BlackRock’s HireVue is standard for everyone each year, regardless of division you are applying to. The two questions are were: - Why are you applying to BlackRock? - Tell us something unique about yourself that we cannot gather from your resume (hobby, interest, achievement, etc.) 1st Round Interview: Two 30-minute interviews with people from the Trading & Securities team. It was entirely personality, teamwork and values-based, with no finance-related questions at all. Each question was prefaced with a short couple of sentences about BlackRock’s values, and I was told to keep these in mind when answering the question. Some of the questions that were asked: - You join a new team and think you have identified ways to speed up their existing processes, how do you proceed to bring this up to the team? - A client has a problem with some of the work that you or your team has carried out for them. How do you approach resolving the issue? - A client (or a colleague) has a problem with some of the work you have done, and it is due to a fundamental lack of knowledge in the area. How do you proceed? - You join a new team and realise that people are not communicating well with each other. How do you improve this situation? What might you implement to help? How do you convince people of the benefits of teamwork and collaboration? It was useful to know BlackRock’s values, even though they were mentioned prior to each question, so these could be included in the answers, however generally answering with a reasonable approach was sufficient. In particular, highlighting how to overcome communication issues, or communicate effectively, was important. 2nd Round Interview: Another two 30-minute interviews. My first interview was cut short, but the interviewer asked me to describe an interesting project I’ve worked on and a difficult decision I’ve had to make. The second interview was with a senior trader, who asked the following questions: - Name a time you’ve worked in a group with people you didn’t have much in common with, what did you learn and what was the outcome? (It was useful to mention how I will/have applied what I learned in team working experiences going forwards) - Name a time you’ve worked in a team and what you did to ensure you worked efficiently together? - What is one blanket theme affecting the financial markets right now? What is driving this? - How might macro investing models make decisions, and could you expand a bit on what they might do? - How could you use quantitative techniques in investing? (The interviewer followed up with asking about techniques for Fixed Income assets only, ignoring equities which I started answering for) Programming skills were also discussed, and how important it is to have these skills as a trader now, so I would definitely recommend having some coding-related skills or project to talk about in the interviewer. It was emphasised how important it is to learn from others, and how no matter how senior you are, everyone at BlackRock is very keen to help out where you need it, or are curious. Both interviewers gave the impression of a very collaborative culture, which was very positive. They can take many months from the HireVue to being invited to a 1st round interview, however being invited to the 2nd round happened within roughly a week of the 1st round being completed. The offer decision took an additional 2-3 weeks from the final interview, so not the quickest with responses. Overall, I think it was a fair interview process, with an appropriate difficulty of questions, and a good company in terms of values, hiring process and collaborative culture.