with little to nothing in the way of responses. I've gotten on the order of 1-3 responses back, and almost all three said that they'd "might have" hired me if they didn't get unexpected cuts.

How many resumes have you send out? In order to get a decent number of responses, you need to be sending out about 100-200 resumes (i.e. spamming everyone that moves).

You can start with www.dice.com[/url], [url]www.phds.org[/url], and [url]www.efinancialcareers.com[/url]. Also PM me since, I have the name some some recruiters for finance jobs. Also get in touch with Dommic Connor on [url]www.willmott.org[/URL]

[QUOTE]Well, it turns out that I made a horrific decision in wanting to do my thesis in observational astronomy. So while my degree says Physics, much of my research experience isn't very transferable outside of academia...[/QUOTE]

It probably is very transferable. One problem with people in academia is that they don't know how to market their degrees.

Did you work on microcontrollers? Have you worked on statistics? Ever programmed in C++. Worked with MATLAB.

One important thing. Stop telling yourself that your degree is useless. Part of the goal in getting a job is to convince someone that your degree is extremely useful to them, and it's hard to convince someone else if you don't believe it.

[QUOTE]I'd love a job in industry (particularly in defense)... but I can find very little in the way of openings I even vaguely qualify for.[/QUOTE]

Something that you have to realize is that no job ad is going to tell you what the real requirements of the job are. So if you have anything that looks like they are offering a position, then you need to spam them.

[QUOTE]I don't have the vigorous theoretical background to do high-end finance, even if that would be of interest to me.[/QUOTE]

Do you have experience with microcontrollers, statistics, time series analysis, or data analysis? Also, a lot of finance is not about what you know, but how quickly you can learn.

There are a lot of different jobs in finance with different skills.

[QUOTE]I have authored many papers, can (and have) taught others how to use astro tools, and I am above average in scientific statistics. I have scripted a few basic monte carlos in Python, but that's really the extent of my coding skills.[/QUOTE]

Is there any chance that in the next two to three months, you can turn yourself into a scipy guru? Also it's better if you don't do basic monte carlos. If you can write python scripts that can do something useful with your experimental data (i.e. you have a FITS image that needs automated filtering) that would be useful.

Also for finance jobs, you should download Visual Studio Express and try to compile something simple like "Hello World." You aren't going to be a C++ expert in a month, but you can go a long way by showing that you aren't allergic to C++.

[QUOTE]My best luck in matching my skills has come from looking at Systems & Research engineering, but I generally never hear back from those positions.[/QUOTE]

Don't bother matching your skills. Just spam your resume to anything that moves.

[QUOTE]While I'm on the subject, I've never really figured out whether I should sell myself as an entry level person with a lot of skills or a qualified person with no experience?[/QUOTE]

It depends on the what the job is looking for which is tough since people will not tell you what they are looking for.

[QUOTE]I guess I'm just posting to figure out what the heck I'm doing wrong. I just am so darn frustrated... I feel like I've wasted my time, and I should have just gone straight into the workforce out of my B.S...[/QUOTE]

A few standard things for Ph.D.'s

1) you aren't sending out enough resumes. You should be sending out 100-200 resumes. If you've contacted about 20 people, that's not nearly enough

2) you are sending your resumes to the wrong people. With extremely rare exceptions, you do not want to send your resume directly to a company or HR. Most Ph.D.'s assume that they should send their resumes to the email address that says "send your resumes here" which is a bad thing to do. You should be contacting recruiters and headhunters.

Also avoid HR. HR has no clue what to do with you.

3) There could be something wrong with the resume, although if people are calling you back, then it's likely to be "good enough." Also it makes a difference if someone specifically calls you back and tells you that you aren't a fit for the job.

 

[twofish-quant]

But I also applied for industry jobs. Did you try posting your resume on Monster? I got a few hits that way - not all companies post jobs there (although some do, so check that out too, even for PhDs) but many read through resumes.

For finance jobs posting your resume on Monster is worse than useless. You want to know who has seen your resume.

Friends of mine who got into industry earlier than me showed me plenty of job ads they said I was qualified for even if I couldn't understand half the ad.

Jobs in most areas invariably do not state the real qualifications. The problem is that 1) you don't want anyone to know that you are hiring experts in field X and 2) you don't want to let people know what you are looking for since you will get spammed with people that claim expertise in a given area.

If I say I'm looking for a python guru, then I'll get a million resumes claiming knowledge in python. If I don't mention that I'm looking for a python guru, then I can very quickly filter out all of the resumes that don't mention that they have experience in python.

Yes, that sounds like something out of Kafka. That's also why companies go through headhunters.

There are lots of contractors out there that will hire you just because you're smart - a friend of mine working for Raytheon said they'll hire anyone with a PhD who knows Matlab.

Matlab experience is also very useful in finance. One thing about physics Ph.D.'s is that it's uncommon to have a physics Ph.D. with any sort of statistical experience so if you have any time series modeling or statistics experience, spend two weeks reading books on econometrics.

Having a PhD in physics and being capable of getting a high-level security clearance is all you need for some jobs with the NSA and defense contractors.

And if you can't get a high-level security clearance, there is Wall Street. One thing that is somewhat funny is that it's not uncommon for Chinese physics Ph.D.'s to put in their resume that they are members of the Chinese Communist Party, which will pretty much kill your application to work at the NSA or a defense contractor, but which is a mild positive for jobs in finance. Something that is sort of amusing is to see the difference in the type of people that what to join the Communist Party of the USA and the Communist Party of China. People that end up joining the CCP tend to be yuppie career focused people that are joining the CCP because it helps you a lot in getting jobs.

One big difference between the culture of defense and Wall Street is that in Wall Street, if you work for bank A, and then your arch-competitor bank B, comes up to you and offers you 2x money, then you would be considered a fool for not switching teams. On the other hand, "switching teams for money" in the defense industry is something that will cause you to end up in jail.

 

[twofish-quant]

One other thing for resume writing. One "must have" piece of information is work status and security clearances.

I should point out that one very frustrating thing for astronomy Ph.D.'s is that the major employers defense, finance, and oil and gas are all very tight lipped people that don't like to talk very much about what they are doing.

A major defense contractor is not going to very loudly say they they are hiring people to do X since their competitors (i.e. the Ministry of State Security of China and the FSB in Russia) are reading those want ads, and investment banks hedge funds, and major oil companies are the same way. If you look at the want ads on the financial boards, they will never say who is really hiring and they won't say for what.

In the case of finance there is this other aspect of public relations. Right now, most people in America hate banks, so mentioning that you have good jobs available for physics Ph.D.'s looks bad.

 

[ParticleGrl]

I feel your pain. I've been looking since last December, when I finished my high energy phd, and am currently tending bar while I look for more challenging work.

I've had some luck getting interviews with business consulting firms, so you might want to look at that route.

 

[Astro_Dude]

Sigh... so I spent an hour writing my response to all yall only to be logged out in the process and lose it all :(. Hopefully I remember everything I said on my second attempt...

My apologies if it's a little fractured, I tried my best to recall everything I said before the computer ate it!

Thanks for all the replies!

I did the same thing - PhD in physics, observational cosmology topic. Got lucky with a postdoc, and just got a visiting prof job. But I also applied for industry jobs. Did you try posting your resume on Monster? I got a few hits that way - not all companies post jobs there (although some do, so check that out too, even for PhDs) but many read through resumes. Friends of mine who got into industry earlier than me showed me plenty of job ads they said I was qualified for even if I couldn't understand half the ad. There are lots of contractors out there that will hire you just because you're smart - a friend of mine working for Raytheon said they'll hire anyone with a PhD who knows Matlab. Having a PhD in physics and being capable of getting a high-level security clearance is all you need for some jobs with the NSA and defense contractors.

