Risk Management Interview at Derivatives Trading Firm, what should I expect?

Risk Management Interview at Derivatives Trading Firm, what should I expect? (Originally Posted: 10/01/2008)

Hey guys,

I am expecting a 20-30 minute phone interview from a derivatives trading firm for a part time internship. the job description is: As a Risk Management Intern, responsibilities will span a wide variety of programming, data analysis, statistical and other quantitative projects. These projects often range in duration, team size, and programming environment. Past projects have included: generating and streamlining risk management reports, designing simulations of various trading strategies, analyzing current trading settings, as well as working on algorithmic trading projects. This position will have a high degree of autonomy as well as responsibility in the design, direction, and approach in these tasks.

Required qualifications: • Knowledge of software and programming design, organization, paradigms, and practices. • Solid analytical and problem-solving skills. • The ability to analyze and approach quantitative projects in a logical way. These skills are often demonstrated through an interest or study of mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering or other quantitative discipline. • Ability to work on projects independently. • Understanding of, or strong interest in, the business of trading and/or finance. • Some knowledge of statistics or experience with data analysis (with Excel, SQL, R, SAS, Matlab, etc.) is helpful.

Optional qualifications: • Programming skills • Knowledge and experience with at least one or more of the following: C/C++, C#, VB/VBA, Perl, Python, LISP, etc.. • Experience with data structures, databases, and/or algorithms are helpful.

What should I expect from the interview? I think they would want to know what skills I have, and back that up with experience. Then, they'd probably want to know how smart I am, so they would probably ask some brain teasers. Are these fair expectations? I hope they're not looking for hard-core programmers, because my programming experience is minimal. But I'm very interested in finance and trading, and I'm good at math so I have analytical skills. Do you think they will hang up on me if they find out I haven't programmed that much? If so, should I try to avoid that by exaggerating my experiences or should I be truthful? Anyone who's done this kind of internship, can you give any insights? Anything would be helpful, thanks so much!