In light of what’s going on with subprime, is it much more difficult to find a gig in structured finance then a year ago? How much does experience in the area matter compared to other jobs in finance?
Experience probably doesn’t matter as much as other fields, as the stuff you work with really only sounds complicated… I wouldn’t expect a lot of hiring this year though…
Tongue-in-cheek: Given that no one really seems to understand the products right now, I’d say that experience doesn’t matter. Realistically: on the buy side, people want experience as some kind of assurance that if you buy or sell these things, you have some idea of what the risk is, and whether you’re buying a load of stinky stuff. On the sell side, if you are a marketer of these products, experience would suggest that you know how to pull the wool over potential investors’ eyes, which would be a valuable thing to many firms.
I work on the buy-side covering structured finance stuff, and I know we had been looking desperately to find another analyst that could cover abcp for our team. We would only look at people with experience in structured finance.