Finance Apprenticeship Test
Sample the work under a practitioner before committing to a finance career
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 91%
Ross turns career exploration into a staged decision rather than a leap based on famous outliers. First, the candidate accepts that spectacular trading careers are extraordinarily rare and that ordinary success still requires hard work. The candidate then chooses a finance area they genuinely love and studies it deeply enough to form a realistic hypothesis about the work. Instead of committing from a distance, they spend time with a practitioner, enter a training program, or create an apprenticeship-like experience. That exposure provides a direct sample of the day-to-day job. Only then do they decide whether to continue, pursue further education, or move into another industry. The mechanism uses real work exposure to replace glamour and abstraction with evidence of personal fit.
Origin
Extracted from Masters in Business
Core principles
- 01Treat exceptional trading success as an outlier, not a baseline
- 02Choose an area you genuinely want to understand
- 03Learn beside someone already doing the work
- 04Use direct exposure before making the career decision
How to run it
- 1
Reset the odds
Recognize that billionaire traders are rare outliers and do not use their outcomes as the expected career path.
Pro tip Evaluate the ordinary work, not only the most visible winners.
Watch out The apparent ease of isolated profitable trades can make the field look less demanding than it is.
- 2
Choose a field
Select an area of finance that you genuinely love and want to understand.
Pro tip Narrow the test to a concrete specialty such as trading, mergers, financing, currencies, or interest-rate exposure.
- 3
Build understanding
Learn the area as well as you can before treating interest as evidence of fit.
- 4
Sample the work
Spend time with someone doing the role or enter a training program that exposes you to its actual demands.
Pro tip Treat the experience as an apprenticeship.
- 5
Make the decision
Use the experience to decide whether the career is really for you or whether education or another industry is a better fit.
Watch out Do not confuse a captivating opportunity with a suitable long-term career.
In the wild
When asked what a recent graduate should do, Ross recommends finding an area they love, understanding it, spending time with someone doing the desired role, and getting a taste through an apprenticeship or training program before deciding.
→ The candidate makes the decision from direct exposure rather than the appeal of famous trading fortunes.
Common mistakes
Benchmarking against outliers
Using Jim Simons, Steve Cohen, or Ken Griffin as normal career outcomes badly distorts the odds Ross describes.
Committing before sampling
Interest alone does not reveal whether the actual work fits; the apprenticeship step supplies that evidence.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for students and recent graduates considering trading or another demanding finance specialty.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for someone seeking a shortcut to exceptional wealth without sustained study and hard work.
From the transcript
“Find an area that you really love, understand it as well as you can.”
“Probably spend some time with someone who's doing what you think you might want to do.”
“So have an apprenticeship if you will, get into a training program, get a taste for it, and then decide if it's really for you”
From the episode
Interview With Keith Ross: Masters in Business (Audio)