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Create a perfect quantitative resume

What keywords and details should be included in your resume when applying for quantitative finance positions and internships?

A question that quantitative analysts often face when applying for jobs and internships is: How to write a resume? Given how competitive these positions are, optimizing your resume is undoubtedly key to landing an interview. Nowadays, many companies use ATS (Applicant Tracking System) to screen resumes and conduct preliminary screening through keywords. At this stage, the right keywords and details will get you through.

This article will provide you with general guidelines for what your resume should include when applying for various quantitative finance positions. In addition, we will share the results of an in-depth analysis based on more than 500 quantitative job descriptions, revealing the qualifications commonly sought by quantitative employers.

General Guidelines

When writing a resume for a quantitative trader or quantitative researcher position, focus on demonstrating your abilities in statistics and mathematics. Not only are these skills the focus of assessment during interviews, they are also the skills most relied upon on the job. Things worth mentioning include math competitions you have participated in (such as AMC, Putnam, etc.) and their results, high scores on academic standardized tests, data analysis projects you have participated in (especially projects using Python), and statistics courses you have completed. On the other hand, if you are applying for a quantitative developer position, you will need to highlight your knowledge in the field of computer science. Whether it's compilers or distributed systems, you should show projects you've worked on in these areas. Some great project examples include building a simulated market exchange or developing deep learning models in Python.

Keyword optimization

While the above advice is general best practice, we took it a step further and analyzed the most common keywords found in quantitative job descriptions. For each job type (quant developer, researcher, and trader), we counted how often the keyword appeared in the job description. The results of the study are as follows.

From this analysis we can draw some interesting conclusions, here are a few of them worth noting.

1. Having a PhD is not the only requirement to become a quantitative researcher. People tend to overestimate the importance of a PhD, but in fact, only one-third of quantitative research positions explicitly require a PhD.

2. If you are not sure what major you should choose to become a quantitative analyst, you can refer to the following suggestions:

3. Quantitative Developer - Computer Science

4. Quantitative Researcher – Statistics

5. Quantitative Trader - Mathematics

6. Python is the most sought-after skill across all quant positions, so it’s crucial to learn it and mention it on your resume. Excel is also an often-mentioned skill, and it will be helpful to include it on your resume.

Summary

Thank you for reading our article, we hope it provides useful guidance for your quantitative resume writing.