I have been looking through Monster and Careerbuilder for quite some time. I've had generally bad luck with them, most positions don't really seem right (or are wretched). Not to sound like a pompous ***, but it just doesn't seem like it's the best place for people with our degrees to be looking...

I've had friends at DCs (although not physics people) help me the same way. I often see the list of things in the posting and say "Dude, I don't know what half these acronyms even mean", but I'll apply anyway since why the hell not. I find that I almost always don't understand half the crap they're talking about on DC postings. I know I can do the work, it's just half the time I don't understand what programs or industry standards they're talking about.

One thing I have also tried is USAJobs, but let me tell you what a waste of time that is. You are literally firing resumes off into the ether. I actually know people that have posted listings on there and they'll outright tell you that 99% of the time, the position is already filled. They'll write the job listing with the person they want's resume in front of them. Unless some vet applies with your experience, they get the job.

How many resumes have you send out? In order to get a decent number of responses, you need to be sending out about 100-200 resumes (i.e. spamming everyone that moves).

About 100, but yes, I need to be sending out more.

You can start with www.dice.com[/url], [url]www.phds.org[/url], and [url]www.efinancialcareers.com[/url]. Also PM me since, I have the name some some recruiters for finance jobs. Also get in touch with Dommic Connor on [url]www.willmott.org[/URL][/quote]

That willmott website doesn't seem to be working? It transferred me to a GoDaddy registration page.

I'll try out those sites, and PM you shortly.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]It probably is very transferable. One problem with people in academia is that they don't know how to market their degrees. [/quote]

That is very true. The other issue is that most professors don't really even know how to sell yourself outside of academia.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]Did you work on microcontrollers? Have you worked on statistics? Ever programmed in C++. Worked with MATLAB.[/quote]

No C++, MATLAB or microcontrollers. I do, however, have a lot of statistics experience. In fact, I generally have a much better bead on scientific statistics than most every physics PhD i know. My adviser drills stats into my group a lot. I'm honestly surprised more advisers don't do this, because the biggest part of being a good scientist is being able to understand your own data. Also, the ability to understand how much data you need to get is of huge importance when you're paying through the nose for telescope time.

Granted, most of my stats is frequentist analysis (linear and non-linear regressions). Analyzing whether that bump in the light curve is significant is a very important skill to have. Understanding your signal to noise is a big part of astro too. I don't really remember my combinatorics and more mainstream stats, I know in my bones what I need for my work though. One issue though is I almost always see stats based jobs want people knowing crap like SAS or R... I don't need that for my work, so I have never had a need for it. I do my own regressions and fits, which is what I imagine those programs are doing for those guys anyway.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]One important thing. Stop telling yourself that your degree is useless. Part of the goal in getting a job is to convince someone that your degree is extremely useful to them, and it's hard to convince someone else if you don't believe it.[/quote]

Yep. I know, it's just hard to keep optimistic is all.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]Something that you have to realize is that no job ad is going to tell you what the real requirements of the job are. So if you have anything that looks like they are offering a position, then you need to spam them.[/quote]

This is interesting, as I often get discouraged by the huge list of skills wanted. I know I can do the work, but I figure that with hundreds of people applying, I'll be in the bottom half of tick marks. I also figure that the computer is going to screen me out before I even land on a desk because I don't have EXACTLY the right keywords.[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]Do you have experience with microcontrollers, statistics, time series analysis, or data analysis? Also, a lot of finance is not about what you know, but how quickly you can learn.

There are a lot of different jobs in finance with different skills.[/quote]

Data analysis and statistics go hand in hand with my every day life. I have to be able to understand my data and usually that requires doing statistics. I'm not sure how much light curve analysis counts as time series analysis, but that's a lot of what I do. I also can do periodograms, but that seems to me like I'm being redundant.

I use both light curves from satellite detectors and space/ground based images in my work.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]Is there any chance that in the next two to three months, you can turn yourself into a scipy guru? Also it's better if you don't do basic monte carlos. If you can write python scripts that can do something useful with your experimental data (i.e. you have a FITS image that needs automated filtering) that would be useful.[/quote]

I actually already have some experience with SciPy although I wouldn't call myself a guru per se. I usually use SciPy for their curve fitting software, just recently got into it. Some powerful stuff there. I generally use NumPy though. I also have used Space Telescope's PyFITS package, although generally just for turning binary FITS tables into usable ASCII format for other scripts.

Aside from binary tables, FITS files i usually use are images where we use astro tools such as IRAF to analyze the data in the FITS file.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]Also for finance jobs, you should download Visual Studio Express and try to compile something simple like "Hello World." You aren't going to be a C++ expert in a month, but you can go a long way by showing that you aren't allergic to C++.[/quote]

So this ends up touching on a question that I've never gotten a good answer for. I don't want to lie on a resume, but I understand the value of selling myself. I also don't, however, want to say "I have experience in C++" and then when asked for specifics have little to say.

How would I phrase something like that on a resume. As an example, over five years ago, I worked with Perl. Basic script writing, nothing fancy. I don't bother listing it since I haven't looked at Perl in over five years, and don't even remember anything about it. I almost feel it would hurt me to put it on as if I was in an interview and asked about it, it would just seem stupid of me to have put it on.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]Don't bother matching your skills. Just spam your resume to anything that moves.[/quote]

I also don't want to annoy people though. For example, if I apply to five-ten positions that the same hiring manager is going to see, I'm going to either annoy him or he's going to realize I am literally applying for anything, and he'll assume I'm not particularly interested in a specific position.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]It depends on the what the job is looking for which is tough since people will not tell you what they are looking for.[/quote]

This is insightful, because it kinda seems cynical. As a question, however, if I see a position that asks for an engineer, should I just apply anyway if I even remotely think I can do it? It just seems like a waste, especially because of all the time that can be wasted looking for hiring manager's names in vain.

In addition, I mentioned USAJobs earlier. There, if you don't score 100 on the requirements you're dead in the water. You won't ever make it past the computer, and you're just hosed.

So I guess it's interesting to hear that often times people aren't looking for what they say they are.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]A few standard things for Ph.D.'s

1) you aren't sending out enough resumes. You should be sending out 100-200 resumes. If you've contacted about 20 people, that's not nearly enough[/quote]

I agree, I need to contact more people. I have been too faithfully sending resumes into the ether of "apply here".

The problem, as I've said and will repeat below, is that often times there is no easy way to find out who I should be talking to.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]2) you are sending your resumes to the wrong people. With extremely rare exceptions, you do not want to send your resume directly to a company or HR. Most Ph.D.'s assume that they should send their resumes to the email address that says "send your resumes here" which is a bad thing to do. You should be contacting recruiters and headhunters.

Also avoid HR. HR has no clue what to do with you.[/quote]

So this actually touches on another problem I have. I can not, for the life of me, find hiring manager's names 90% of the time. LinkedIN? Oh, they're all anonymous. Google? No Dice. Calling the company? They won't say. I constantly hear that saying "Dear Hiring Manager" is a kiss of death on cover letters... what in the heck are people supposed to do if they go to such lengths to hide themselves?

Every single career fair and recruiter I have talked to looks at me and shrugs when I tell them physics. They'll yes me to death when I explain the versatility and usefulness of my experience but in the end the answer always comes back... "You're not an engineer, I don't know what to do with you."

