Discover your dream Career
For Recruiters

What, exactly, is wrong with my CV (2)?

I lost my job a few months ago and am struggling to find a new one. I've got three years' front office trading in the money markets under my belt and have applied for about 100 jobs and had no response so far. I think I'm being rejected for middle office roles as they think I will leave as soon as I find something better and I'm getting no responses from trading firms. Can anyone give me any advice?

EDUCATION

2002-2005 University of London, Imperial College of Science College and Technology

BEng Computer Science - Grade 2:1 Honours

1995-2002 Grammar School

A Level: Computing (A), Economics (A), Mathematics (A)

AS Level: Physics (A), General Studies (A)

G.C.S.E: Business Studies (A*), Chemistry (A*) Electronics (A*), History (A*), Information Technology (A*), Mathematics (A*), Biology (A), English (A), English Language (A), German (A), Physics (A)

CAREER HISTORY

April 2006 - January 2009 Major US investment bank

Officer, Trader I

International Treasury

Assigned as money market trader on the USD and GBP book covering Eurodollar deposit market and Interbank market

Responsibilities involved balance sheet management, funding the bank and its business partners, and discretionary positioning through interest rate mismatch.

Took part in meetings with the Bank of England to discuss funding problems and solutions

Active on the desk in cash deposits, foreign exchange and various off balance sheet products

Off balance sheet trading includes overnight index swaps (OIS), Forward Rate agreements (FRA's) and interest rate swaps.

Main responsibility as cash deposit trader from o/n to 1 year to fund the USD book, setting daily LIBORS as part of BBA panel and squaring the daily overnight balances by using the broker market, Reuters dealing, ECP and Bloomberg.

Proprietary trading book given with remit to trade USD OIS, GBP SONIA's, EUR EONIA's, FRA/OIS spreads, and all STIRT futures and options (Eurodollars, Euribor, Short Sterling, 1Month USD Libor contract, Fed Fund contracts) with main trading in arbitraging difference in USD OIS to Fed Fund contracts.

Cash deposit trading with external clients, interbank market, corporates, internal sales team and all internal trading desk's funding needs

Synthetic cash/implied arbitrage positions created by the use of FX swaps and forwards out to 1 year to swap cash positions from other international and EMEA currencies into USD by trading with the FX STIRT desk.

Experience gained in trading AUD, CAD, GBP, JPY, NZD, THB, SGD, HKD and MXN cash markets by regularly covering other traders.

Part of 2 man project team to create and refine the proprietary online deposit system running now for 2 years.

In charge of hedging the entire banks international currency hedging book on all capital and transactional exposure present within all EMEA and Asia bank entities worldwide, executed by trading with internal FX/NDF desks within Europe and Asia.

Trade CLS positions daily for the bank, to clear overall FX positions.

September 2005 - April 2006, Major US investment bank [same as above]

Global Operations Analyst Program,

Exotic Rates Derivatives Middle Office (Product Development Trading)

Trained within Global Operations Leadership Development graduate program with classroom training in London

Placement within Exotic Rates Derivatives Middle Office

Trained to learn all types of structured interest rate products which enable me to book all types of structures by logical analysis into specialised PDT system breaking each trade into component vanilla parts.

Consistent handling of all cash flow queries involving calculations of coupons on complex structures and liaising with funding MO to fund FX trades balanced with responsibility of booking majority of trades

Close integration with Middle Office P&L function to explain day on day trade amendments and market moves

Strong daily use of computing background to write VBA to efficiently download rates, retrieve ledger data and to build cash flow calculators for different exotic products.

July 2005 - September 2005, Major US investment bank [same as above]

Summer Internship, Global Operations Leadership Program

FX Trading & Rates Derivatives Middle Office

Completed 10-week internship with time on the Foreign Exchange Spot desk and Exotic Rates middle office.

Part of FX on boarding team to open new accounts and counterparties on online FX trading platform

Projects included reconciliation of the whole exotics book to find inconsistent hedges with the use of VBA and Excel to query 8000 trades in total on the exotic rates system, which resulted in correction of P&L.

