What a screener is looking for
A quant screen is a fast search for evidence that you can reason with data or build systems that hold up. That evidence is concrete: a model you specified and tested, a system you owned in production, a result you can defend under questioning.
Write each role so its first line carries that evidence. A line that names the problem, the method and the measured outcome does more than a paragraph describing responsibilities.
- -Research evidence: the question, the data, the method, what the result was and how you knew it was not noise.
- -Engineering evidence: what you owned, the scale or latency it ran at, and what you changed about it.
- -Depth signals: a language you can be examined in, rather than a list you once touched.
What to cut
Most of the length in a first draft is not read. Objective statements, soft-skill adjectives, full module lists and tool logo walls all compete for the same attention as your strongest line.
Keep education compact: degree, institution, subject, and the thesis or project only where it is quantitative and you can be questioned on it.
Tailoring by route
The four entry routes are read differently. Research applications are read for the research record. Trading applications are read for probabilistic reasoning and speed, so competition results, games and market exposure carry weight. Development applications are read for systems ownership and language depth.
Read the firm's own description of its loop before you tailor: the rounds tell you which evidence the screen is selecting for. Our firm interview libraries set out each published process stage by stage.
Before you send it
Every line should survive the question 'how do you know?'. If you cannot defend a number on the page in an interview, remove the number rather than soften it.
If you want a read on where your background fits, the fit check compares a job description against your experience and returns the gaps to work on. Nothing on it is stored.