I have literally been told by people that I'd be hired if I had my quals and a B.E. instead of a PhD.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350482"]3) There could be something wrong with the resume, although if people are calling you back, then it's likely to be "good enough." Also it makes a difference if someone specifically calls you back and tells you that you aren't a fit for the job.[/QUOTE]

One thing I do that I know a lot of people are too lazy to do: I always try to make my resume tailored to each app, which gets easier and quicker to do each time. I add things all the time based on the posting, I'll shift more relevant things to the top... anything I can to make it match the damned computer's filter.

One of the people who have gotten back to me were either people I directly worked with in the past, so they knew me and liked me. The other group that springs to mind is a group that would totally have been an awesome experience for me, and I think it helps that someone in my program just went through their training successfully, so they know what they are getting. In both cases, they showed a lot of interest and budget cuts came into play...

The third is probably the only time I ever heard anything from a real person on USAJobs, but that didn't pan out.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350500"]For finance jobs posting your resume on Monster is worse than useless. You want to know who has seen your resume.[/quote]

It's pretty bad for most kinds of science and engineering too. All it does is take you to the same site you'd have gone to directly anyway. The only time I've ever been contacted through those sites is for crappy sales jobs.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350500"]Jobs in most areas invariably do not state the real qualifications. The problem is that 1) you don't want anyone to know that you are hiring experts in field X and 2) you don't want to let people know what you are looking for since you will get spammed with people that claim expertise in a given area.

If I say I'm looking for a python guru, then I'll get a million resumes claiming knowledge in python. If I don't mention that I'm looking for a python guru, then I can very quickly filter out all of the resumes that don't mention that they have experience in python.

Yes, that sounds like something out of Kafka. That's also why companies go through headhunters.[/quote]

This is incredibly insightful. I have heard people say that job postings are a "wish list", but when applying for DCs and big name companies, I just have to assume that 100 people are applying, 50 of which have everything on the list...

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350500"]Matlab experience is also very useful in finance. One thing about physics Ph.D.'s is that it's uncommon to have a physics Ph.D. with any sort of statistical experience so if you have any time series modeling or statistics experience, spend two weeks reading books on econometrics.[/quote]

MATLAB is also very useful for anything in research or engineering. I've heard that MATLAB to Python is an easy transition, maybe it is the other way too..

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350500"]And if you can't get a high-level security clearance, there is Wall Street. One thing that is somewhat funny is that it's not uncommon for Chinese physics Ph.D.'s to put in their resume that they are members of the Chinese Communist Party, which will pretty much kill your application to work at the NSA or a defense contractor, but which is a mild positive for jobs in finance. Something that is sort of amusing is to see the difference in the type of people that what to join the Communist Party of the USA and the Communist Party of China. People that end up joining the CCP tend to be yuppie career focused people that are joining the CCP because it helps you a lot in getting jobs.[/quote]

One thing I have seen occasionally - some ENTRY level jobs demand that you already have the clearance now. Generally they just say "ability to get S/TS/SCI", but sometimes even entry level jobs want you to already have it. Such is the job market I guess. It's also much easier than I would have thought for foreign nationals to get clearance.

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350500"]One big difference between the culture of defense and Wall Street is that in Wall Street, if you work for bank A, and then your arch-competitor bank B, comes up to you and offers you 2x money, then you would be considered a fool for not switching teams. On the other hand, "switching teams for money" in the defense industry is something that will cause you to end up in jail.[/QUOTE]

This made me laugh. :D

[quote="twofish-quant, post: 3350535"]One other thing for resume writing. One "must have" piece of information is work status and security clearances.

I should point out that one very frustrating thing for astronomy Ph.D.'s is that the major employers defense, finance, and oil and gas are all very tight lipped people that don't like to talk very much about what they are doing.

A major defense contractor is not going to very loudly say they they are hiring people to do X since their competitors (i.e. the Ministry of State Security of China and the FSB in Russia) are reading those want ads, and investment banks hedge funds, and major oil companies are the same way. If you look at the want ads on the financial boards, they will never say who is really hiring and they won't say for what.

In the case of finance there is this other aspect of public relations. Right now, most people in America hate banks, so mentioning that you have good jobs available for physics Ph.D.'s looks bad.[/QUOTE]

Well, there's no way I can think of to say "Ability to get clearance" because that seems like a waste. Although this is interesting nonetheless. I have certainly applied for positions with the hope that maybe they're looking for someone with the skills I have and they just didn't say.

As for being tight-lipped that's totally true. I wish I had experience like some of my colleagues in parallel processing and hydrodynamics. They all have jobs in places that are tighter than Fort Knox. They can't say what they do, but given what their research was and where they work, it doesn't take a genius to make a good guess.

[quote="ParticleGrl, post: 3350601"]I feel your pain. I've been looking since last December, when I finished my high energy phd, and am currently tending bar while I look for more challenging work.[/quote]

Hey, at least the bar hired someone who they know is going to take off as soon as she gets a job!

[quote="ParticleGrl, post: 3350601"]I've had some luck getting interviews with business consulting firms, so you might want to look at that route.[/QUOTE]

Good idea, thanks! :)

 

[JDGates]

I have an observational astronomy PhD, and work in the defense industry.

Look at the studies and analysis FFRDCs, plus Lincoln Lab and the Applied Physics Lab.

Look at smaller defense contractors (e.g., Metron, SPA) -- the bigger ones have more regimented hiring processes and tend to have positions more like "Blah Engineer - Level IV" that will need more specific requirements to fill.

Government will be very hard to break into for reasons you've already discovered, but not impossible; look at OSD CAPE, for one. But it's easiest to find out about opportunities through networking.

I won't bother arguing with twofish, but some of his job hunting advice is...idiosyncratic, particularly the "spam everything in sight" approach. Personally, I think you're much better off spending time finding jobs you're really interested in and tailoring your application to those jobs. Worked for me, anecdotes aren't data, blah blah, but where I work (with lots of PhDs) we want to see that you know what we're about, why your background would work well for us, and that you're interested in us and not, well, just another PhD who can't find a job somewhere else.

 

[ParticleGrl]

we want to see that you know what we're about, why your background would work well for us, and that you're interested in us...

How does one find any actual info about defense contractor type jobs? I've tried emailing and calling various people at some of the places I'd like to work, but the few responses I get back are all along the lines of "we can't really talk about our work." Usually, they also encourage me to apply, but tailoring a resume/cover letter seems out of the question- the job posting is vague and I have no clue what I'd actually be doing there.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

How does one find any actual info about defense contractor type jobs? I've tried emailing and calling various people at some of the places I'd like to work, but the few responses I get back are all along the lines of "we can't really talk about our work." Usually, they also encourage me to apply, but tailoring a resume/cover letter seems out of the question- the job posting is vague and I have no clue what I'd actually be doing there.

You'll be fixing the stargate or something mundane like that.
;-)

 

[Mororvia]

Sigh... so I spent an hour writing my response to all yall only to be logged out in the process and lose it all :(. Hopefully I remember everything I said on my second attempt...

My apologies if it's a little fractured, I tried my best to recall everything I said before the computer ate it!

Thanks for all the replies!

(not going to quote your entire essay)

Regarding contractors, I would browse a list such as this: http://washingtontechnology.com/toplists/top-100-lists/2010.aspx

Go down the list and browse what many or all have to offer. You may see a lot of duplication between some companies since some can be a subcontractor to another. The difficulty with a list such as this is that it doesn't show many of the smaller companies that may be easier to get in to, and I don't know where to find such a list.

