After completing automated video interviews where the website recorded my answers to commercial awareness and competency type questions, I got offered a place on the day-long assessment centre. It had 3 parts, a team exercise, a case study in the morning, then a trading game after lunch and then interviews with people from the business. The day is quite intense overall as there is a well-paid summer internship on the table and there is a lot more candidates than places so competition is tough. You need to strike a balance of not being shy and quiet, but being not too aggressive either. Basically, you need to have your voice heard and contribute to the discussions in an effective manner. Be articulate and outspoken, and assertive when voicing your ideas (something probably more easier said than done). The quality of the candidates therefore, the "bar" is quite high as well, as far as I remember there were only a few people from semi-target universities such as Bayes, Bath, etc. the rest were all from Oxbridge, Warwick, Imperial and LSE. The trading game is basically about the same thing that a trader does on a daily basis, "making markets" which means always being ready to buy and sell an instrument at a certain price. Each round, there is a dice rolled in each team, and each team needs to give their bid and ask quotes, and also any action they might want to take (lift another team's ask, sell at their bid, etc). It is important to manage your risk, and not "give away" your current position by providing too high/low bids/asks. I was quite confused throughout the game and its quite hectic so I didn't really realize what exactly is going on. It is also a quite small room so you can easily overhear other teams strategy. Then the results of the game is announced and there is an schedule of interviews going on in two separate rooms. I was interviewed by two directors from the business, so quite senior, it was a discussion of my resume and background, current events and even some mental math at the end. I didnt get an offer but learned quite a lot in this one day. I'd advise anyone to be confident in their answers, have a strong handshake etc. small things matter.

I applied online and HR called back in about 4 weeks to invite me for an interview. 1st Interview: The first interview was a pleasant conversation about the position and my resume. I was asked about my familiarity with BNP Paribas and I shared some of my knowledge about the bank's history and global presence including its subsidiaries in various countries. I also mentioned my familiarity with the 2000 merger and individual activities of Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) as well as Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. I had read some of the bank's financials as well and I think the interviewer was quite impressed at that point. 2nd Interview: Second interview took place two weeks later and I was invited one week after the first one. I met the department manager who was a partner and one of her associates. This round was a lot more technical and after initial introductions I was provided with a notepad and a pen and they started asking me technical and quantitative questions about trading, finance, commodities and economics. The ones I remember are: - Can you explain the Black-Scholes-Merton equation and all of its mathematical and financial components? - Can you briefly walk me through HMM (Hidden Markov Model)? - What do you think about the evolution of statistics and machine learning in the future? - What are the critical parameters in a Monte Carlo simulation? - Tell me about commodity categories. - What do you know about cross-border energy trading activities in Europe? - Can you tell me about agricultural trading at global scale? - How would you prefer working with spatio-temporal datasets? - Do you know the differences between GFS and ECMWF weather prediction models? - Explain stochastic volatility vs implied volatility. Would you be able to write a program that graphs volatility surface? Briefly explain how. I was able to answer most of the technical questions except some follow up questions about HMM and Monte Carlo and some of the meteo-related questions as I only had some experience with the weather forecasting from sailing until that point. I got an offer before the end of the same week.