Ken Griffin Says The Citadel Hires ‘Live Winners’

To get a job offer at the top hedge fund, potential employees must go through an assessment process that includes questions about childhood goals and achievements, Wall Street Journal reported. They also need to demonstrate an aptitude beyond the job – because financial wizardry won’t always cut it.

“We hire people who are winners in life. Winners in finance often aren’t enough,” said Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, as well as founder and non-executive chairman of sister company Citadel Securities. Diary.

In fact, several of the company’s employees are also top performers outside of finance, such as champion powerlifters and chess grandmasters.

As one of the firm’s core values ​​states, Citadel Securities only wants top talent at the firm.

“We’re here to win,” says its website. “We are constantly improving and committed to outperforming and outperforming our competitors. We take on what others dismiss as impossible and solve the hard problems others shy away from. That’s why we hire the best.”

Meanwhile, the CEO of Citadel Securities told the company’s graduating class to dominate the financial world by mirroring some of the world’s fiercest competitors: Olympic athletes.

Drawing inspiration from an employee outing he took to watch the Olympic track and field events in Paris, CEO Peng Zhao told the departing interns to strive to reach the top of the podium, Business Insider reported.

“I hope many of you in this room will win gold in financial services. I hope the future champions of the capital markets are in this room,” Zhao said in a conversation with the company’s CEO. “Actually, that’s not my hope — that’s my expectation.”

Such high expectations are consistent with the competitive nature of the company, which generated net trading revenue of $2.3 billion in the first quarter, up 68% year over year, thanks to its proprietary algorithms that capitalize on following slight price differences between markets.

To even make it to Citadel Securities, interns had to stand out from a crowded pool of about 85,000 applicants and overcome an acceptance rate of 0.5 percent — lower than that of elite colleges like Harvard and MYTH.

Haydn Gwyn, a former intern who was later hired as a quantitative trader at the firm, described working for Citadel Securities as “challenging” and “stimulating,” according to an interview on the firm’s website.

Later, in the conversation with the company’s CEO, Zhao called out several top Olympic athletes, including French swimmer Leon Marchand, who won four gold medals and set several Olympic records.

“I really appreciated the small difference between the gold medalist and the swimmers who weren’t on the podium,” he said. “We’re talking tenths and sometimes hundredths of a second.”

As for the trainees, Zhao said they can succeed if they strive to emulate the competitiveness of Olympic swimmers.

“Like those swimmers, we often compete to be just a little better and faster and take home the gold,” he told the trainees. “So remember that’s what brought you here to this room. That will get you to the top of the podium.”

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