Regarding USAJobs, you're right. Many times it seems like your submission just goes into the void, never to be heard from again. I've found that many agencies do provide feedback for whether or not your resume was passed on for further consideration. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a requirement though as many don't provide feedback.

As you or someone else mentioned, if a position is only open for about a week or so, definitely still apply, but they may be targeting someone in particular. I think this method makes good sense though because why should they bring in someone new if they already have the staff available to do the job?

Finally, the CIA and NSA don't post on USAJobs. If you are interested in working for them you'll have to go to their websites directly. Also, there are many contracting companies that staff those offices as well.

Good luck!

 

[Astro_Dude]

I have an observational astronomy PhD, and work in the defense industry.

Look at the studies and analysis FFRDCs, plus Lincoln Lab and the Applied Physics Lab.

Look at smaller defense contractors (e.g., Metron, SPA) -- the bigger ones have more regimented hiring processes and tend to have positions more like "Blah Engineer - Level IV" that will need more specific requirements to fill.

Government will be very hard to break into for reasons you've already discovered, but not impossible; look at OSD CAPE, for one. But it's easiest to find out about opportunities through networking.

I guess I've been thinking too much in terms of the big 5, so that's certainly an idea.

Lincoln lab is a great idea, didn't even think of that.

I won't bother arguing with twofish, but some of his job hunting advice is...idiosyncratic, particularly the "spam everything in sight" approach. Personally, I think you're much better off spending time finding jobs you're really interested in and tailoring your application to those jobs. Worked for me, anecdotes aren't data, blah blah, but where I work (with lots of PhDs) we want to see that you know what we're about, why your background would work well for us, and that you're interested in us and not, well, just another PhD who can't find a job somewhere else.

So would you agree or disagree in terms of applying to a job even if I don't really meet all the requirements? Even entry level jobs I see have at least something I don't match on the required/strongly desired list. It's almost as if DCs want people to have everything right out of the gate.

How does one find any actual info about defense contractor type jobs? I've tried emailing and calling various people at some of the places I'd like to work, but the few responses I get back are all along the lines of "we can't really talk about our work." Usually, they also encourage me to apply, but tailoring a resume/cover letter seems out of the question- the job posting is vague and I have no clue what I'd actually be doing there.

Sometimes, I find I can deduce what they're talking about, but even then only in a vague sense. The bigger problem, I think, is that often times it's damned near impossible to get the name you need. Couple that with reading all these hiring managers writing advice columns saying "If it isn't addressed to me, I think the person is lazy and throw the app away!", and it's just depressing.

You'll be fixing the stargate or something mundane like that.
;-)

In the middle of my backswing?!

 

[Astro_Dude]

Sorry, missed this while I was writing the last post... :D

(not going to quote your entire essay)

Regarding contractors, I would browse a list such as this: http://washingtontechnology.com/toplists/top-100-lists/2010.aspx

This is a much more intuitive list than some of the ones I have found... and I certainly have been focusing too much on big names I think...

Regarding USAJobs, you're right. Many times it seems like your submission just goes into the void, never to be heard from again. I've found that many agencies do provide feedback for whether or not your resume was passed on for further consideration. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a requirement though as many don't provide feedback.

The most I usually get from USAJobs is a form email saying I qualified and I was passed along... but almost always that was for statistics based jobs. Generally never for physics related things because they'll have things like "We want a physics/engineering PhD who was in Fallujah".

As you or someone else mentioned, if a position is only open for about a week or so, definitely still apply, but they may be targeting someone in particular. I think this method makes good sense though because why should they bring in someone new if they already have the staff available to do the job?

I guess my problem is it's all a ruse in that case. I know USAJobs has to, because they are required by law, but I've seen it in the private sector too. It's just a little dishonest if you ask me.

Finally, the CIA and NSA don't post on USAJobs. If you are interested in working for them you'll have to go to their websites directly. Also, there are many contracting companies that staff those offices as well.

Good luck!

Oh yeah, I applied to both those guys back around Christmas. CIA never said anything and NSA just sent me form letters saying "Still Not Interested" every 30 days for about 4 months. I should probably update NSA though...

I know people who have worked with CIA and have outright told me that generally applying to CIA is a waste of time.

 

[MaxManus]

...
MATLAB is also very useful for anything in research or engineering. I've heard that MATLAB to Python is an easy transition, maybe it is the other way too..

Yes it is an easy transition and so is python/matlab to R.

 

[twofish-quant]

I have been looking through Monster and Careerbuilder for quite some time. I've had generally bad luck with them, most positions don't really seem right (or are wretched). Not to sound like a pompous ***, but it just doesn't seem like it's the best place for people with our degrees to be looking...

You are right. Those sites are useless. The jobs sites that are useful for financial/technical jobs are dice.com, efinancialcareers.com, and phds.org. If you are interest in finance positions, focus on jobs near NYC. Also if you USENET is useful if you have a geographical region in mind (i.e. austin.jobs)

That willmott website doesn't seem to be working?

Wilmott.com

If you mispell then it gets you into a random site into the ether.

I do, however, have a lot of statistics experience. In fact, I generally have a much better bead on scientific statistics than most every physics PhD i know.

If you apply for a finance positions, you should highlight the statistics experience. Physics Ph.D.'s have a bad reputation in Wall Street for being weak on statistics.

One book you should read is "Analysis of Financial Time Series" by Ruey S. Tsay. You don't have to be a total expert in everything in the book, but it will be useful to know what a GARCH model is.

Granted, most of my stats is frequentist analysis (linear and non-linear regressions). Analyzing whether that bump in the light curve is significant is a very important skill to have. Understanding your signal to noise is a big part of astro too.

Analyzing whether that bump in the stock price is significant is also a very important skill.

The magic worlds that you need if you want to go into finance is "extensive experience with statistical data analysis of time series".

This is interesting, as I often get discouraged by the huge list of skills wanted. I know I can do the work, but I figure that with hundreds of people applying, I'll be in the bottom half of tick marks.

In finance, having the words "Physics Ph.D." gets you through the first set of HR filters.

I also figure that the computer is going to screen me out before I even land on a desk because I don't have EXACTLY the right keywords.

It's usually a HR person that does the initial filtering. "Physics Ph.D." "statistics time series analysis" should get your past the first keyword searcher.

I actually already have some experience with SciPy although I wouldn't call myself a guru per se. I usually use SciPy for their curve fitting software, just recently got into it.

If you can add some non-trivial function into the package, that will also turn heads. Python is very heavily used in finance.

So this ends up touching on a questioni that I've never gotten a good answer for. I don't want to lie on a resume, but I understand the value of selling myself. I also don't, however, want to say "I have experience in C++" and then when asked for specifics have little to say.

The important thing for your purposes is not to sell yourself on your C++ skills, but to make it clear that you aren't allegeric to C++, and that you have very, very, very basic C++ skills. You aren't going to get a job on the basis of C++, but you might be asked to code time series routine in C++, and being able to do that is useful.

If you can get to the point where you can compile and run minimum things in C++, then you can put "basic C++" in your resume.

How would I phrase something like that on a resume. As an example, over five years ago, I worked with Perl. Basic script writing, nothing fancy. I don't bother listing it since I haven't looked at Perl in over five years, and don't even remember anything about it. I almost feel it would hurt me to put it on as if I was in an interview and asked about it, it would just seem stupid of me to have put it on.

Don't put it in. First of all, pretty much no one actually uses much perl any more. Second, anything you put in your resume is going to be asked in the interview, so you want to arrange things so that people ask you questions about stuff that you are good at.

