I was recommended by the analyst who left the position so the initial screening/HR interviews were passed quickly (except all the personality tests which were terribly long and tedious). After which I had 2 interviews.
1st interview: Initially, it was more like an introduction meeting between me and the immediate supervisor where we talked about the position. I didn't feel challenged and looking back I think this part of the meeting was mostly about character assessment, positive attitude, availability, commitment level and similar non-technical factors. After the long introduction we took a break and I was asked to make comments on the trading solutions, tools, scripts which were built by my predecessor. I was familiar with the languages (C, VBA, Python) and techniques he had used and provided my opinions on how to improve them, finish the unfinished ones. I also gave more solid examples to what I might be able to accomplish for them in the future. This was a very small and intimate team (3+1 people) making insane trading volumes.
2nd interview: Second interview was held as a group interview. I got to meet senior-level member of the derivatives trading team. I was asked random financial knowledge questions to which I had satisfactory answers. I remember specific questions like:
- What's the GDP of xyz country, which country had surprising GDP changes in the last decade, which countries' GDP might be trending in the next decade?
- Which futures contracts have the highest trading volumes with regards to various indices, industries and individual stocks.
- Are you familiar with event-driven hedge fund strategies, can you give examples?
- If a stock's price increases by 0.5% every day what would its volatility (historical) be?
- How many submarine accidents are there on average every year?
- What charting solutions might improve/speed up greek calculations for an option trader?
- Is it a good idea to practice dollar-cost averaging on options?
- Various questions regarding Brokerage and Asset Management firms in Europe and in the US, their AUMs, trading volumes etc.
On top of that there was a mini-case study about average submarine accidents per year where I made some assumptions and tried to demonstrate a high quality reasoning process. Questions felt ruthless and the more I answered the more they stepped it up. I think these questions were a bit too hard and specific considering I was interviewing for a relatively junior position. Later, I learned why they went on with these questions and how it all actually played in my favor. The position received even higher number of applications than expectations from very strong candidates from top universities. After getting the job I coincidentally learned some applicants had degrees from Sorbonne, LSE, Insead, some others which I don't remember. Although interviewers/my new team had really liked the initial interviews based on character and intentions, they told me they wanted to justify their decision by giving me an extra hard technical interview to which my responses were highly satisfactory and better than the competition.
I was offered the position in the week after.