FX Dealer Academy highlights practical skills gap in dealing job interviews

Nicosia, Cyprus. Candidates with years of brokerage experience can still struggle to secure dealing positions because they lack the practical understanding needed to apply knowledge under pressure, according to Marios C. Kyriakou, head of the Cyprus-based FX Dealer Academy.

The academy said the issue is particularly relevant to Cyprus, which has a sizeable foreign exchange and contracts-for-difference brokerage sector and workforce.

Practical application

In an analysis released this week, the academy examined why candidates with established brokerage backgrounds can falter in dealing interviews.

Kyriakou said the main gap was often not experience itself, but whether candidates could connect what they knew with the way a dealing desk operated in practice.

Candidates may arrive with experience at recognised brokers, several years of desk exposure and relevant qualifications, but struggle when interview questions move beyond basic terminology and into practical situations, the academy said.

Recurring weaknesses

Kyriakou drew on about a decade of experience at mid-sized retail brokers, where he progressed from junior roles to senior and managerial positions before moving into dealer training, desk management and candidate assessment for senior roles.

He said a recurring weakness was an inability to link individual concepts and understand how one decision could affect another.

The academy identified profit and loss calculations, corporate actions, broker revenue from CFDs, market structure and toxic flow as areas where candidates could face difficulties.

Interview scenarios

The weaknesses became more apparent when candidates were asked to address hypothetical situations rather than define industry terms.

Candidates could be asked what they would check first after an unexpected market movement, which risks they identified and how their response would change if a factor in the situation changed.

According to the academy, stronger candidates were generally able to work through a problem logically and explain their reasoning step by step, even when their initial answer was not entirely correct.