For example, if I apply to five-ten positions that the same hiring manager is going to see, I'm going to either annoy him or he's going to realize I am literally applying for anything, and he'll assume I'm not particularly interested in a specific position.

1) It's unlikely that this is going to happen. What usually happens is that you have a first level of screening that gets rid of the candidates that aren't going to get hired. Then there is a phone screen which gets done by whoever has time, but it's usually someone relatively junior. Then if they like you, there are a series of interviews. Also hiring in finance is invariably a group decision.

2) You aren't interested in a specific position.

As a question, however, if I see a position that asks for an engineer, should I just apply anyway if I even remotely think I can do it? It just seems like a waste, especially because of all the time that can be wasted looking for hiring manager's names in vain.

In finance yes, because most companies have a lot more jobs than the one in the storefront window. Also, the resumes invariably don't go to a manager. There is someone (usually a HR person with no technical experience), that immediately tosses out the resumes that don't work.

In addition, I mentioned USAJobs earlier. There, if you don't score 100 on the requirements you're dead in the water. You won't ever make it past the computer, and you're just hosed.

That's why the site is useless. People would like to have some computer system that gets rid of the first level of searchs, but this turns out to be something that computers are bad at.

The problem, as I've said and will repeat below, is that often times there is no easy way to find out who I should be talking to.

Welcome to Kafka-land. There are people whose entire jobs involve keeping you from talking to anyone that matters. If you are a random job seeker, you are never going to get the name of the person that makes decisions about hiring so don't even try. What you do want to do is to have a resume that is impressive enough to go through all of the filters so that whoever makes hiring decisions will come and want to talk with you.

So this actually touches on another problem I have. I can not, for the life of me, find hiring manager's names 90% of the time.

1) If you can get the name of someone useful 10% of the time, you are doing spectacularly well. You aren't supposed to know who the managers are.

2) Also, I hate the term "hiring manager" because that makes people think that there is one person in the company that makes decisions about who to hire. Except for really, really tiny companies it doesn't work that way.

What in the heck are people supposed to do if they go to such lengths to hide themselves?

Make yourself attractive so that people will want to call you. "I'm a physics Ph.D. with extensive experience in statistical analysis in time series and I'm interested in applying those skills to high frequency or algorithmic trading." Anyone interested?

Every single career fair and recruiter I have talked to looks at me and shrugs when I tell them physics. They'll yes me to death when I explain the versatility and usefulness of my experience but in the end the answer always comes back... "You're not an engineer, I don't know what to do with you."

That's because you are talking to the wrong people. You are talking to people from HR, and if you are a Ph.D., you want to avoid people from HR as much as possible.

One thing I do that I know a lot of people are too lazy to do: I always try to make my resume tailored to each app, which gets easier and quicker to do each time. I add things all the time based on the posting, I'll shift more relevant things to the top...

You can do that, but keep in mind that the real qualifications may not be the ones in the job ad.

This is incredibly insightful. I have heard people say that job postings are a "wish list", but when applying for DCs and big name companies, I just have to assume that 100 people are applying, 50 of which have everything on the list...

They don't. Also, if someone did have everything on the list, they'd demand so much money, that they wouldn't be worth hiring.

As for being tight-lipped that's totally true. I wish I had experience like some of my colleagues in parallel processing and hydrodynamics. They all have jobs in places that are tighter than Fort Knox. They can't say what they do, but given what their research was and where they work, it doesn't take a genius to make a good guess.

One reason that I went into finance was that even though I'd likely get fired for saying exactly what I'm doing right now, at some point in my life, I'll be able to talk about what I was doing in summer 2011. Even if I did totally mess up, the worst that anyone could do is fire me. That's not going to be true if I worked at Los Alamos making things go boom.

Also one thing that you should be interested in knowing is that one thing that is stamped "top secret" in a large corporation is the corporate directory.

 

[twofish-quant]

I won't bother arguing with twofish, but some of his job hunting advice is...idiosyncratic, particularly the "spam everything in sight" approach.

Different fields. Different cultures.

Personally, I think you're much better off spending time finding jobs you're really interested in and tailoring your application to those jobs.

It's hard/impossible to do this in finance because companies won't post the real job requirements. One problem is that if you post the real job requirements, everyone will write their resume to hit those requirements, which makes it harder to do screening. Think of it from the companies view point. If you mention that you want experts in Common Lisp, everyone will claim expertise in Common Lisp. Now if you don't mention that you want someone that knows Common Lisp, then most people won't mention it, and the two people that do get interviews. If you do know Common Lisp but you don't mention it, then it stinks to be you, but why should the employer care?

The other weird thing is that sometimes the employer doesn't know the real job requirements. What happens in some of the jobs is that we will advertise for generally smart people, and then we'll figure out what we want them to do after we get a batch of resumes. Part of the reason that this works is that people are adaptable.

Finally, if you send your resume to a aircraft company, you can sort of figure out that your job has something to do with aircraft. If you send your resume to a finance company, all you know is that your job has something to do with money, which could be anything.

We want to see that you know what we're about, why your background would work well for us, and that you're interested in us and not, well, just another PhD who can't find a job somewhere else.

One thing that I like about working in finance is that I can somewhat more open about my motivations. I don't know of any physics Ph.D. for whom finance is the first choice of careers. You are interested in banking because you want to make money, and there's no point in pretending that you aren't just another Ph.D. who can't find a job somewhere else, because that's true for 95% of the Ph.D.'s that work there.

 

[jasonRF]

I have an observational astronomy PhD, and work in the defense industry.

Look at the studies and analysis FFRDCs, plus Lincoln Lab and the Applied Physics Lab.

Look at smaller defense contractors (e.g., Metron, SPA) -- the bigger ones have more regimented hiring processes and tend to have positions more like "Blah Engineer - Level IV" that will need more specific requirements to fill.

Government will be very hard to break into for reasons you've already discovered, but not impossible; look at OSD CAPE, for one. But it's easiest to find out about opportunities through networking.

I won't bother arguing with twofish, but some of his job hunting advice is...idiosyncratic, particularly the "spam everything in sight" approach. Personally, I think you're much better off spending time finding jobs you're really interested in and tailoring your application to those jobs. Worked for me, anecdotes aren't data, blah blah, but where I work (with lots of PhDs) we want to see that you know what we're about, why your background would work well for us, and that you're interested in us and not, well, just another PhD who can't find a job somewhere else.

I will have to agree with all of the above. I know quite a few folks who went to work at FFRDCs with backgrounds in high energy physics, nuclear physics, etc., and are doing work side by side with engineers. I also have a PhD (but in engineering) and have interviewed a lot of potential employees. I look for a) smart people with strong technical background, who b) are interested in our company and have a clue about us, and who are c) enthusiastic about what they have worked on in the past and can d) clearly communicate their work to an audience of people who do not share their specialty. We have hired quite a few Physics and Math PhDs to work for us, and in general they work out quite well for doing engineering work, and bring new angles to problem solving that we wouldn't get if we only hired engineers.

I must say that particular knowledge can matter, though, especially if our current work is more rapid, short-term types of projects that don't allow for the time it takes for non-specialists to get up to speed. My group does a lot of image and signal processing, almost all of which is based upon statistical theory. Our last Physics PhD I interviewed didn't get hired, primarily because he didn't know probability and statistics sufficiently well to be useful out of the box (I must say that this is by far the biggest problem we have with physicists - physics departments could greatly increase the marketability of their students by forcing them to take a one-year probability and mathematical statistics sequence at the senior level. Add in a stochastic processes class and a Fourier analysis course and they would be great hires!). If you have a clue about probability and statistics you need to get that into your resume somehow. And if you didn't take coursework on it, be prepared to be quizzed. If it were me, i would want you to know:

prob: basic probability, conditional probability, expectation, something about gaussian random vectors and linear transformations of gaussian random vectors.

estimation: least-squares, maximum likliehood, and know what the Cramer-Rao bound is and why it matters. It would be a bonus if you know mean-square estimation as well (aka minimum mean square error estimates).

hypothesis testing: Neyman-Pearson lemma and likelihood ratio tests. Composite hypothesis testing would be included here, when you do not know noise levels apriori you have to estimate them (engineers call this generalized likelihood ratio tests).

