The Blackstone Group

Referred by someone from the BREDS team I met at a campus careers fair. HR contacted me via LinkedIn one day later saying they would like me to apply. I sent my C.V. and a couple of weeks later I was contacted and asked to come into the London office for a 1:1 with two colleagues and a multiple choice numerical test. The maths test was 30mins long and no calculator was allowed. The questions were Advanced AS + level and quite challenging. Next I had a 1:1 with someone from the team. Again, he asked primarily maths/finance related questions (think IRR/Cap Rate etc.) and was asked very little about my previous experiences or even why I wanted to work for BX. The second interviewer was apparently called in for a meeting and so was unable to interview me. I was then asked to go home and I got a rejection email from HR an hour later. The impression I got was that they are basically looking for human calculators, with no preference towards other abilities or any existing network you might have in the industry. Don't bother applying if you haven't done maths/finance to a high level.