The $26bn Hedge Fund Which Hires 20-Year-Olds

Are you in your 20s? Do you want to manage $1bn of other people’s money for one of the world’s leading hedge funds? Send your resume to Ken Griffin at Citadel – you could be just his thing.

In a wide-ranging article on Griffin and Citadel, the Wall Street Journal reports that the fund hires a swathe of 20-somethings into analyst roles and that those who survive end up managing 10-figure sums.

Citadel is one of the few large hedge funds to run a campus recruiting program that trains up its own graduates in-house. Historically, most funds have preferred to pinch junior traders from investment banks.

Griffin should be sympathetic to his young hires – he began trading in his dorm room at Harvard and set up Citadel when he was in his 20s. Unfortunately, the WSJ notes that Griffin has a reputation as an, ‘exacting and impatient boss,’ and that 25% of his investment staff have been ‘turned over’ or hired in the past year.

Griffin himself is guilty of micro-managing – every quarter, analysts are made to produce reports on each of the 1,700 firms Citadel’s invested in and Griffin interrogates them on their conclusions.

There are some upsides: Citadel sometimes runs film nights and Griffin has been known to show up in fancy dress (dressed as Dr. Seuss character The Lorax) at the company Halloween party.

A job at Citadel should also appeal to anyone with a feel for apocalyptic scenarios. The fund reportedly has, ‘more than 500 doomsday scenarios constantly running, calculating how the the portfolios would fare under a wide range of different upheavals, such as 1987’s “Black Monday” crash and the 1997 Asian financial crisis.’ With this in mind, Citadel’s investments are focused on positions that could be quickly cut in times of stress. Sound interesting? Click here to see what Citadel ‘team members‘ have to say about it.

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