What skills do you need to work in a hedge fund?

The hedge fund industry is made up of a wide array of firms employing people with a wide array of skills. If you're a portfolio manager it helps to be able to generate consistent profits with a Sharpe ratio (which measures risk adjusted returns) well above 1.5, but this isn't the only requirement. There is no single perfect candidate for hedge fund jobs, but you can get an idea of which skills are desired the most by listening to the top hedge fund managers, and by speaking to the recruiters that actually put candidates in front of them.

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What skills do hedge fund managers like?

Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, has spoken at length about the skills which his best employees possess. Speaking to the London School of Economics in 2024, he said that "one thing that always matters to us at Citadel is communication skills," and a willingness to debate. Citadel's people "argue their points with intensity, backed up by data;" Griffin said that doing this requires "deep thinking" and, while mathematical analysis can be useful to get your point across, it shouldn't be treated as a "crutch." Speaking at Stanford's 2026 Leadership Forum, Griffin said that "the success in your career will be defined as to whether or not you're a lifelong learner."

Dmitry Balyasny, CEO of Balyasny Asset Management, appreciates "investment discipline." Speaking on a podcast in February 2026, he said investment staff who "fall in love with one idea" but don't interrogate it or consider other possibilities will struggle.  Balyasny also likes "passion." He said that being in the right role at the right firm is important to help you get past those "miserable periods when nothing is working [and] you feel like the biggest idiot in the world."

Steve Cohen, founder of Point72, similarly believes you need to have passion for the role; he also said in 2024 that you need to be in a "constant state of improvement." This requires humility, and a willingness to ask the "exceptional" people around you as many questions as you can. Cohen said he's "not afraid to look stupid" when doing so.

Ryan Tolkin, CEO of Schonfeld, said on a podcast in December that it's important to "escalate risk" and "speak up to share a perspective that might not be easily surfaced" by other members of a group. He said he built the culture at Schonfeld around this notion, and said that everyone, including junior staff, should be able to "challenge the norm [and] speak up."

Hamza Lemssouger, CEO of Arini Capital, told students at the LSE Alternative Investments Conference this year that working in a hedge fund requires "discipline. It's about waking up every day, doing the same things and then keeping it and improving it." He said you need to be a professional pessimist in order to understand the risks of the actions you take; "you can be optimistic in life and pessimistic in work," he said.

What skills do you need to get a graduate job in a hedge fund?

It can be difficult to demonstrate all the traits above when you're so early into your career; hedge funds have ways around that.

In January, Citadel created a 'head of assessments' role for McKinsey consultant Keith McNulty, who will be developing tests designed to assess the personality traits of graduate hires. Balyasny uses similar tests to match interns with existing employees who can mentor them.

There are many ways to demonstrate discipline and competitiveness outside of a standardized test. For technical roles, like quant and engineering internships, participation in mathematics olympiads, hackathons, or other competitions can aid your chances. For non-technical roles, you could benefit more from being an athlete; Josh King, ex-head of corporate affairs at Citadel, said last summer that the fund has a "large collection of lacrosse players." 

People who work for hedge funds tend to be highly competitive and highly disciplined. Kirk McKeown, ex-head of proprietary research at Point72 said that top hedge fund professionals "treat their brains and careers as if they were pro athletes" by effectively managing their physical and mental health in an intense industry. This is particularly important as you progress towards becoming a PM; Will England, CIO of Walleye, said in 2023 that portfolio management jobs are "psychologically extremely toxic" by nature, and it "takes a certain sort of psychological profile" to withstand the stress. McKeown said that strategies to maintain mental health can be as small as a daily checklist or as large as having a therapist. 

Some skills are more important for juniors than they are for seniors, particularly AI fluency. At Millennium, all interns are encouraged to use the technology, and the fund has created a special intern track for engineers focused on developing AI solutions. Top candidates in any track are able to build AI tools, and explain how they use them. 

Junior traders are also absorbing duties of other support roles; one trader told us young traders today do an increasing amount of complex quant research. He said he needs to "code at a much better standard than junior traders in the past, who only needed to pass Python 101."

It's difficult to break into any of the top graduate schemes; Citadel, Point72, Balyasny and Millennium each accept less than 1% of applicants for their internships. While these numbers can be inflated by subpar applicants, one recruiter told us last year that only one in 100 graduates with 2.1 STEM degrees from "top tier universities," actually broke into the industry. 

What skills are hedge fund recruiters looking for?

Having the right attitude and personality is all well and good, but if you don't have evidence of those traits you won't get anywhere. Headhunters and recruiters look for specific tangible signals that suggest you have all the wonderful traits above.

One recruiter, speaking anonymously, told us that a track record is the most obvious signal they search for when making external investment hires. "I've yet to meet a fund that doesn't require at least a year's worth of track record," he said. "They want to know what Sharpe ratio you're running at and your holding period horizons." If you're applying for graduate roles, this can be hard to demonstrate, but there are options. You can get involved in your university's investment society, or, if you have the available funds, you can run your own proprietary trading strategy. 

An exaggerated track record, however, will set you back. Giorgi De Santis, an ex-Goldman Sachs MD and hedge fund director said in a YouTube video in June that a pet peeve of his is "people who overstate what they achieve" on their CVs. If you interned on a successful trading desk managing $100m in AUM, don't say that you, yourself, were the one managing that money. Wild claims will be interrogated so ensure you have the evidence to back them up. 

Ilana Weinstein, a prominent hedge fund recruiter said in 2023 that, when hiring portfolio managers, she searches for “risk management, portfolio construction, hedging, sizing, [and] the ability to build and manage a team.” When hiring investment analysts, the focus is instead on "idea generation, creativity, independent research, and asking the right questions."

Return to our guide to hedge fund jobs here.

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