Get a Desk Referral at a Prop Trading Firm
Prop firms reject most cold resumes before a human reads them, but they hire aggressively from specific labs and schools. If you share one with an insider, that shared thread is your way in.
Find your warm intro →Free · No sign-up · See results in ~10 seconds
A plain LinkedIn search buries the people who would actually help you.
It ranks by prominence, so the most-followed, most-messaged names sit on top. FindWarmIntros surfaces the coworkers who share your school or a past employer - the people most likely to reply - and hands you a ready-to-send intro.
✍️ Ready-to-send intro“Hi - we both studied at [your school]. I’d love to hear about your path to a company you are targeting before I apply…”
… plus everyone else in your network who can put in a good word.
See who can refer you in - pick a quant & trading target:
Why the shared-lab path beats the careers page
Firms like Hudson River Trading, Point72, Jane Street, and Citadel run resume filters tuned for a narrow profile: specific PhD labs, olympiad and Putnam finishers, and a short list of target schools. A cold application lands in a pile with thousands of others who cleared the same bar.
A referral from inside routes your resume to a named recruiter with a note attached, and internal referrals at these firms often carry a bonus for the referrer, so helping you is not purely charity. The person who shared your advisor, your research group, or your competition team is far more likely to vouch, because they can actually judge your work.
How to run the outreach without sounding like a cold applicant
The overlap does the persuading. Lead with the exact thread you share, be specific about the desk or team, and make the reply a yes-or-no.
- Name the overlap in line one. 'We were both in Prof. Chen's optimization lab' or 'I did IOI 2019 too' lands harder than 'I admire your career.' Specificity proves you are not blasting a template.
- Say the exact desk. 'I am aiming for a quant researcher role on a systematic equities desk like Cubist' shows you did homework and lets them route you to the right person, or tell you it is the wrong team.
- Make replying cost 30 seconds. Ask one closed question: 'Would you be open to a 15-minute call this week?' Attach nothing, request nothing else. A busy trader answers a small ask, not an essay.
- Ask for the referral only after the call. Once they have seen your background, say it plainly: 'Would you be comfortable submitting me as a referral to your team?' Naming it removes the guesswork.
Finding the right insider without hours of scrolling
The hard part is not the message, it is finding the one person at a firm of thousands who actually shares your lab, program, or school and sits near the desk you want. Filtering LinkedIn by company plus school still leaves you guessing who is reachable and who will recognize your name.
FindWarmIntros does that finding-and-ranking step for you: it surfaces the real people at a target firm who share your school or past employer, ranks them by how strong the overlap is, and drafts the opening note so you lead with the shared thread instead of the ask. You still send it and build the relationship, but you skip the scrolling.