What's Really Required of the Hedge Fund Resume: Track Record

Hedge funds are the big winners in the new regulatory landscape. Gary Cohn of Goldman Sachs says so. Ok, hedge funds are furiously disputing the notion that they're the new risk takers, but there's little denying that former banking prop traders are keen to join them - witness the resurfacing of two BAML prop traders at Brevan Howard only this week.

If you're a trader who wants to move to a hedge fund, or if you're a marketer who wants to move to a hedge fund, what do you need to emphasise to get noticed?

Answer: your track record, in as much detail as possible.

For Traders

The big thing for the aspiring hedge fund trader is an audited track record of profitability. The ability to prove, unequivocally, how much you personally made with the capital you were given, is what hedge funds really want to know.

"Traders from banks who are moving into hedge funds often have problems because they can't prove how much money they made," says David Durham of hedge fund search firm Durham Consultants. "A trader at a hedge fund will be able to prove that he made X in the first year with Y of capital. If you've worked in a bank you won't have this. It will also be difficult to isolate how much profit was due to flow and how much was due to prop trading."

Ideally, Durham says aspiring hedge fund traders should put together a short one page resume detailing their education and work experience. He says it will be taken for granted that you attended one or more top universities and worked for one or more top banks, plus (ideally) a hedge fund.

To supplement the brevity of the resume, Durham says details of past trading performance should be included in a detailed addendum specifying how much you made in each month of the past few years, plus volatility and information on the Sharpe ratio.

For Marketers

If you want to work in hedge fund marketing, which is also an area of popularity right now, you'll need to be as precise as possible about your past achievements on your resume.

"Don't be fluffy," says Peter Elliott at hedge fund search firm Elliott James Consulting, a hedge fund recruiter. "You need to be very clear about what you've achieved.

"What people really want to know is whether you can close a deal," says Elliott. "They want to know what you've raised or - if you're coming from another sector - what your sales figures are, whether you've beaten your target and whether you've beaten your team.

"They're also interested in aftercare," adds Elliott. "Hedge funds want sticky money. They want people who can bring money which will stay around long term. It's good to emphasise your repeat sales."

Eliott doesn't believe in one page resumes for marketing roles. "A one page (resume) isn't long enough. Two pages are preferable," he suggests.