Citadel CTO Umesh Subramanian personally reaches out to top candidates during their decision-making process, including recent college grads. The hedge fund talent war, intensified by AI, has led to fierce competition for talent, with firms shelling out hefty pay packages to secure the best recruits.

Subramanian leads Citadel’s tech teams and looks for candidates with intellectual curiosity, team spirit, commercial interest, and strong engineering backgrounds. While he personally contacts sought-after candidates, not all conversations result in hires. Some are redirected to other opportunities better aligned with their interests.

Top executives like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also personally engage with candidates to secure talent. The scramble for AI talent has heightened competition in the hiring process, with traditional tech giants and banks like Goldman Sachs investing billions in tech budgets to attract top talent.

Citadel is highly selective, with a record-low 0.4% acceptance rate for its summer training program in 2025. Subramanian emphasizes the importance of fighting for exceptional talent, reflecting the company’s culture of executives actively seeking out the best recruits.

Read more at Yahoo Finance: Citadel CTO says he personally calls top entry-level candidates who are deciding whether to join the firm