This stuff isn't hard and I wouldn't ask you for detailed derivations, just basic ideas that made it clear you understood the idea.

best of luck.

jason

 

[ParticleGrl]

I must say that particular knowledge can matter, though, especially if our current work is more rapid, short-term types of projects that don't allow for the time it takes for non-specialists to get up to speed.

Is there any good way to discover if a company is doing more short-term projects? I've grown frustrated with employers telling me "we need someone ready to go out-of-the-box." Is there a good way to find companies with longer-term projects?

 

[jasonRF]

Is there any good way to discover if a company is doing more short-term projects? I've grown frustrated with employers telling me "we need someone ready to go out-of-the-box." Is there a good way to find companies with longer-term projects?

I don't know of any good way. The best way I can think is to look at places that have a long history of hiring physics/math phds. When I was in grad school I was in a plasma physics group (was engineering, but not so useful ...) and many of our graduates interviewed with places like APL, Lincoln Lab and other ffrdcs and got offers. Granted it was the late 1990s before the dot com bubble burst. Anyway, often the job was to do "system analysis" which seemed like a topic that no one learns in school and they just wanted smart people that they could train. No, I do not know what system analysis really means, but if they still hire for those kinds of jobs then you already have the qualifications you need.

Some of the military labs may be worth a look, too. AFRL and ARL come to mind.

best of luck,

jason

 

[JDGates]

How does one find any actual info about defense contractor type jobs? I've tried emailing and calling various people at some of the places I'd like to work, but the few responses I get back are all along the lines of "we can't really talk about our work." Usually, they also encourage me to apply, but tailoring a resume/cover letter seems out of the question- the job posting is vague and I have no clue what I'd actually be doing there.

You can find out a good amount with some serious Googling. If you have still have access to an academic library (even by just walking in) then LexisNexis can be useful. I also had some luck using alumni network searches.

To take my company as an example, it's true that you won't be able to find out anything about ~95% of the specific projects we're working on; what gets made public is nonrepresentative. However, you should be able to find out who our major sponsors are and what sets us apart from other companies working for the same sponsors. You should also be able to figure out why we like science and engineering PhDs.

It does take some work and I don't guarantee that it will always work, but putting some time into researching companies does pay off, at least in my experience. Being able to (intelligently) use certain keywords and phrases before my interviewers did appeared to work to my favor, anyway.

So would you agree or disagree in terms of applying to a job even if I don't really meet all the requirements? Even entry level jobs I see have at least something I don't match on the required/strongly desired list. It's almost as if DCs want people to have everything right out of the gate.

It really depends. If it's an engineering-type job, then I'd think that lacking specific technical skills (e.g., experience with some software package or statistical method) would be more detrimental; jasonRF appears more qualified to speak to this than I am. If it's a more analytically-oriented job, then they may be more interested in your problem solving skills, and let you learn specifics on the job (this is the attitude where I work), making it more worthwhile to spend time applying.

physics departments could greatly increase the marketability of their students by forcing them to take a one-year probability and mathematical statistics sequence at the senior level.

Absolutely. My undergrad physics department did a great job of mixing stats in with the upper-level labs, and I took some stats on my own, but I still wish I'd had more. I don't know if it would have helped in my job search, but it certainly would've made doing my job easier at times.

 

[Aaronvan]

Try the National Security Agency. They hire a lot of people with your quals. Having a foreign language is a plus, too.

 

[twofish-quant]

To take my company as an example, it's true that you won't be able to find out anything about ~95% of the specific projects we're working on; what gets made public is nonrepresentative. However, you should be able to find out who our major sponsors are and what sets us apart from other companies working for the same sponsors. You should also be able to figure out why we like science and engineering PhDs.

This is highly field dependent, and not applicable to finance. Googling for what my company is pretty close to useless, and our webpage doesn't give much in the way of information about what Ph.D.'s do. There are people in the company that spend their days googling for information and if they find an information leak, they'll plug it.

We do have lots of "meet and greets" and face to face recruiting sessions

And we are one of the more open companies. We have a web page. There are hedge funds that don't have a web page.

I should point out that this is one part of the culture that I don't like, and I'd like for us to be more open about what we do since a lot of it is mathematically and scientifically cool. The interesting thing is I don't think that anyone is *against* that idea. It's just that to change the standard operating procedure of saying nothing involves a lot of fighting inertia.

Being able to (intelligently) use certain keywords and phrases before my interviewers did appeared to work to my favor, anyway.

That helps a lot in the finance interview. Knowing what a greek, bond duration, put-call parity is helps a lot, and it will take you two days to pick up the jargon. I had one interview in which the recruiter mentioned was at in fixed income, so I went to the book store and started reading. I wasn't a bond expert, but it helps to understand the question that someone was asking me. Also a lot of it is easier.

greek = math derivative
delta = first derivative
duration = scaled first derivative
gamma, convexity = second derivative

It really depends. If it's an engineering-type job, then I'd think that lacking specific technical skills (e.g., experience with some software package or statistical method) would be more detrimental

Also it depends on how many people apply. If you have one spot and three good candidates, the person with experience in a specific package might get the job, because there is nothing else to decide between the three. But it's very much something of a lottery ticket.

Curiously, I got me first job because I was a FORTRAN 77 guru. There were Java experts all over the place, but very few people that knew FORTRAN 77. Some people collect antique wine. Some people collect antique cars. I've gotten jobs knowing out to deal with antique code.

This gets into the danger of following the crowd. One of the few things that you can do to maximize your winning in the lottery is to not pick the same numbers as everyone else. That's why questions like "what should I study" are somewhat self-defeating, because if everyone studies something, you'll get a bubble, and then people won't make money at it.

 

[hjlim]

Hi,
What about taking some, say, computer science courses in your school? If you are willing to stay in school for 1~2 semesters, you could probably even get an MS degree in cs, for free for you as you should have a tuition waiver!

 

[Astro_Dude]

Try the National Security Agency. They hire a lot of people with your quals. Having a foreign language is a plus, too.

NSA told me to piss off. Several times. :(

Hi,
What about taking some, say, computer science courses in your school? If you are willing to stay in school for 1~2 semesters, you could probably even get an MS degree in cs, for free for you as you should have a tuition waiver!

Well, my tuition waiver is going to run out, and our group has no more money, so I'd be hard pressed to stay. More to the point though, everything is already in and I'm not even sure I can rescind the paperwork at this point.

 

[twofish-quant]

Is there any good way to discover if a company is doing more short-term projects?

For companies in industry, the only way is to send in your resume and ask in the interview. One of the weird things is that industrial companies are often more tight lipped about what they are working on than government agencies, even those in defense or intelligence.

I've grown frustrated with employers telling me "we need someone ready to go out-of-the-box."

It would be nice to respond with "Great! I'm ready to go!"

There's a tricky balance between humility and arrogance that one needs to get right in the job interview. On the one hand, one doesn't want to come across as a know-it-all. On the other hand, one reason that physics Ph.D. training is good is that you can learn something new on your own very quickly. One good/bad thing about the modern work place is that employers will not spend money on training.

