Need Advice - 33yo, trying to transition from quant to value shop

Water Cooler Careers
#1

Really need some career advice here. I’m 33 years old and trying to transition from quant finance to a value shop or at least something more fundamentally driven. I would like to stay on the buyside/alpha creation side but I’m also open to investment consulting. I would also like to move from NYC to Chicago but I’d be open to other cities as well. NYC is great, but the rat race here is getting old and with a family it is becoming very hard. I’ve applied to 25 openings on online postings and company websites in the last three months and I’ve only received one follow up assessment. Otherwise, no interviews, no replies.

More on my background. I’m currently a PM at small $12mm AUM quant hedge fund. We are backed by a larger entity, but for the most part no real name recognition. I previously worked in some prop trading settings at firms and a foreign bank. I just passed my CFA Level II exam, I attended a blue chip college and I do not have a graduate degree. I have some functional low-level programming abilities in various languages but I don’t enjoy it and I typically exclude it from resumes. My current position is not bad at all, I just don’t love it anymore. I’ve had a brief experience managing an event driven portfolio in the past and it was the best year of my professional life, I just didn’t have the guts to branch off at the time. I’m worried if I don’t make this move now, I’ll never be able to transition. Who will want to hire a 35-40 year old junior research analyst?

I will take the Level III exam next year but in the mean time, what can I do to improve my candidacy? Should I use a recruiter? Should I include investment ideas with my applications?

#2

Definitely finish the CFA program. Also, practice reading and writing research reports on companies, i.e. prepare for the “company pitch” part of the interview. These are the things people tell me employers like.

#3

Will definitely sign up for the Level III but trying to transition right now rather than wait a full year to apply once I have the credential (knock on wood…)

#4

bump

#5

Have you considered trying to go sell side first?

#6

No, I hadn’t thought about that route. From what I’ve seen it’s hard to engage in medium term value investing idea generation in that setting. As performance driven as the buy side is, the focus on the sell side is even shorter term.

What’s the rationale, that it’s easier to crack than the buyside or that they are both similarly hard but applying to both sides just increases my overall sample?