In a hotel ballroom overlooking the South China Sea, 24-year-old Taylor sits with 13 other university students in hoodies and sneakers coding away on laptops during their school break.
“There’s only a finite pool of truly exceptional students,” said Kristina Martinez, Citadel’s managing director in charge of human resources in Asia-Pacific. “Because of the complexity of what we do and the fact that companies that intersect with us will be looking at the same people, we need to get in early.”
The Hong Kong boot camp is one of many around the world for Miami-based Citadel, as Asia takes on a bigger focus given the company’s expansion in the region. Citadel, the hedge fund business, and Citadel Securities, the market maker, have doubled staff in Asia since 2020 to more than 400 people, even as some Wall Street firms pull back from the region.
One employee joked that Citadel was living proof of China’s old adage that “if you learn math, physics and chemistry well, you can conquer the world.” “The person who’s just kind of awesome at academics, but has not done something above and beyond and not really demonstrated excitement around something, that’s probably not the candidate who’s going to thrive,” she said, in an interview in Hong Kong.
“Unlike job interviews, the intern program is packed with real-time problem solving, social, learning and highly interactive activities,” said Martinez. “There are no surprises by the end of the process.” Griffin’s firms are competing with the likes of Meta, ByteDance Ltd. and Alphabet Inc. among technology giants, along with market-maker rivals including Optiver Holding BV, Jane Street Capital LLC and Susquehanna International Group.
Campus recruiting now starts much earlier than before, and often lasts all year. Human resources departments are no longer just funneling stacks of resumes to hiring managers and doing one-off school visits.