Is there a good way to find companies with longer-term projects?

In finance, there are no long term projects. The longest term project that I know of has a deadline of two years from now. There are some vague long term goals, but no project plans that last more than a year, because things change too quick. Again that works for people with strong math and science backgrounds, since people are forced to learn things very quickly.

 

[twofish-quant]

What about taking some, say, computer science courses in your school?

Or you can take surf the internet and figure out how to program computers on your own.

 

[StatGuy2000]

I find it interesting that no one on this thread had mentioned anything about setting up a profile on LinkedIn, where you can upload a complete resume and tailor both your specific expertise and your career interests.

I would think that recruiters, headhunters and even a few hiring managers would contact the said individual, particularly if you have specific marketable skills, such as programming experience in MATLAB or C++ or statistical experience. I personally have received numerous contacts from recruiters informing me of positions (since I already have a full-time job which I enjoy, I have to turn these opportunities down, but I have connected with the recruiters to keep in me in the loop on other new opportunities).

 

[StatGuy2000]

Twofish-quant, I have a few questions based on your posts here:

(1) I find it interesting about your assertion to the uselessness of HR in financial firms in general, and more specifically in your firm. After all, part of the responsibility of HR is in ensuring that they recruit talent suitable for a given division or department. Shouldn't senior management in the quantitative division of the financial firm be providing more input and guidance to HR as to what general qualifications they are looking for (e.g. a doctorate or equivalent experience in math/physics, extensive programming knowledge, etc.)?

(2) I get the impression that financial firms that hire physics PhDs seem to be quite passive in terms of recruitment, in essence waiting for applicants to spam them with resumes highlighting their doctoral research. Am I mistaken about this? (in other industries it is quite common for potential employers to visit college campuses to do meet-and-greets with students).

(3) I am curious as to whether someone with a physics PhD has an edge in financial firms as opposed to someone with a PhD in math, statistics, or industrial engineering/operations research.

 

[twofish-quant]

(1) I find it interesting about your assertion to the uselessness of HR in financial firms in general, and more specifically in your firm.

Don't misinterpret what I say. HR is extremely useful to the firm. They are however, useless to you.

The reason is that 99% of the positions that HR fills are non-geek positions for non-geek applicants, so that filling geek positions is something that HR doesn't put a high priority on. Also, the research people would rather minimize HR's role in hiring. HR people tend to be people with *zero* technical skill, so when it comes to hiring technical people, both HR and the technical groups would rather they not make any actual hiring decisions.

What happens is in my firm is that we have internal people that do HR things. Often this is informal, (i.e. manager has a stack of resumes and asks for volunteers to go through them). If you are lucky, and you send your resume to HR then it will get forwarded to someone that can do something about it. However, there are a dozen ways for your resume to get lost in the shuffle, and there is no incentive at all for the company to make sure your resume doesn't get lost.

After all, part of the responsibility of HR is in ensuring that they recruit talent suitable for a given division or department.

That's actually not the responsibility of HR when it comes to technical positions. We don't want them to recruit people for us, which is fine since it is something they would rather not do.

Shouldn't senior management in the quantitative division of the financial firm be providing more input and guidance to HR as to what general qualifications they are looking for (e.g. a doctorate or equivalent experience in math/physics, extensive programming knowledge, etc.)?

Doesn't work. Remember that people in HR do not have technical skills and they don't really have the desire to learn physics. So if you tell them look for people with deep knowledge of non-linear optimization, their reaction is "what's non-linear optimization?" The most you can do is to say "if anyone submits a resume with the keyword X, please send it to e-mail Y." And even that doesn't work well, because HR has no incentive to actually do that. Remember that everyone in the company gets hundreds of e-mails each day, and it takes time to sort through the e-mail, remember where to send it, etc. And why bother? The company doesn't care that you get the job. As long as the job gets filled by someone, everyone is happy.

Technical positions are different from other positions. For some positions, you don't need specialized knowledge to weed out incompetent people. For example, if I were interviewing for bank tellers or mortgage salesman, I can do that without too much specialized knowledge. (Quick: try to sell me a mortgage.) For other positions there is some credential you can use. For example, medical and law have licensing. For software engineering and quantitative finance, this isn't true. If you have no specialized knowledge and you are trying to interview a mortgage salesman, you can try to have them sell you a mortgage.

If you have no specialized knowledge, then how you are going to begin to do a technical interview of a Ph.D. in astrophysics? (Incidentally, I knew that I would like finance when people started asking questions about general relativity at the interview, and I knew I was in the right place when the interviewer pointed out that I flipped two variables in the answer.)

This is where headhunters come in.

I get the impression that financial firms that hire physics PhDs seem to be quite passive in terms of recruitment, in essence waiting for applicants to spam them with resumes highlighting their doctoral research. Am I mistaken about this? (in other industries it is quite common for potential employers to visit college campuses to do meet-and-greets with students).

We do meet and greets and "super-days". However the problem is the way that physics Ph.D.'s are distributed. There are only a few schools that graduate more than a dozen physics Ph.D.'s each year, and most schools graduate one or two each year. We do put on a show at the Ph.D. factories like MIT, but most physics Ph.D.'s don't get their degree from a Ph.D. factory.

It's not that we think that MIT physics Ph.D's are smarter than physics Ph.D.'s from Random State. The issue is that MIT graduates about 40 physics Ph.D.'s per year, whereas Random State graduates two, and so if you hold a "Ph.D. party" at MIT you can get people to show up. Also alumni are pretty key. A lot of these "meet and greats" are just an alumni showing up at their old school to give a talk.

Also, Ph.D. hiring is different from MBA hiring. MBA's get hired by the truckload. With some very rare exceptions, Ph.D.'s get hired one or two at a time. So if you are hiring one person, and you have one person graduating, then having a meet and greet isn't that efficient. Also, you have similar problems with the structure of finance. There are a few largest investment banks, but lots of mom-and-pop hedge funds. If you have a company that has twenty people, then it's hard to put on a road show.

The other problem is that campus career services is usually not set up for Ph.D. hiring.

(3) I am curious as to whether someone with a physics PhD has an edge in financial firms as opposed to someone with a PhD in math, statistics, or industrial engineering/operations research.

In general no. However it can hurt or help you in specific situations, people do care a lot about diversity, so if you have a team of five people, and if three of them have physics Ph.D.'s, there is a very strong effort to make sure that the next person that gets hired isn't a physics Ph.D. On the other hand, if you have five people on a team and none of them have physics Ph.D.'s, then there is a bias toward adding someone that has done physics. Again, from the point of view of the job seeker, this looks random.

This is also why hiring decisions are team based. One thing that happens is that people tend to be biased toward people with the same backgrounds as they come from. I've noticed for example, that if you have someone that has done astrophysics, the I tend to give them higher ratings than if I interview someone with a background in statistics or operations research. Partly this is because, if I ask a question, it's likely to be something that someone that has done astrophysics knows.

But this can be bad, so what we try to do is to make sure that the interviewers have a mix of backgrounds so that the biases cancel each other out.

 

[twofish-quant]

I find it interesting that no one on this thread had mentioned anything about setting up a profile on LinkedIn, where you can upload a complete resume and tailor both your specific expertise and your career interests.

It's not useful for finance. One reason it's not is that we've gotten specific instructions from HR, legal, and compliance about what we can and can't put in our linkedin pages, and I'm pretty sure that there is someone from HR that spends their day searching linkedin to make sure that policy is enforced.

