Citadel - GHSmart Assessment? - Help

Hi Everyone,

 Has anyone have to go through a GHSmart Assessment? I am going through the itvw process with Citadel and they are making me go through this after the case study.

 Any insights? is this common practice?

Thx!

 

This is standard for investment professional roles. You're going to sit down with an interviewer for a few hours and talk about yourself, from early childhood through to your most recent job.

It's not really a thing you can (or should try to) prep for. You should just be honest and speak confidently about yourself. Try to frame a consistent narrative of curiosity, capability and self-improvement. Don't lie, don't deflect (they specifically look for and then dig into deflections), and don't ramble. Articulate clearly. Strong communication skills matter.

It's not an IQ test and it's not a personality test. The questions are not technical, they're targeted prompts for you to talk about yourself across jobs and personal experiences. Sometimes they'll ask followup questions or formulaic clarifying questions.

This stage can only disqualify you if the interviewer feels you're being dishonest about your background or there's a major red flag (for example, you have a persecution complex and speak ill of all your bosses). I'm not going to comment on the assessment's value, but Citadel uses it to learn about your holistic leadership potential and historical ability to execute on an arbitrary mandate coming into a job.

 

So after this test (I already passed the case study), would you say my chances to obtaining an offer are looking good?

Also, with regards to the position, I would be working with the risk side, not really investments, I have a background coming from a commodity trader in its structuring debt and credit group. Is compensation for that side of business competitive in HFs?

Thanks

 
Most Helpful

The GH Smart interview starts with your teen years and moves through to your last job. It's a pretty intensive assesment. Basically they want to make sure you're actually natively interested in securities selection and not just trying to seek prestige or get as much money as possible, since people with these motivations tend not to succeed in the business. There are no technical questions it's a purely "fit" style interview.

The way you should prepare is by going through your entire life, the important decisions you made, and why you made them. Focus on pivotal success/failure moments and ask yourself why you succeeded or failed, and what lessons you learned. Don't make excuses for failure (pinning blame on others). Ensure that the story you tell sticks to a consistent theme about what motivates you to succeed. 

The assesment actually costs quite a bit of money (I think the psychologists who administer the interview charge $10k/h for 2-4 hours worth of work). If they're doing this assesment they've probably narrowed down the # of candidates to at most 3. When I took the interview, I was subsequently hired.

 

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