Citadel has an ultrahigh bar when it comes to hiring, and even after being hired, traders still have to contend with the cutthroat expectations of billionaire founder Ken Griffin.
To get a job offer at the top hedge fund, prospective hires have to undergo an assessment process that includes questions about their childhood goals and accomplishments, the Wall Street Journal reported. They must also 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 is often not enough,” Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel as well as the founder and nonexecutive chairman of sister company Citadel Securities, told the Journal.
In fact, several of the firm’s employees are also top performers outside of finance, such as champion powerlifters and chess grand masters.
As one of their core values states, Citadel and Citadel Securities only want top-tier talent.
“We are here to win,” Citadel Securities’ website states. “We are constantly improving and are committed to out-thinking and out-executing our competitors. We take on what others dismiss as impossible and solve the hard problems that others walk away from. This is why we hire the best.”
Meanwhile, Citadel Securities’ CEO told the firm’s graduating class of interns to dominate the financial world by mirroring some of the world’s fiercest competitors: Olympic athletes.
Taking inspiration from an employee outing to watch Olympic track and field events in Paris, CEO Peng Zhao told the outgoing interns to strive for the top of the podium, Business Insider reported.
“I hope many of you in this room will win gold in the field of financial services. I hope that the future champions of capital markets are in this room,” Zhao said in a conversation with the firm’s chief people officer. “In fact, that’s not my hope—that’s my expectation.”
Such high expectations are in line with the competitive nature of the firm, which generated net trading revenue of $2.3 billion in the first quarter, up 68% year over year, thanks to its proprietary algorithms that profit from slight price differences across markets.
To even make it to Citadel and sister firm Citadel Securities, the interns had to stand out in a crowded pool of about 85,000 applicants and overcome an acceptance rate of 0.5%—lower than that of elite colleges like Harvard and MIT.
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 company’s website.
Later in conversation with the firm’s chief people officer, Zhao called out several top Olympic athletes, including French swimmer Léon Marchand, who won four gold medals and set several Olympic records.
“I really appreciated the tiny difference between the gold medalist and the swimmers that weren’t on the podium,” he said. “We’re talking about tenths and sometimes hundredths of a second.”
As for the interns, 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 bit better and faster, and we take home the gold,” he told interns. “So remember that that’s what brought you here into this room. That’s what will bring you onto the top of the podium.”
