Only 1 In 100 Considered: The Quant Job Crisis And What Grads Can Do About It

Picture this scenario. You’re a hopeful quant ready for your career to take off. You’ve nailed your masters in financial engineering (MFE) coursework, built a nice GitHub portfolio, and even squeezed in a philosophy elective for good measure. You hit “submit” on your internship applications, confident that your résumé will shine – but weeks pass, and there’s just silence. Needless to say, you begin to worry about your future. Well, you’re not alone.

Recruiters have told eFinancialCareers that only 1 in 100 graduate resumes for quant roles were selected by hiring firms for interviews or further consideration. Christos Koutsoyanis, CIO of Atlas Ridge Capital and adjunct professor at NYU’s Courant Institute, recently told attendees at Quant Strats Europe that, “many of [his] good candidates are finding it very hard to get internships.”

40% OF QUANTS HIRED THIS YEAR COMPARED TO 80% LAST YEAR

The numbers are rather shocking, with eFinancialCareers reporting on QuantNet’s aggregated employment data that shows just 40% of Courant’s MFE 2025 grads were employed at graduation. That rate is half of its 80% employment rate in 2024.

What’s happening here? Many traditional quant jobs are getting scooped up by AI tech, says Bernard Marr, a contributor at Forbes and author of Generative AI in Practice: 100+ Amazing Ways Generative Artificial Intelligence is Changing Business and Society.

“From the evidence I’ve seen, advanced economies aren’t prepared for challenges that just a few years ago were entirely theoretical but are now very real.”

What can be done to change these fresh quant grads’ odds at landing a job in a market dominated by AI? Budha Bhattacharya, a Goldman Sachs alum now leading quant strategy at Lombard Odier says it’s all about specialization. At the same conference, he also said that grads need to go deep into niche areas like hardware engineering or advanced machine learning.

Many say it’s the human edge that makes a quant stand out. Omar Toulan, Dean of IMD’s MBA program argues that “humanistic skills will become more important, not less,” especially as some content skills will be automated. What sets top candidates apart, he says, is their ability to communicate, to reason logically, and to apply contextual judgment.

You could add creative skills to that list. This appeal to employers is reflected in BITSoM’s latest MBA cohort, where students come from backgrounds as varied as puppetry, classical music, and journalism – proof that creative, emotionally intelligent skills give candidates a huge edge.

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