My greatest regret is not getting into this firm
If anything, having that many achievers results in bored people doing things that are suboptimal for the performance of the firm as a whole. Whole divisions of wasted talent spawn and self perpetuate.
It's the hiring process hazing ritual that sets the allure, there's not much else to it.
1. What do these firms typically look for in support staff? I’m asking about non trading/quant roles like recruiting/ops/facilities management?
2. What’s the potential upside, not specifically financial, but more along career growth and opportunities for different roles within the firm if you join in a support function?
Appreciate any insight you may have.
Shows that you are both courageous and smart with a positive, vibrant attitude. Thanks for sharing your positivity, much appreciated and more likely than not you will succeed in your try. Good luck :-)
There are many support roles, one is research, and that can mean sorting through a daily pile of a few thousand "documents" (ranging from a single paragraph to a thousand pages) and sorting them into groups, and then being able to rapidly summerise the salient features.
This bleeds into training AI to do the same .. while remaining aware of the nature of the material to be a human check on the AI.
There are also roles for people that can map or otherwise visualise data, pander to the needs of the core earners so that they never need reach far for what food, drink, personal life support they need, etc.
If you're aiming for support you likely want to present your discretion and ability to seamlessly play well with others as dynamics and demands change.
Regardless of what the individual you responded to thinks.. Firms like this have very difficult interview processes. They are looking for something "Special" and this excludes the vast majority of applications.
I took a taxi to my interview, and the taxi driver himself told me he drives many people to the location for interviews, and drives a lot of unhappy people back (failed the interview).
It should tell you something when even a local taxi driver knows how difficult it is to get into these places.
I will try to answer your questions as well:
1) I did support work when i was at "hedge fund" - They want people who can think outside the box and be a culture fit. their culture is well known, and you either fit in or you don't. There is no "faking it".
They generally hire fresh grades from ivy league schools. This way they can indoctrinate the culture. This is not always the case, but probably 70% of their employees were done this way.
2) Many of my former coworkers are now CEO's, COO's etc. Besides the money the culture encourages you to push past your limits and grow. One guy was a developer, he's now the CIO for an international makeup company..
At the firm I worked at, it did not matter what your role was. If you wanted to change groups, you would be given a fair chance to take the tests. if you passed, you were in the new role. The tests were INTENSE... but many "techs" moved to business roles over the years.
Could I have made more money at Jane St? No idea. Probably? But money isn't exactly holding me back right now.
Would I have felt like I was working on interesting problems? For me, personally, I don't think so. I don't find abstract problems as interesting as I do practical ones, and, practically, working at Jane St is working to make a few rich guys incrementally richer. Not really a problem I'm interested in, I guess.
(As an aside, it seems to me retention is much higher in tech than it is on Wall St. The rosy view of this seems to be that Wall St pays so well that everyone retires early, but then again, there's a reason they call it "compensation.")
You have to make your own choices. Jane St has a gleaming reputation--and maybe, for you, it would have been a perfect match!--but not getting hired there seems to me to be a strange thing to consider a "greatest regret."
People don't leave.