Thought this Ken clip was funny. He said at Citadel, he looks for athletes who did well academically. The teams I worked w/ during my 6 years there were some of the most unathletic human beings ever assembled. Two mini stories:
1. Maybe once a year Citadel would get Yankees box seats with an indoor portion w/ food/couches/tvs the outdoor portion of the stadium to see the game in more regular seats.
I mostly watched the game outside. Half my team watched the game inside on the couches w/ the TV and food. I went to check in on some of them halfway through the game and they are staring collectively at the TV. That's when I came to an insane realization... they didn't know this, but they weren't watching the right game. It's like the 5th inning and they were just as surprised as I was that they weren't watching the Yankees. Some of the best math, statistics, and engineers you can possibly work w/ but even understanding basic sports was a rarity.
2. The other activity Citadel does in NYC is book out some of the Chelsea Piers annually. One of the things I did was bowling. I bowl maybe once every other year and managed to barely break 100. Not bad, not very impressive.
I was subsequently handed a Starbucks gift card. I asked, "what is this for?" the response, "you got the high score". I was surely like, oh just for my group's game, that's cool. But then I learned that it was nearly every lane Citadel had booked out. I subsequently walked the bowling lanes and saw scores that would be indistinguishable from elementary school birthday parties.
My teams were on the more quant side of things so this definitely is not universally true but from my experience if anyone was winning medals for competing in their past, it was likely from Math Olympiad and not the Olympics.
Ken Griffin on the single factor he looks for when hiring at Citadel:
"show me an athlete who did well academically."
"an athlete because they know what it takes to win and they've had to experience loss."
talent is everywhere. what's rare is someone who knows how to lose, recover, and still perform at a high level.
same thing separates profitable traders from everyone else.