early career setback advice

[quantMSCF]

Hello,

I need some career advice and possibly mentorship about my current situation.
I graduated from MSCF in 2022 and worked for ~2 years for a small prop trading firm as a QR.
My employment there terminated, and I have now found a new job as a Quant Analyst for a big bank.
Finding a new job was hard and took me a lot of time, and I have accumulated some months of unemployment gap.
During these months I realized that I probably missed some opportunities, and I did not take the most out of MSCF, and I am now trying to figure out a plan to relaunch my career.
How many months of unemployment do you think could be harmful to my future employability?
How could I reasonably justify this gap in my resume? With Non-compete/Garden-Leave? Could I somehow mitigate it by enrolling in CQF and putting it on my resume?
Another thing to mention is that I signed my new job contract 2 months ago, and I might still have to wait for another 2 months to start working because of the Visa transfer and immigration paperwork.
I am now 26, and I want to mitigate the impact of this setback on my future career.
What about starting a PhD in a couple of years, taking a part-time Master's in ML maybe, or again mitigating my unemployment gap with CQF or any other certification?
What about tweaking the dates in my resume in my favour, within acceptable limits? Maybe using the date I signed the contract, considering only the immigration paperwork is taking ~4 months.
I do not want to do anything sketchy, but I would also like to put this bad experience aside and get a fresh start.

Thanks!

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Don't do anything sketchy. It never ends well.
Having a gap in your employment is fine, especially in this market.
You already get the next job lined up so no need to stress over the time it takes for the paperwork to process. You have no control over this.
During this time, maybe take some online certificate, courses that would be useful for your incoming job.
Read books, network, travel, meet family and friends. Maybe this will generate some fresh idea of what you want to do in your future.
Life is short. This is just a job.

 

[quantMSCF]

Thank you for your advice!
Do you have any thoughts about CQF, or do you recommend any other certificate in ML applications to finance?
My long-term career goal is to work in QR or portfolio management.

Thanks!

 

[joe_boy]

Thank you for your advice!
Do you have any thoughts about CQF, or do you recommend any other certificate in ML applications to finance?
My long-term career goal is to work in QR or portfolio management.

Thanks!

Why not a part-time masters in ML or Statistics? I have seen some LinkedIn profiles that have very good placements with those two degrees. I understand it may be a bit expensive but I believe it will help you far much more than a professional certification. Think I heard from Dmitry (on his YT channel) that US employers don't really care about those certifications.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

CQF is unnecessary when you already have an MFE degree. Taking some stats/ML courses to freshen your skills from time to time would be a good option.
We also have a few interviews AMA with members working in QR here. I recommend reading those threads to glance valuable bits of advice.

 

[quantMSCF]

Thank you for your help!
I am going to start my new job as a quant analyst soon.
After graduating MSCF, I worked for 2 years for a small prop trading firm doing quant research on equity options market making, and now I’ll be a senior quant analyst doing ML work on the sell side, but not on the investment side but more on risk, capital requirements and retail, but with potentially very good exposure to ML and statistics.
Do you think, being already 26, and having accumulated quite a big gap in my employment, I can still get a shot in 1 or 2 years at quant research on either buy/sell side with a focus on front office investment and trading?

Thank you!