MYFUTURE Education and Careers Guide 2021/22

Shivani Sharma
Quantitative Research Analyst -
J.P. Morgan Asset Management
What is your current role?
I am a Quantitative Research Analyst
at J.P. Morgan Asset Management
in London. My team sits within the
‘Equities’ division, meaning that I
work with fund managers who are
responsible for investing clients’
money in the stocks and shares
of a wide range of companies. My
role involves enhancing the process
of choosing which companies
to include and how to construct
these funds using mathematical
and statistical methods, and
programming languages such as
Python. Before joining J.P. Morgan, I
completed a BSc in Mathematics and
Economics at the London School of
Economics.
How did you get your job?
I applied for the Asset Management
Products Summer Analyst
20
Programme in my final year of
university, and was invited to
interview for the Quantitative
Research team given the nature
of my university course. Having
completed the summer internship,
I received an offer to join the firm
full-time as an Analyst.
What would you have done
differently if you were being
interviewed for it now?
I remember being overwhelmed
before my interviews because I
didn’t know anything about being
in Quantitative Research; I assumed
that it wasn’t for me and that I
didn’t have the right skill set, and
this mindset made my preparation
agonising rather than exciting.
A few pieces of advice regarding
interviews would be to try to get
excited for the process, don’t put
too much pressure on yourself, and
have faith that the firm you are
interviewing for wants you to do
well rather than catch you out or
interrogate you. Any firm that has
the opposite attitude may not be a
firm you want to work for.
What’s the best question you’ve
been asked at an interview and
how did you respond?
How many fridges are there
in India? These ‘market sizing’
questions involve combining general
knowledge, commercial awareness
and logical reasoning, and are
surprisingly common in finance
interviews. I think that I started with
the population of India, and got to
my answer by making assumptions
about the number of individuals
per household, the proportion of
households that may own a fridge
and the number of fridges per
household.
One question I was interested
in before starting my career is:
“In your opinion, is this industry/
division a good place to start a
career, and why?”. Just because
a few people chose to start their
careers in one space 30 years ago
doesn’t necessarily mean it is the
place to start a career today, based
on market conditions. This is always
going to be a relevant question, and
asking interviewers for their opinion
tends to go down well.
What skills do you need to
do your job and how did you
develop them?
The key skills involved in my role are
reasonable mathematical ability and
strong logic reasoning. Regardless
of your coding ability (to reiterate, I
had never done any coding before
starting), you will always be able to
learn as long as you can apply logic.
Being comfortable with numbers
is also essential in finding your role
interesting and enjoyable.