What Makes Zolio Unique?

In a candidate, Zolio knows talent is more than a resume and investment performance is more than a number. In a firm, Zolio recognizes that organizational and cultural elements are important in addition to investing approach and specific recruiting needs. A Zolio match considers all these aspects when recommending a candidate interview with a firm.

Who is a Zolio participant?

Participants are current undergraduates (juniors and seniors), graduate students as well as young professionals who have been in the workplace for 2-3 years. The target age range is 20-28 years old. Although successful investors and traders tend to have strong quantitative skills and often complete business, economics, math and science degrees, the field of Zolio participants is open to all with a genuine interest in investing and trading. A Zolio participant is dedicated, hard-working and committed. Just to complete the program, one must engage regularly for an 8-month period. To excel, one must take advantage of the many self-learning tools available on the platform, such as chart analysis, while producing superior risk-adjusted returns.

How does Zolio achieve a match in a candidate?

Zolio combines a range of tools when assessing a participant’s investment talent and fit with any particular investment firm.

Profile

Initially, Zolio participants will complete a targeted, proprietary profiling tool designed to understand demographics, perceptions, experiences, and other elements of participants’ backgrounds. There is no “right” or “wrong” Zolio profile of investors; rather, the Zolio experience is meant to help reflect the styles of success that would work best in certain types of trading environments. Personality characteristics impact trading styles. Different types of firms require different types of trading strategies. The type of profile that is appropriate for a high volatility trading firm may not be what is required for an institutionally oriented long-only one. A firm that prefers to express investment ideas by purchasing equities will require different investor profiles than a firm that actively trades indices or options.
The Zolio profile helps answer “What type of investor are you?” One may ask the same question outright in an interview, but Zolio captures the answers on many different fronts to provide a consistent and unbiased view.

The types of attributes assessed include reasoning, analytical ability, risk tolerance, conscientiousness, self-management, and openness to experience.

Trading Experience

Actions speak louder than words. An extensive paper trading experience on a live, electronic trading platform with real-time data feeds is conducted over an 8-month timeframe. Participants will be able to invest/trade in the following strategies: Equity long-only and long/short using everything from an intra-day to an 8-month time horizon and simple macro as expressed via ETF’s.

The Zolio profile completed by participants is compared to the actual trading, and here one can see behaviors played out. A participant might think they are risk adverse, but in actual trading, Zolio can observe that they take extreme risks in certain situations. The program can see where they make profits and where they lose them. By understanding behaviors rather than self-reported data, Zolio can project a better understanding of who a participant is as a trader. Trading results are but one input, and they augment, but do not substitute for the hiring process in place at investment management firms.

Investing/Trade Journal

A mandatory, trading journal is completed by participants at regular intervals throughout the 8-month session. The journal is in an electronic format which enables Zolio’s proprietary software to analyze the prose for meaningful and defining keywords. The journal entries provide insight into the participant’s trading strategy, style and thought processes at the time each decision to buy, sell or hold is made. The journal offers clues, for example, to a person’s approach to risk management and idea generation. This fact base provides rich data which is immune to revisionist history.

The unique analysis and combination of all these elements provides a much more robust image of who a candidate is and provides for a more in-depth interview experience.

How does Zolio achieve a match in a firm?

Firms will complete an extensive questionnaire covering:

• Firm characteristics
• Investment style
• Organizational characteristics
• Candidate demographics

View a more detailed sample of the firm questionnaire.

View a sample of the report that a firm will receive about the candidate.

Read a dialogue with participants.

Contact us to learn more about our tools and to understand how Zolio will work with your firm.