What a power trading CV does not tell you
A CV shows employers and dates. For a power trading hire, that is most of what it shows, and it is not the information the decision needs.
Four things are worth establishing before an interview, not during one.
Which book the person actually ran. "Intraday trader" at the same firm covers someone with their own book and mandate, someone executing another trader's decisions, and someone supervising an algo they did not build. The title is identical. The hire is not.
At what size. A book's scale changes the job. Position limits, the number of markets, whether a bad evening is uncomfortable or existential: someone who ran a small book well may step up, but you should know that stepping up is what you are asking, and price the risk accordingly.
In which zones. Power is local. Profitable years in one market's conditions say little about a market with different drivers, different liquidity and a different relationship between forecast error and price. The question is not whether the experience is real but whether it transfers, and the zones answer it.
Whose performance it was. The hardest one. A good year can belong to the person, to the platform around them, to the seat they inherited, or to a regime that suited their style and then ended. A trader who can decompose their own record, which decisions were theirs, what the infrastructure contributed, what would have happened in a different year, is showing you the thing a CV cannot hold: whether they understand why they made money. The ones who cannot decompose it are asking you to buy a number without a cause.
None of these four is discoverable from paper, which is why a search that screens on paper screens on the wrong layer, and why the register itself refuses to classify anyone by title. They are discoverable in a structured conversation before anyone meets the desk, and establishing them first changes what the interview is for. The desk stops auditing the past and starts testing the fit, which is a better use of an hour of a head of trading's day.
Case notes, desk-build maps and real moves across European power.
Desks spent the year hiring against volatility rather than against growth. The distinction matters because the two produce different vacancies.
Interview processes at trading firms are usually short and usually good. Traders interviewing traders ask sharp questions, decisions come quickly, and the candidate leaves with a clear picture of the book, the risk lines and the people.
On a desk of six, losing one trader is a material event, and everyone involved knows it. The head of desk knows what the book loses. The trader knows what their departure costs.
Senior power trading, quant and optimisation hires across European markets.