A Practical Guide To Quantitative Finance Interviews

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A told you only the month of his birthday, and told your colleague C only the day. After that, you first said: "I don't know A's birthday, C doesn't know either." After hearing what you said, C replied: "I didn't know A's birthday, but now I know it." You smiled and said:"Now I know it too." After looking at the 10 dates and hearing your comments, your assistant wrote down A's birthday without asking any questions. So what did the assistant write? Analysis of Financial Time Series * I personally like other books more, but this book exposes one to the most number of time series models. I don't know the real birthday: How can I know for sure that C doesn't know the real birthday? Well I know the month. If I were told the month were December, then the options are Dec 1, Dec 2, Dec 8. In which case, C could know the real birthday, which violates the bullet point above. So I can't have been told December is the month. Same logic goes for June. If the month was Mar, Sep or Dec, then M would still not be able to work out the birthday by eliminating the 2s and 7s. Although each company will have its own interview protocol, here are steps you can take to prepare for quant interviews regardless of the organization:

Read about the specific organization with whom you are interviewing to understand their clients and the services, and the philosophy that guides their practice Based on my experience working and interviewing with these firms, I made a list of resources and some interview tips to help students prepare for Quant and Finance interviews. Many prop trading(eg KCG, SIG) , quant trading(Two Sigma, Jane Street, WorldQuant) and market making focused firms (Optiver, IMC, Flow, Akuna) follow this pattern.Please note, the pattern of interviews may change with time, it’s recommended to do your due diligence about the companies you are interviewing with. Math/Logic/Numerical tests: Some may also post these resources on platforms such as YouTube and host live events, which are usually listed in Handshake. These resources can be a valuable tool in your interview preparation, as they are tailored to the specific company for which you are interviewing. Find external resources Heard on the Street is a classic Wall Street interview Q&A book. Many of the questions you will hear in real interviews will have been "borrowed" or modified from this book. In fact, many interviewers want to see that you've done the necessary "grunt work" just by reading through it! The book contains five main sections - Quantitative/Logical Questions, Derivatives Questions, Financial Economics Questions, Statistics Questions and Non-Quantitative Questions. Each of these five areas is incredibly important for the aspiring quant. The questions are by no means straightforward - there are some particularly challenging statistics and quantitative questions. Make sure to study this book thoroughly before taking an interview on the 'Street. 2) Frequently Asked Questions in Quantitative Finance - Paul Wilmott Your interviewer will provide instructions to either take time to work through a problem first and then share your solution, or to work and explain your rationale as you go. In either case, you should be mindful not to get hung up on terms you don’t know or calculations you can’t compute. Instead, communicate what you are thinking and why.I will be graduating in Spring 2022 with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Northeastern University. Despite having had more than a year’s worth of internship experience, I have been at a slight fork in the road in terms of knowing the exact job/career path I want to specialize in. comments on the usefullness: 5 for high frequency or algo trader/researcher, pricing quants (model validation roles), start arb strategists. We can exclude Dec and June months only because the month-knowing person tells us C does not have a chance. And again, Dec and June would have given C a possiblity to know. But exactly because the bday is in Mar or Sep, C doesn't initially know for sure. Quantitative Portfolio Management (Incredible book with interview questions scattered throughout which will also give you a highly developed ability to discuss statistical arbitrage and explain most of the core quant finance topics relevant to hedge fund/ asset management) Let D be the day of the month of A's birthday, we have D belongs to the set {1,2,4,5,7,8}. If the birthday is on a unique day, C will know the A's birthday immediately. Among possible Ds, 2 and 7 are unique days. Considering that you are sure that C does not know A's birthday, you must infer that the day the C was told of is not 2 or 7. Conclusion: the month is not June or December. (If the month had been June, the day C was told of may have been 2; if the month had been December, the day C was told of may have been 7)

I expect the calculus and linear algebra review to go smoothly. I recall most of this content so the preparation process will simply entail solving the questions from the prep book and actively seeking tough questions from my old textbooks. Materials Make sure you understand the usage and output of these functions: lm, glm, anova, summary.lm, plot.lm, acf, pacf. Python Most Frequently Asked Questions on Quant Interviews, 2nd Edition (2019) by Dan Stefanica, Radoš Radoičić and Tai-Ho Wang A preliminary quant interpersonal interview is typically 45-60 minutes, and may be in person or virtual. For in-person interviews, you may be handed a pencil and paper or markers for a whiteboard for your calculations. For virtual interviews, you might work on a shared virtual whiteboard or Google Doc.

How should I prepare?

If you rarely program in C/C++, start with C++ Design Patterns and Derivatives Pricing. This is by no means a complete introduction, but it gives you an overview of the language. comments on the usefullness: 5 for fresh graduate, max(2, 5 - #years of experience) for experienced hires. Basic