Some Hedge Funds Are Hiring, Even Now

5 January 2009

1 minute read

Most hedge funds lost money last year. So hiring must be in lockdown mode throughout the sector, right? Wrong.

"We're looking for all talent related to the hedge fund space," says New York recruiter Kyle Ramkissoon, principal and founding member of IJC Partners (a search firm, not a hedge fund firm).

Despite a "huge slowdown" in overall openings and hiring, some fund firms are going against the grain by expanding staff, Ramkissoon says in an email. Also, a number of smaller, lesser known funds are looking to acquire top talent that wouldn't have considered those employers due to size, strategy or location.

Areas of demand include risk management, compliance, and quants who can build high-frequency, front-line trading applications.

"Of course, all of this is subject to change based on the redemption picture" in 2009, he adds. "But as of now there are openings and my team is working diligently to find talent for the seats open."

AUTHORJon Jacobs

Insider Comment

5 comments

Qu
Quant Strategist
9 January 2009
Last year, Kyle Ramkissoon sent me an email asking me to call him. On the phone, he said he was late for a meeting and would call me within an hour--he never did. In other words, my SOLICITED phone call wasn't returned.
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Jo
Jon Jacobs
8 January 2009
eFCReader: Few if any recruiters ever return unsolicited calls from candidates who aren't currently in an interview process with the recruiter's client. Not returning calls from candidates absent specific interest in the candidate's background doesn't signify lack of professionalism - it's simply a reality of doing business. "I could easily get lost doing nothing but be nice to people who send their resumes, and I'd never get anything done," a recruiter once told me. (That particular recruiter did become hostile and unprofessional after I proposed to publish that remark and attribute it to her.) As far as which hedge funds actually have openings, there are 268 hedge fund openings posted on eFinancialCareers as of this moment. Yes, recruiters placed the overwhelming majority of those. But, as our marketing director has said when asked if the openings published on this site are "real": Our prices to publish job listings are quite high, which is a disincentive for recruiters or anyone else to post job openings here that they don't have. If there's no real job opening and a recruiter just wants to collect resumes, they can do that cheaper on CareerBuilder or Monster. (And our staff also does vet postings.) - Jon Jacobs, eFinancialCareers News
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EF
EFCReader
8 January 2009
I spoke with this recruiter last year. He was totally unprofessional and did not return phone calls. Don't waste your time speaking with him.
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Ro
Robert Stringer
7 January 2009
I work in the energy sace and would like to speak with you.
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eF
eFCReader
7 January 2009
This would be more credible if eFC's investigative staff - if it exists - did more than take the word of a recruiter but dug around to find some of these funds that are recruiting. Some of these articles read like thinly disguised recruiter ads.
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