See Part 1, where I share more tips.
1. What resources did you find most helpful at Sloan during your recruiting journey?
The Career Development Office: Like a Sherpa, But in a Suit
The Career Development Office (CDO) is the unsung hero of MIT Sloan’s MFin journey. If you think of Sloan as Everest (which, let’s face it, feels about right during finals week), then the CDO is your sherpa. Except instead of hauling oxygen tanks and ropes, they’re handing you a recruiting calendar, a perfectly formatted resume, and just enough mock interview feedback to make you feel mildly offended yet deeply grateful.
Why do they start working with you before you’ve even unpacked your moving boxes? Because recruiting starts fast. It’s as if the finance world collectively decided that “relax and settle in” is for liberal arts majors. By the time your first class finishes its second lecture, firms are already on campus, doling out coffee and career pitches like a hedge fund Halloween. Without the CDO’s timeline, you’d be the person showing up to an information session on private equity internships only to learn they recruited… last spring.
The Matrix of Opportunities: Choose Your Pill (Hint: It’s Coffee-Flavored)
Let’s talk about the firehose. Yes, it’s real, and yes, it’s aimed directly at your face. Between Career Core, networking nights, and more coffee chats than any cardiologist would recommend, the sheer volume of opportunities at Sloan can feel overwhelming. Picture Neo in The Matrix, except instead of dodging bullets, you’re juggling lunch-and-learns, trading competition prep, and enough free sandwiches to run a deli.
The trick? The CDO helps you cut through the noise. They’ll sit you down, look at your overly ambitious calendar, and gently steer you away from trying to attend every event. (“Do you really need to meet six more buy-side recruiters in one day? Maybe just focus on two?”) Their personalized approach feels like the exact opposite of Wall Street’s reputation for ruthless efficiency—more like a kindly bartender helping you pace yourself during happy hour.
Alumni: Your Built-In Cheat Code (Yes, It’s Legal)
The night before your big interview, you’re sweating over what to say when they inevitably ask, “Why do you want to work here?” Enter: the alumni network, your personal GPS for navigating recruiter-speak. Call up a Sloan grad who already works at the desk you’re targeting, and suddenly you’ve got insights that feel borderline unfair: what the interviewer cares about, what to avoid, and whether the coffee machine on their floor actually works. (Spoiler: It doesn’t. But they do have LaCroix.)
This alumni connection feels a bit like having the answers to an open-book test, except no one’s going to call you out for cheating. It’s just good strategy, like using a credit card for the points. After all, alumni want you to succeed—they’ve been where you are, juggling prep materials and existential career angst, and they know what it’s like to want that edge.
The Steak Dinner That Changed Everything
Here’s the plot twist: sometimes the best career opportunities don’t come from meticulous planning. They come from that random event you almost skipped because you were too tired to eat another canapé. Case in point: one MFin student went to a steak dinner on a whim and walked out with competing offers from Bank of America and a Chicago trading firm. The only problem? Both offers had a three-hour deadline. Imagine trying to calculate a binomial options tree while your phone keeps buzzing with “final reminder” emails.
The CDO doesn’t just prepare you for these moments—they help you navigate the aftermath. When you’re staring down two contracts, each with more fine print than a derivatives textbook, they’re there to help you weigh the pros and cons. Sure, your mom thinks “quant researcher” means you’re designing rockets at NASA, but the CDO gets it. They’ll work with you to choose between a role that offers a 24/7 Bloomberg terminal and one with an espresso machine that rivals your favorite café.
Clubs and Labs: Where Theory Meets Reality
Recruiting isn’t just about interviews; it’s also about proving you can actually do the job. That’s where Sloan’s Quantitative Financial Markets Club and action-learning labs come in. Think of them as the Hogwarts of quant finance. In Fin-Lab, you’re not just learning equations—you’re applying them to real-world problems, sometimes for actual clients. It’s like trading in the wild, except without the soul-crushing losses (hopefully).
Meanwhile, the Quant Club puts you in touch with industry leaders who remind you why you got into finance in the first place: because math is cool, markets are wild, and solving puzzles for a living is objectively fun. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that these workshops come with built-in networking opportunities, which might just land you a gig—or at least a strong LinkedIn connection.
The Art of “Hi, Can I Pick Your Brain?”
Networking is like modern art: everyone agrees it’s important, but nobody can quite agree on what it looks like—or if it’s just a little awkward. In my job search, networking wasn’t just helpful; it was the thing. Sure, you can send out résumés and hope for the best, but let’s be real: if you’re not talking to people who are already where you want to be, you’re basically playing darts in the dark. With a blindfold. And maybe no darts.
Why Networking Works (And Sometimes Feels Like Magic)
Here’s the thing about the finance world—or any world, really: it runs on relationships. Quantitative trading might seem like a game of numbers and algorithms, but behind all the Python scripts and stochastic processes are people. People with information, insights, and yes, sometimes job opportunities they might casually mention over coffee or at a conference. Talking to these people, and making sure they remember you fondly afterward, is basically the cheat code for breaking into the industry.
