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Guest blogging at Paul Kedrosky’s crib, Joseph Weisenthal spots this ad from a hedgie joint on San Francisco’s Craig’s List. The final requirements are:

1) Prepare a cover letter. 2) Flip a coin 50 times. Record the results on your resume as a sequence of heads (H) or tails (T) symbols. 3) Email your cover letter and resume to us.

So what’s the deal with the 50 coin tosses? Joe thinks it could be a way to spot phonies, since the data set is hard than it looks to fake. If you were to fake it, would you have the courage to list head or tails on a row? I wouldn’t, but the odds of that aren’t unreasonably small.

Then again, 50 tosses ain’t that much. Plus, it could be done easily with the random number generator on Excel.

Some commentors think it’s a sardonic comment on the nature of investing. Could be. Although that probably doesn’t explain why they’re hiring.

My guess is that it’s a trick question. Once in the interview, they’ll ask you what kind of coin you used. Any who still deals in U.S. currency will automatically be eliminated from consideration.

Posted by edelfenbein at July 22, 2008 10:27 PM