SKILLS

IT Skills Microsoft Office, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, Visual Basic, VBA, Java, SQL, HTML

FINANCE SKILLS Enrolled for CFA Level I exam

Languages English (Native)

Hobbies Long Distance Running, Snowboarding, Football, Charity work (Setpoint school program, orphanage work in Puerto Vallerta, Mexico)

Awards

London Marathon 2008 medal, raised 2000 for charity

Essex County FA Fair Play Award, Under 18 Barking & District League Football

Bank of England/The Times Interest Rate Challenge 2001 Regional Runner Up

CAREER

Initially gained knowledge of financial markets on 3 month internship within Global Operations and gained a place on the graduate program. The graduate program gave me training of all debt products and derivatives to a high level within the exotic rates middle office with large exposure to trading room and traders with experience of booking highly complex structured trades (Callable Range Accruals, Snowballs, Barrier FX swaps, etc) into the bank's system.

Applied for internal position as money market trader on International Treasury desk which gave me career progression by looking at management of cash books and positions created by funding issues and trading.

Position on USD money market desk has given great insight into the credit crisis since August when the crisis started within our markets, directly involved in managing the bank's balance sheet during these difficult times.

Knowledge of the LIBOR market (FRA fixings and daily setting) and credit spread widening allowed me to start trading FRA/OIS spreads at a time when market was small, now much bigger and more mainstream.

Quote IRS (3's1's and 1y1's), USD OIS (o/n out to 1 year) and FRA's (short dated) for customers occasionally, majority of positions discretionary in nature trading on the bank's account.

Trading short date USD OIS in size against Fed Fund contracts to obtain pure arbitrage.

Managing the bank's funding gap by taking cash position on the yield curve shape out to 1 year, finding term cash in illiquid markets by using direct contacts at Central Banks, Government Sovereign Funds and direct interbank relationships over Reuters Dealing 3000.

Ability to square overnight/tomnext/spotnext balances in most currencies traded on the desk

Overseas experience gained, assigned to Singapore in May 2008 to cover USD and SGD books in bank's local branch there

If you want to get in touch with/offer a job to the owner of this CV, please contact him/her at <a href="specassoc@hotmail.com"specassoc@hotmail.com

Note from the editor: If you want your CV to be reviewed too, please email us at <a href="Editor@eFinancialCareers.com"Editor@eFinancialCareers.com.

author-card-avatar
AUTHORAnonymous Insider Comment
  • Pe
    Person formerly known as Trade
    14 March 2009

    Hi all,

    Thank you for everyone's constructive criticism , yes the Imperial College thing is a schoolboy error but no one's ever pointed it out, former US Bank included until now! The CV is 2 pages but I'll try to cut it to 1 page. I appreciate all the words of encouragement (Bob, RP, Paulie, Brain Boitano amongst others) even though a lot of people are telling me to move on, I think I'll still give a hard try for a few months before considering a Master's or MBA. Lots of help given to help straighten up my CV, thank you all!
    PS. Hotmail messed up my account so any contact pls use specassoc@hotmail.com.

    Cheers
    Person formerly known as Trader Person

  • ti
    titsup
    13 March 2009

    push on mate take note of whats said and not to worry about morons like hannah, there's a loser.

  • Po
    Poor Analysts
    13 March 2009

    onFire: Not sure if your comment was sarcastic..you don't think a straight A student who gets his university name wrong would get his CV binned straight away in the financial world? I'm surprised. Of all people, traders especially can't afford to make such simple mistakes.

  • Ta
    Tarquin
    13 March 2009

    Is Hannah the female version of Henry?

  • on
    onFire
    13 March 2009

    yes, because that makes or breaks this CV, doesn't it poor analysts?

Sign up to Morning Coffee!

Coffee mug

The essential daily roundup of news and analysis read by everyone from senior bankers and traders to new recruits.

Sign up to Morning Coffee!

Coffee mug

The essential daily roundup of news and analysis read by everyone from senior bankers and traders to new recruits.