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I've always had the fanciful idea of starting a blog on Teamliquid, given a few rather special perspectives I'm lucky enough to have:
1. I'm a trader at a large investment bank, which at the very least offers me perspectives on many topical issues. Also I sense there is a lot of curiosity about the nature of trading and finance, and plenty of people who would like to get a glimpse at the profession with the veils of mystique, exaggeration and spin pulled away, perhaps to consider it as a career for themselves.
2. I live in Hong Kong, the place with the developed world's highest income inequality. The amount of wealth being "created" here is simply staggering, creating the world's most expensive luxury homes. And yet the average income on this island of 7 million is less than countries like Turkey and Greece. I honestly believe that this era of Hong Kong's history will be remembered much like the Twenties in the US, with the same kinds of villains, legends, hedonists, charlatans, victims and loonies that live on today in the popular imagination and great art (the latter less likely in this culture-less city). Being privileged enough to live close to the center of this action, I feel there might be some who would be interested in hearing about some of this first hand.
But for various reasons I've been putting off, in particular it's rather difficult to talk in detail about trading at an investment bank without breaking several laws at once, and it's even more difficult to talk about the stories of real-life billionaires without getting into even more trouble.
Then a few days ago the CVs for this class of summer interns came in for the various trading desks to pick and choose which ones they wanted as their slaves for 3 weeks. Nothing seemed particularly interesting, the usual batch of kids who are not smart or interested but worked hard and who love being paid well to gamble but no aspects of the trading itself. (As an aside, going to business school automatically puts you in this category for most traders reading CVs, but that's another discussion). I got to the final page and found perhaps a solitary hope.
Traded FX and credit derivatives at a prior job, degree in computational finance, proficient at all sorts of programming, member of China's IMO training team! All good things, requiring more than a modicum of intelligence. But we weren't too interested in hiring, and the kinds of hardcore mathematics my group is interested is not exactly the sort used in derivatives. Another group could probably put him to better use.
But then, "Interests: ... Korean food ... Starcraft ...".
In that pithy language traders have to get the message across quickly and clearly: Done.
I'll be putting in a request to have him on our desk, and as is apparent, it was a decent excuse to start a blog in TL.
I'm not sure how committed I can be (I have already spent far too much time on this first entry), but if there is interest in what I have outlined above I will do my best.
  
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You know rich people, and you're helping out SC2 players. Introduce them.
I want Bob Costas interviewing MLG champs.
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Calgary25987 Posts
Haha  I wonder who this guy is - he will probably read this blog.
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I'm curious how you feel about what you do. (not trying to pick a fight, just interested in your thoughts, since you talk a lot here about inequality)
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Haha, nice. Out of curiosity, is everything called a CV in Hong Kong? In the US you send regular jobs a resume, and a CV is strictly for academic ones (it's a long resume that includes invited talks, all your publications, etc.)
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So where do I send my resume?
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Estonia4644 Posts
over here we mainly call it a CV as well, for pretty much everything, from jobs to exchange studies applications. Resume is just used as a less common alternative & sometimes just for added pretentiousness D:
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He better be a BW fan. The moment he mentions how "colossi are superior to reavers" you better give him a good lecture. =P Just kidding, looks it'll be an interesting summer for you!
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CVs are different from Resumes, and the US Government uses those rather than resumes in most cases.
For a lot of really technical jobs, they only accept a CV, which is essentially a much longer resume, showing all of the work and education a person has completed. For instance my father works for the US Department of Defense and submits a 6 page CV instead of a resume. His includes the entirety of his career, including work completed while in the military and school.
Hope this guy works out for you!
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About as good a criteria as any when wading through stacks of "I'm great and will be good for you!" papers. Hope he works out really well and doesn't... all-in poorly.
Actually, the US govt uses what they call a "Federal resume" which pretty much has to have everything you've ever done that could be remotely applicable; and with recent changes trying to get rid of the dreaded KSAs, that's even more important than ever.
