21 · Names on Doors

Application Excel sheet list for firms: Jane Street, Citadel, Citadel Securities, MAN Group, HRT, Five Rings, Optiver, DRW, Jump Trading, XTX Markets, Two Sigma, Maven, Mako, Old Mission, GSA Capital, G-Research, Squarepoint, Quadrature, Point72, Cubist, Qube RT, Millennium, Marshall Wace, Castleton Commodities, Bluefin, XR, Wintermute, Onyx, DV, Dare, Virtu, GHCO, Mandara, GSR, B2C2, Jump, Brevan Howard, Winton, BAM, Tibra, SIG, BlackRock, Rothschild — a bunch of the biggest names in finance. Try internships in every niche rather than narrowing down straight away, even within finance. Recruiters will help as well. Firms to look into for quant trading based in London. Delaying gratification and choosing skillset apprenticeships at SMEs is higher leverage, because at larger scale the internships tend toward mundane work rather than accountability and sovereignty over business decisions.

There are large recruiting sessions for the big firms around July. "I'm excited to share that I've been selected for Future Focus at Optiver, Meet Millennium at Millennium, and the Future Leaders Programme at Blackstone this year." People even in their freshers year get internships and summer analyst offers once they're in Imperial — don't be picky; try every job London has in stock for you.

Lots of internship opportunities — Imperial is a target school, not just for quant. The EFDS course leans slightly humanities, but Imperial is pure STEM, so you can get into any type of institution with that credential alone; it's a matter of a tailored résumé and great interview performance. The UN, the EU, policy makers; market makers that improve liquidity like Jane, Citadel, Optiver; quant trading academies; even VC funding alongside a DPhil. But know that the big dogs are in VC — and if you want back into the game, you can re-enter through PE, building and selling companies with leverage.

That first internship is going to be hard. Once you have Jump Trading or Citadel on your résumé, expanding into return offers gets easier — but before that, do everything you can. Even any sort of work experience helps radically. It could be something as small as a tiny trading firm in the Seoul suburbs with a million dollars AUM. Apply to 10,000 internships and summer analyst positions in Seoul — Samsung, Toss, LVMH, whatever, especially the SMEs that offer bootcamps teaching you the Bloomberg terminal. The best way is to fail, and to fail fast. Volume matters stupendously. You CAN secure a summer analyst offer between July and September in Seoul. There are the top financial firms — MS, GS, HSBC, Samsung, 한국투자증권, NH투자증권, 미래에셋증권, 삼성증권 — and a load of them in Gangnam and the main financial districts. There is nothing to lose from applying to every top firm in Seoul. Getting a Morgan Stanley summer analyst offer pre-Imperial would be the ultimate "fuck you" move. Look into the local scene: Seoul is one of the biggest financial and fintech hubs in the world. Go to the top firms' headquarters — BlackRock, Blackstone, HSBC — feel the energy, work in the first-floor cafés, get as close to the operations as possible.

I want to secure some sort of job at the NYSE or LSE, some global stock exchange, something at Goldman — traditional banking, corporate IB, high finance — just to get insider access. I really want to work for McKinsey QuantumBlack, or any consulting business, as an AI Risk and Quant Modelling summer analyst, just for the insider information.

Certificates are a joke, but get them done and out of the way. 투자자산운용사 and 국제무역사 — the 46th sitting: August 23rd, registration July 27–31, results September 3rd. AmplifyME, Bloomberg Market Concepts, the job simulators from top quant and finance firms — cram them; they're good to have. There's also government-supported alpha for the Korean workforce: 내일배움카드 — get the office certificate from the 8th floor and pick it up at Seolleung Station Exit 1. CodeIt's four-week completion course and employment bootcamp. As long as you work at Tim Hortons, you keep access to the card — hold onto it as side income.