Online Application
I had to submit my CV online and it was pretty conventional. Nothing special in tailoring it to the job, however I think my degree in quantitative finance helped as not many people have exposure to quantitative finance this early.
Expect a 3 month wait before advancing to the next stage.
HackerRank Coding Test
I had to do two HackRank coding questions with 100 minutes to solve both. There wasn’t any interviewer involved, it was just you with the questions and a timer. To be honest, I wasn’t even expecting this, so I did not prepare for them specifically.
Example
The first question I faced was this one: Hackerank, where I had to perform a Stock Maximisation for an example scenario.
How to respond for success
This is just like any other coding test, so you need to try your best to come up with a solution. I practiced your LeetCode questions, that would give you a pretty good idea of how these questions work.
Expect a 1 month wait before advancing to the next stage.
First Interview
This interview took about half an hour and I was interviewed by the team leader (Executive Director) himself from the team that I’m currently working in. All of the questions were technical and I did not know anything about the interview except for how long it can take prior to the interview, so I couldn’t and didn’t prepare.
Example
He asked me to name some challenges for machine learning modelling, boosting in machine learning, the assumptions of linear regression in time series, what is fixed and floating interest rate, what is an IRS, how to hedge against interest rate fluctuations, what is an option.
How to respond for success
The machine learning and time series questions came from what I mentioned in my CV. So if you plan to put something on your CV, make sure you know them well. They really do want to see how good you say you are.
The interest rate questions were asked simply because it’s the fixed income strategy team that’s recruiting. A good understanding of the rates is a must for them. To prepare, I honestly this is very high-level and you should try to learn it at school, I don’t think this is something you can crash in a summer.
Expect a 1 week wait before advancing to the next stage.
Second Interview
This took about an hour and I was interviewed by two of the team members (VP) who I am currently working with. Similar to my first interview, this was also highly technical as well.
Example
I mentioned some past experience working with rate derivatives at school, so they asked me to address some of these projects. This took up most of the time of this round. They also asked about linear algebra, brain teasers in statistics, and asked me to solve a math problem with Markov chain property.
How to respond for success
Most of the conversation was about projects related to fixed income products I did before, so my advice would be make sure you know what you put in your CV. Also, for the math and statistics, learn them well at school if you plan to work as a quant.
Expect a 1 week wait before advancing to the next stage.
Second Interview
This took about an hour and I was interviewed by two of the team members (VP) who I am currently working with. Similar to my first interview, this was also highly technical as well.
Example
I mentioned some past experience working with rate derivatives at school, so they asked me to address some of these projects. This took up most of the time of this round. They also asked about linear algebra, brain teasers in statistics, and asked me to solve a math problem with Markov chain property.
How to respond for success
Most of the conversation was about projects related to fixed income products I did before, so my advice would be make sure you know what you put in your CV. Also, for the math and statistics, learn them well at school if you plan to work as a quant.
Expect a 1 week wait before advancing to the next stage.
Final Interview
This took about half an hour and I was interviewed by the Managing Director himself who is the head of all fixed income quant strategy. Again, these were mostly technical questions as well.
Example
He made it clear in the beginning that he’s about to ask questions in four disciplines: math, statistics, coding and finance.
For math: he asked how I would solve a root-finding problem with a black-box function. You obviously have some options, so I went for the gradient descent framework that later requires me to apply finite difference method.
For statistics: it was mainly brain teasers as well but fairly simple.
For coding: he asked two coding languages C++ and python. For C++, he asked what does a pointer do, what is pass by referencing, what do you need to create a copy (answer: a constructor). For Python, he asked me to provide a solution to get all identical values from a list with duplicate elements, what is the difference between a tuple and a list, and what are the conditions for an object to be hashable.
For finance: he asked what is an IRS and how to price an IRS.
How to respond for success
These questions can be tough, but definitely are things that you should know if you want to be a quant. They are not trying to be hard on you, that’s just how the standard naturally is I guess. If you’ve always wanted to go into quant, meaning that you probably are on your way to becoming one, then these questions shouldn’t be unfamiliar to you. It just takes time to get there. If you are completely new to this but want to get in as well, maybe start with a relevant degree or certificate like CQF so that you can learn it properly.