Take, for example, the time I reached out to an alum from my university. We talked about his career, his college years, and his favorite books on financial markets. An hour later, he introduced me to a hiring manager at his firm. Did he have to do that? Absolutely not. But people like helping people they like. And if you can make someone feel like helping you is as natural as breathing, you’re halfway there.
My Networking Strategy: A Multi-Asset Portfolio of Approaches
Networking isn’t one-size-fits-all—it’s more like portfolio management. You diversify. You hedge. You rebalance when something isn’t working. Here’s how I did it:
- Conferences and Seminars: Imagine dozens of quants crammed into one room, simultaneously debating machine learning models and the quality of the coffee. It’s a vibe. I attended these events not just to learn but to make myself visible—asking questions, introducing myself to speakers, and following up afterward. (Pro tip: Always follow up. If they don’t remember you, did you even meet?)
- Online Forums and LinkedIn: The internet is a beautiful place, full of niche communities like QuantNet, where you can geek out about trading strategies and maybe, just maybe, stumble across someone hiring. LinkedIn is the grown-up version of this—less memes, more connections. I used it to share insights, comment on posts, and slide into DMs with a purpose.
- Professional Associations: Joining groups like the International Association for Quantitative Finance isn’t just about looking fancy on your résumé. It’s about access—exclusive resources, events, and a directory of people who probably care about the same nerdy stuff you do.
- Mentorship Programs: Here’s the secret sauce: mentors are often way more invested in your success than you are. I sought out people who’d been through the grind and could steer me toward the right opportunities while also telling me what not to waste my time on.
The Networking ROI: More Than Just Jobs
Yes, networking helped me land interviews and offers, but it did much more than that. It gave me a deeper understanding of the industry—what’s trending, where the opportunities are, and which buzzwords actually mean something. It also connected me with collaborators for research projects and strategy development. In a way, networking didn’t just advance my career—it expanded it.
The Secret Ingredient: Be Human
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s this: networking is not about asking for things—it’s about building relationships. That means being curious, offering value, and following up with a thoughtful email that doesn’t sound like a ChatGPT prompt. People respond to authenticity. They also respond to donuts, but authenticity is cheaper and works just as well.
So, yes, networking played a huge role in my job search. And it wasn’t as scary as it sounds. Think of it less as “selling yourself” and more as “talking to cool people who can teach you things.” And who knows? You might just teach them something too.
Trading Clubs Are Like Quant Labs: Or, How Leadership Grows a Pair of Gaussian Copulas
Picture this: you’re co-president of a Quant Finance Club. Sounds fancy, right? But really, it’s like running a little startup inside the MFin program, except instead of selling widgets, you’re trying to sell yourself on understanding how Gaussian copulas explain life, the universe, and everything. (Spoiler: they don’t, but pretending they do looks great on a resume.)
When you’re not buried in statistical modeling or dissecting bid-ask spreads, you’re corralling students, coordinating with industry speakers, and trying to keep the pizza budget from blowing up. What starts as an academic exercise quickly turns into a crash course in how finance actually works. Want to organize a hackathon? Congratulations, you’re suddenly managing logistics, resources, and ten engineers arguing about Python libraries. Want to pitch a trading simulation? Now you’re a project manager navigating spreadsheets and team dynamics. It’s basically a Bloomberg Terminal with feelings.
Finance Is a Team Sport (But Someone Has to Call the Plays)
Quant finance may look like a solo sport—it’s you, a keyboard, and a 50-tab Excel monstrosity—but it’s not. In the club, you learn that collaboration is key. Whether it’s running trading competitions or brainstorming event ideas, you’re constantly negotiating, persuading, and aligning people with wildly different visions. It’s like herding cats, except the cats are future quants who all think they’re the smartest person in the room. (Some of them probably are.)
And when the team wins? It’s deeply satisfying. When someone aces a case competition or lands a dream job, you realize your role in helping make that happen. It’s the closest thing to trading PnL you can feel in an academic club: intangible, but real.
The ROI of Leadership
At the end of the day, being a co-president is about leverage—leveraging time, knowledge, and connections to get a better return on the insane investment that is an MFin. Every event you run, every hackathon you coordinate, every “can I pick your brain?” coffee chat sharpens the skills that employers actually care about: communication, problem-solving, and the ability to not panic when a regression model refuses to converge.
Sure, we could just show up, take our classes, and call it a day. But leading the Quant Finance Club? That’s where the real education happens. It’s the intersection of theory and practice, a sandbox for trying (and sometimes failing) to be the kind of quants we all pretend we already are. And if nothing else, it’s great prep for explaining Gaussian copulas to HR.
