How To Get Hired at a Hedge Fund: A Résumé Dissection

My previous post, How To Get In To College, was obscenely successful. It was, however, somewhat simplistic in its execution, which is what likely lent to its popularity. I tried my hand at eviscerating yet another hackneyed variant on the application: the résumé. Be forewarned that this one is a bit more dense than HTGITC, primarily due to the use of acronyms and prolix technical names that proved, for better or worse, to be low-hanging fruits begging to be picked and mashed into satire.

{Below is a dissected, entirely fictitious résumé submitted to an entirely fictitious hedge fund I called the Rhodes Group. To wit, any company named herein is entirely fictitious; any similarity in name or operation to extant investment management or advisory firms is wholly coincidental. Goldman Sachs, though it makes a cameo here, bears no material similarity to the Goldman Sachs external to the confines of the work of fiction below.}

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Profile

“Boy-Genius” financial wunderkind. Driven by quantitative performance measures. Technically well-versed. Corporate doublespeak rendering of attempt at self-aggrandizing originality expressed as sentence fragment.

Experience

Founder and Managing Director–The Sybarite Group

Coy exegesis of undergraduate experience founding the now defunct hedge fund, Sybarite Group. (named—in that great tradition of hedge funds—through the following formula: “[Arcane Word] Group”) Note on how such determination was inspired by Ken Griffin, a fellow collegiate hedge-fund-founder of now-proven “financial omnicompetence.” Some overinflated description of its “thesis”, and of its “Global Macro” strategy undertaken in the Seeking of Alpha in the thinly-traded, now-delisted Iraqi ADRs and junk bonds, summed up by an analytical diatribe on the implosion of SG’s Interest rate Debt-Equity Arbitrage (“IDEA”) strategy-program platform after several concurrent debt crises in malaria-afflicted regions of the world. [Although, it was “an extremely interesting and rapidly-developing ‘space’” at the time of SG’s inception.] Chalking it all up to “Failure is often the cost of valuable experience gained.”

[Gloss-over of the fact that the applicant was but the titular head of SG, for even though the applicant thought Global Macro to be tailor-made for his non-quant poli-sci degree, one that would contribute “Fundamental Understanding of Hypervolatile Geopolitical Issues And Resultant Market Inefficiencies”, the applicant’s wanton mathematical incompetence relegated him to creating flowcharts, infographics, and writing the quarterly report]

Market Informatics Intern–Informa, LLP

Saccharine remembrance of the ol’ internship days. A description of developing “proprietary Melville MaxAlpha rectilinear delimiting operational quantizers”, which is just a fancy name for some Excel spreadsheet-jockeying done in the back office—at which the applicant Excelled. Heavy usage of “integrated systems approach” when explaining implementation of said MMARDOQs into the high-frequency black box ‘algo’ trading carried out by Baku—the multimillion-dollar computer (named for the Japanese mythical beast that stalks the dream world and subsists by devouring nightmares) connected through high-purity fiber optic cable to the NYSE’s order matching engine and any number of as yet SEC-unregulated dark pools of liquidity. Grave description of managing “informatics throughput spillover”. Quiet demurring in the interest of modesty, however false.

[Failure to acknowledge the fact that the “ur-nerds” who studied particle physics and quantum mechanics and polyformatic abstracted Khurana processes were the ones who worked with Baku and the MMARDOQs, and that the applicant’s only role in their development was coming up with the technical-sounding name and attendant acronym.]

Deputy Compliance Task Force Officer—Goldman Sachs

Affected evaluation of the obligatory stint at Goldman Sachs, replete with doting, sweet, sweet nothings for his GS team and, more broadly, for the applicant’s scanty twenty-one months spent there—which may or may not have been the best, most stimulating year of the applicant’s life heretofore, the definitive answer to which (“May… or may not…”) is strictly guarded under an expansive NDA, as are his specific responsibilities as Deputy Compliance Task Force Officer. A sentence saying something to the extent of “You know how they are at Goldman…” with no explicit referent to whom “they” might be.

[For the maintenance of the firm’s immaculate media profile: “All rights to acknowledge negligence, failure to act, and operational incompetence, willful or accidental, committed by current and former employees of the Partnership are hereby legally waived by the undersigned according to Section 4.18.1221 of the Comprehensive Nondisclosure Agreement. (Comp-NDA)”]

External Relations Chairman & Interim CMO—StratPraxis | Mammon

A rather stodgy description of current duties writing copy for the newly formed StratPraxis Fund Group, a subdivision of Greenwich, CT based Mammon Strategy Partners, a position held until the applicant gets back on his feet. “The current post-recessionary labor market is expected to remain growth-averse for an extended period. Although composing promotional material for StratPraxis is engrossing, it doesn’t allow me to utilize my organic leadership abilities or my people skills. Newly capable in the construction of creative phrasing, I welcome the challenge of applying these skills to the securitization arm of the Rhodes Group.”

Education

Brand Name University—Political Science, 20–


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