[anothermouse]

Experience of finance is required, or you had better be cheap. Experience of a product or a platform is better, but you can't understand those with out the financial knowledge . They will teach you both if you go permanent.

Typically, you need a specific skill, and they hire for that. The more exotic the better. Java? no. C++ on unix? more so. Front Arena or Murex? Easy.

Back office jobs most likely won't give you the financial market/product exposure, but closer you get to front office the less coding happens (and you won't get close without experience.)

My "in" to the industry was having perl as well as their other requirements, which made me unique amongst the other applicants (perm role). I gradually transitioned to being a c++ guy as that paid more and I was optimizing for cash.

How to get there from where you are? We'd need to know "where you are". as cjbenedikt says, what do you do, know etc?