Thanks Andy.
My job is located in Horsham, PA.
I was contacted by a recruiter to interview for this job, so I'm not sure if that helps. I do believe the personal website I had set up as a student (it's gone now) was helpful for them to find me.
I have a similar website in data analysis as I am looking to work more permanently in this sector. For the moment I'm selling the traffic, which is at least in the short term paying ok. But a little intense. I also have a call centre job on top of that.
Quite a few recruiters and employers are looking for this as it cuts a lot of crap out for them. Seeing PhD beside your name, or even cold calling employers doesn't say the same as "here's a dataset, here's a few analyses and here's why they're useful". In fact even top grads in finance or stats will make dumb errors thanks to no practical experience. The classic in quant finance is taking volatility out the BS equation - many will not spot it's a non-stochastic differential equation, something that a more practical candidate will spot.
To the OP - there's a few issues here. The reason I'm in this situation is because I didn't move when I had the chance. I used to be a quant, but my team got shut down right after I started. It took me 1 year to realise it, but I realised the stupid role they moved me into was A) not me and B) fell very far short in terms of mathematics (occasional excel is not even remotely close to using my skillset and left me uncompetitive in any mathematical job market). But by then I was locked into a completely different market which I wasn't suited to. I wish I understood it better, but what had happened is that too many of the quant skills I picked up from uni or being a quant were lost by then and employers know a grad or someone more recently employed in the sector would have them.
I stayed in PF for 6 years, but by the end I was dragging myself into work on a daily basis for a job that had very little to do with maths and which required numerous skills I shouldn't have been expected to have given my background and where sacking or being paid off was inevitable - I got paid off after that. For a few years the job had been ok as I got somewhere and moved to a far better firm, but ok became underperforming as frankly I was in the wrong job all along. And take a hint from Andy's question - he's the
owner of this site and has to query how people made career changes? The reason even he doesn't know is because maths has become by some way one of the toughest areas to do career changes within - I was roadblocked every which way whenever I tried to correct this. So you will have to be careful. It's not impossible, but most people in other careers don't realise the implications and assume it's a career for life and that all this career change stuff is people being prima donnas - job loss/sacking/unemployability never comes into their minds given that you'll have plenty of other areas where people can either spend 40 years in the wrong job and not lose it, or swan into a new one with very little hassle. Actuary is the only mathematical career where you can take the piss that I know of, but even then it'll only take one major shift to change that. And there's indications even that's changed. Do you honestly want to bank on your position being protected by necessity for 40 years?
The thing to look at is day to day work. This is where things vary hugely - the previous poster describes his work as IT work, but that's quite ambiguous as I think he means programming and scripting. Most IT work has little programming and is more involved in servers/support for issues people have with their systems. I'm not gonna say which will be better for you - but be aware of the demands of this job and also don't try use it as a stepping stone to data science (in fact you might rule out data science by taking such a job - there no shortcuts or "stepping stones" and you won't have the energy to correct that mistake). If you like the adrenaline rush and can do this, maybe try it. But if you really prefer programming, avoid. There's a VAST difference between doing a job like the previous poster's (where it sounds like it's not exactly the dream you might expect but where his skillset is very much used and fun) and doing something like what I ended up in or IT support. Hell being quant wasn't all I expected it to be, but it was fun and the satisfaction and motivation I got (vs the incessant stress of other roles I did) tied in with it being the only job I ever had where I had virtually no issues performance wise. This proved hands down that every douchebag that came out with this "ah sure all jobs are the same" crap were patronising, condescending idiots and badly, badly wrong.
Also to round off the misery if you do wind up in the wrong job look forward to everybody in your life being self appointed experts in whatever it is you do (while in their tiny little world you know nothing), usually being wrong and pissing all over you, until you put it right. And putting it right can take time. It went wrong for me in 2006 and I'm still paying through the nose for it.