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I didn't know CVs/Resumes had a section for you to list interests. Just found it funny you can list things such as korean food, starcraft, etc...
Also, you were talking about how the mathematics was different for what you were looking for rather than derivatives. Can you talk a bit about that since I'm going into quantitive finance and am pretty interested in the math behind it.
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On April 05 2012 02:12 fusefuse wrote:
over here we mainly call it a CV as well, for pretty much everything, from jobs to exchange studies applications. Resume is just used as a less common alternative & sometimes just for added pretentiousness D:
I think Latin is more pretentious than French.
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I haven't seen resume used over here either, everything is CV as far as I can tell
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Am I the only one that doesn't put my interests in my resume ? I felt it was a useless add-on so I removed it. It's already close to 2 pages with academic formation/other formations/work experiences/aptitudes/references
I could probably fit a bit more of my personality on the resume but I feel you show that in an interview anyway and honestly anyone could lie about being super awesome so I'm not really sure why employers even bother reading those parts.
To be honest, when I was younger I listed my interests but I kept it general (video games; sports of all kinds, etc). Would definitely never put something like SC on a resume unless I did casting gigs and was applying for something related where the experience could help.
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On April 05 2012 05:23 Kurr wrote:
Am I the only one that doesn't put my interests in my resume ? I felt it was a useless add-on so I removed it. It's already close to 2 pages with academic formation/other formations/work experiences/aptitudes/references
I could probably fit a bit more of my personality on the resume but I feel you show that in an interview anyway and honestly anyone could lie about being super awesome so I'm not really sure why employers even bother reading those parts.
To be honest, when I was younger I listed my interests but I kept it general (video games; sports of all kinds, etc). Would definitely never put something like SC on a resume unless I did casting gigs and was applying for something related where the experience could help.
I understand your hesitation but when you are part of a field of fairly similar and viable candidates you need to do whatever you can to stand out. The OP is the proof in the pudding; he knew the kid was smart but so were all the other candidates. What separated him was a common interest.
It may be a stupid reason to hire someone but more often than not it's impossible to make a decision between equally qualified people.
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So SC is becoming the next standardized hobby instead of poker for S&T resumes?
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United States10328 Posts
Hmm, what sort of "hardcore mathematics" do you do at your desk?
and whoa, Chinese IMO team @______@
On April 05 2012 01:23 Chill wrote:Haha I wonder who this guy is - he will probably read this blog.
I'm not sure how many Chinese people (in China) use TL as opposed to Chinese sites.
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On April 06 2012 01:25 -Frog- wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2012 05:23 Kurr wrote:
Am I the only one that doesn't put my interests in my resume ? I felt it was a useless add-on so I removed it. It's already close to 2 pages with academic formation/other formations/work experiences/aptitudes/references
I could probably fit a bit more of my personality on the resume but I feel you show that in an interview anyway and honestly anyone could lie about being super awesome so I'm not really sure why employers even bother reading those parts.
To be honest, when I was younger I listed my interests but I kept it general (video games; sports of all kinds, etc). Would definitely never put something like SC on a resume unless I did casting gigs and was applying for something related where the experience could help. I understand your hesitation but when you are part of a field of fairly similar and viable candidates you need to do whatever you can to stand out. The OP is the proof in the pudding; he knew the kid was smart but so were all the other candidates. What separated him was a common interest. It may be a stupid reason to hire someone but more often than not it's impossible to make a decision between equally qualified people.
Yeah, I feel like this is more common for consulting/finance jobs, especially because they place more emphasis on cultural fit (since everyone's highly qualified). Listing interests on the resume is a great conversation starter during the interview, and can help you establish rapport with the interviewer. If anything, it's certainly more worth putting on your resume than references or an objective statement. At worst, it won't detract from your resume, assuming you haven't put down anything particularly polarizing. To that point, I would be a little wary of putting Starcraft because while gaming has certainly become more acceptable, it definitely has the chance to put off your recruiter.
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EPT