I would think that recruiters, headhunters and even a few hiring managers would contact the said individual, particularly if you have specific marketable skills, such as programming experience in MATLAB or C++ or statistical experience.

But you are in the doghouse, if your own manager reads your linkedin page, and gets the impression that you are looking for work elsewhere. Something about finance is that much of the compensation gets paid as a lump sum at the end of the year, and so if your managers get the idea that you want to leave, that impacts your bonus.

I personally have received numerous contacts from recruiters informing me of positions (since I already have a full-time job which I enjoy, I have to turn these opportunities down, but I have connected with the recruiters to keep in me in the loop on other new opportunities).

Extremely dangerous to do in finance. Companies can't do this directly. If someone from company A looks on linkedin for people to hire from company B, then you are looking at a massive lawsuit. If you get lucky and happens to hit someone in company B, that wants to leave, then great! However, if you hit someone that is happy at company B, and hates company A because of something that happened years ago, you've just stepped on a landmine. That person will report the incident to their lawyers, their lawyers will talk to your lawyers, and you will be in big, big trouble.

Also this is why a lot of hiring in finance is personal. If I take a friend out for lunch, I can ask if he is happy or not (and tell him if I'm happy or not). I don't know what is going to come out of the conversation, but I know that he is not going to get me fired. If I talk to someone random, I don't know that.

Headhunters do this from time to time. However, in finance there are a lot of scummy headhunters, so one thing that you have to worry about is getting good quality HH's. One thing that I worry about is that some idiot HH will call me at work or send me e-mail at my work address. Now any non-idiot HH will know not to do that, but if I put my resume online, I have no way of screening out idiot HH's.

But even if I wanted to do this I can't, because if I did put my entire resume online, I'd get this nasty letter from HR telling me to take it down or I'll get fired.

 

[Astro_Dude]

Thanks again to everyone in this thread, my incessant whining must grow tiresome.

I have started to do some basic C++ using just emacs and my g++ compiler I need for a variety of my NASA-made packages I run. I'm picking it up rather easy, but I'm having flashbacks to IDL with all this annoying declaring of variables. I much prefer Python.

I find it interesting that no one on this thread had mentioned anything about setting up a profile on LinkedIn, where you can upload a complete resume and tailor both your specific expertise and your career interests.

I would think that recruiters, headhunters and even a few hiring managers would contact the said individual, particularly if you have specific marketable skills, such as programming experience in MATLAB or C++ or statistical experience. I personally have received numerous contacts from recruiters informing me of positions (since I already have a full-time job which I enjoy, I have to turn these opportunities down, but I have connected with the recruiters to keep in me in the loop on other new opportunities).

I have been on LinkedIn for about 8 months and have not once been contacted by anyone for even a crappy job. Maybe that says something about my resume, because LinkedIn profiles are essentially resumes. I dunno.

I'm still having the issue that every time I look at even small DCs, I can't really find too much in the way of jobs I'm a great fit for... I just am not terribly optimistic applying for a job in engineering stuff (even when I can do it), because they just don't seem to care about physics people.

The REALLY frustrating thing is I have some contacts that are heads of entire divisions of their company, and generally the response I get back is that I have impressive credentials, they just don't have anything for me.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Twofish-quant, thank you for your replies to my questions, although your answers raise a number of other questions, as follows:

(1) As you mentioned, HR for the most part do not have technical skills and they are primarily responsible for filling the 99% of positions that are non-technical. However, many large companies (many financial firms in the US fall in this category) have large HR departments. You would think that within the recruitment division of HR you could find at least a handful of people with some limited technical capabilities who could devote themselves solely for helping to recruit technical positions.

For example, large pharmaceutical firms hire biostatisticians like myself, and much of that recruitment is handled through recruiters or HR (even though neither the recruiters nor the HR personnel have any background in statistics). Also, I have seen technical positions being listed on the websites of large financial firms in Toronto (where I live and work) which require a PhD in math/applied math/physics. After all, the role of HR is to ensure that the firm can fill a given position with the best possible candidate, and if the positions requires specific qualifications, such as a physics PhD, you would think that HR should be able to find candidates without necessarily needing to know "what" these candiates can specifically do (the interviewers can handle this aspect of things).

(2) I find it really curious that those who work in financial firms could get in trouble for putting your resume online in LinkedIn. I work for a clinical research organization (CRO) i.e. a contracting firm specializing in providing biostatistical services, among others, to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and it is common practice for people in my general industry, from entry level personnel to senior management, to put their entire profile, including their complete resume, online. I have never heard of any of these individuals being reprimanded by HR or from management, simply for putting their resumes online.

(3) One thing I hear of constantly is the importance of networking, but it seems to be that financial firms seems to go out of their way to make this very difficult. Furthermore, financial firms, at least from your replies above, also seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for individuals with technical backgrounds (such as a PhD in physics) to know what positions are out there. Which leads me to wonder this, how are graduate students in physics or math interested in working for finance supposed to know who to apply to or where to send their resumes or CVs (including knowing which headhunter is reputable)? You had suggested simply spamming resumes left and right, but that's difficult to do if you don't even know which companies are offering what positions.

(4) On a related note to question (3), what does YOUR firm do to find suitable candidates for technical positions?

 

[StatGuy2000]

Thanks again to everyone in this thread, my incessant whining must grow tiresome.

I have started to do some basic C++ using just emacs and my g++ compiler I need for a variety of my NASA-made packages I run. I'm picking it up rather easy, but I'm having flashbacks to IDL with all this annoying declaring of variables. I much prefer Python.



I have been on LinkedIn for about 8 months and have not once been contacted by anyone for even a crappy job. Maybe that says something about my resume, because LinkedIn profiles are essentially resumes. I dunno.

I'm still having the issue that every time I look at even small DCs, I can't really find too much in the way of jobs I'm a great fit for... I just am not terribly optimistic applying for a job in engineering stuff (even when I can do it), because they just don't seem to care about physics people.

The REALLY frustrating thing is I have some contacts that are heads of entire divisions of their company, and generally the response I get back is that I have impressive credentials, they just don't have anything for me.

My suggestion is to have someone review your resume to see if you are highlighting skills that are especially marketable (example, statistical analysis or programming). Also, don't assume that people are automatically going to contact you just because you have a LinkedIn profile. It can take a while for someone to notice you, and I have also found, at least in my experience, that employers have contacted me during specific times of the year (typically during the months of January-May, and also around September-November).

I would also suggest trying to make either new connections on LinkedIn, send out messages to specific managers or recruiters, or join specific groups on LinkedIn that are focused on the area of your interest. You can find much information on potential job postings in this manner as well.

 

[Astro_Dude]

(3) One thing I hear of constantly is the importance of networking, but it seems to be that financial firms seems to go out of their way to make this very difficult. Furthermore, financial firms, at least from your replies above, also seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for individuals with technical backgrounds (such as a PhD in physics) to know what positions are out there. Which leads me to wonder this, how are graduate students in physics or math interested in working for finance supposed to know who to apply to or where to send their resumes or CVs (including knowing which headhunter is reputable)? You had suggested simply spamming resumes left and right, but that's difficult to do if you don't even know which companies are offering what positions.

I think this is the main reason TFQ says to spam. Finance sounds like it is a lot like defense in that they actively try to keep what their job openings are a secret. Or, at the very least, they are intentionally vague about what they are doing and don't want people contacting them. As he called it earlier, "Kafka-land", you can't ever get in contact with someone in person to listen to you and you're just screwed unless you spam and eventually get through somewhere.

Essentially, p(success) is so low, you need to have N=10^10.