{"id":1217,"date":"2026-06-11T19:46:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1217"},"modified":"2026-06-11T19:46:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:46:39","slug":"ken-griffins-citadel-companies-just-hired-350-interns-only-0-36-of-over-115000-young-applicants-made-the-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1217","title":{"rendered":"Ken Griffin\u2019s Citadel companies just hired 350 interns\u2014only 0.36% of over 115,000 young applicants made the cut"},"content":{"rendered":"
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But even as the billionaire\u2019s companies expand their entry-level ranks, landing the summer gig has never been harder.<\/p>\n

Read more Exclusive: Consumer device giant LG Electronics to launch blockchain to place and sell ads<\/a><\/p>\n

More than 350 interns across Citadel and the company\u2019s sister firm, Citadel Securities, just kicked off their program this Monday. Citadel\u2019s young hires are starting their summer gig with an offsite in Palm Beach, Florida, where Citadel Securities will end their stint for the season. It\u2019s the largest intern cohort the business has ever had, spanning 90 colleges globally, but that didn\u2019t mean fresh-faced professionals had an easier time landing a spot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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This year\u2019s competition hit a boiling point, with more than 115,900 applications flooding in for the limited spots, up 6.4% from the 2025 record. Only 0.36% of candidates wound up making the cut this year, marking another record for some of Gen Z\u2019s most coveted internship spots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inside Citadel\u2019s internship: real business responsibilities with $4,300+ weekly salaries\u00a0<\/h2>\n

During the summer gig Citadel interns work on team projects that have a tangible effect on the business across pipelines including quantitative research, engineering, and investing. Nearly all of the recruits come from backgrounds in computer science, physics, and statistics, while around a tenth are economics and finance majors. And Citadel is looking to build the skills, knowledge-base, and network of its young talent over the two-and-a-half month internship; throughout the process they\u2019ll be clued in with other company employees, paired with a mentor for career guidance, and meet weekly with their managers for one-on-one conversations. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At the end of the program, the early-career talent will present their projects in hopes of securing a return offer. Citadel\u2019s leadership predicted that a majority of interns will receive a full-time work opportunity after the program, as many have in years past. And they turn out to be more successful hires in the long-run; the company found that campus recruits are twice as likely to one day become a high-performer at the financial titan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During their 11-week-long stint, the interns won\u2019t have to survive on ramen noodles and instant coffee while working at the financial giant. Interns at Citadel and Citadel Securities receive around $4,300 to $5,800 weekly in base salary, which is dependent on their job and professional experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Additional perks include a signing bonus and a $15,000 housing\u00a0stipend, or the choice to live in the corporate housing. Citadel is looking to attract the brightest quants and traders\u2014and it\u2019s willing to shell out to snap up the best young talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to have an almost insatiable appetite for exceptional talent, and we\u2019ll continue trying to identify as much of it as we can because we believe it\u2019s a critical competitive advantage,\u201d Fabian Figi, leader of recruiting at Citadel Securities, recently told Business Insider.<\/em> \u201cOnce we identify that talent, we\u2019ll move incredibly fast to secure it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Visa thinks it\u2019s a great idea for AI agents to shop and pay for things without human approval<\/a><\/p>\n

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Fortune <\/em>reached out to Citadel for comment.<\/p>\n

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Bright spots in a dire hiring market for young talent\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Young professionals looking to launch their careers in office internships are watching the opportunities slip through their fingers. Even workplace leaders are being blunt about the issue; Hayden Brown, the CEO of freelance marketplace Upwork, acknowledged that there\u2019s been a lot of \u201cfear-mongering\u201d about entry-level prospects in the AI era. And WeWork CEO John Santora admitted Gen Z\u2019s hiring nightmare is real\u2014and called out leaders to fix the dilemma.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s no question that the entry-level hire is under pressure,\u201d WeWork CEO John Santora said onstage at Fortune<\/em>\u2019s Workplace Innovation Summit earlier this year. \u201cIt\u2019s incumbent upon all of us to bring that talent in and to educate the talent and teach them to be the future growth of all our organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Internship postings on Handshake, a platform for early-career professionals, plummeted 16% earlier this year. In the tech sector alone, hiring for recent college graduates among the 15 largest businesses has dropped by over 50% since 2019, according to a 2025 report from VC firm SignalFire. Talent right out of school made up 15% of big tech hires before the pandemic; now, they account for just 7%.<\/p>\n

And those vying for the few open positions are up against a tidal wave of competition. The internships listed on Handshake received nearly double the number of applicants during the 2024-2025 academic cycle than it did the year before, sharply increasing from 62 candidates per job up to 109. The applicant ratio has risen starkly within just a matter of years; internships during 2022-2023 only received an average of 43 applicants, two and a half times fewer than last year\u2019s tally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Luckily for Gen Z, more companies are ramping up their early-career efforts to bring in more young talent. The CEO of IT firm Cognizant, Ravi Kumar\u00a0 Singisetti (also known as Ravi Kumar S), said that he would create more opportunities for entry-level professionals, \u201chiring more school graduates than ever before.\u201d And the leader of social media platform Reddit says that the business is actually ramping up its recruitment of Gen Z workers. Rather than let AI automate junior roles, billionaire Steve Huffman is hiring young digital natives precisely for their tech savvy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Tech giant IBM is also on the hunt for Gen Z workers. Earlier this year the $253 billion company revealed that it\u2019s tripling its entry-level hiring and will even be onboarding for roles supposedly endangered by AI, including software developers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe companies three to five years from now that are going to be the most successful are those companies that doubled down on entry-level hiring in this environment,\u201d Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM\u2019s chief human resources officer, said earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Read more Anthropic just proposed taxing itself to pay for the jobs its AI destroys<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Citadel is recruiting more entry-level talent for its internship than ever before. It\u2019s a welcome opportunity in a dire market for Gen Z.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jobs"],"yoast_head":"\nKen Griffin\u2019s Citadel companies just hired 350 interns\u2014only 0.36% of over 115,000 young applicants made the cut - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1217\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ken Griffin\u2019s Citadel companies just hired 350 interns\u2014only 0.36% of over 115,000 young applicants made the cut - Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Citadel is recruiting more entry-level talent for its internship than ever before. 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