Commodity Trader Trainee

This was a second-round interview after a 1 on 1 on-campus interview a few months earlier for their first year of a new commodity trader trainee program (starting 2008). They paid for an expensive flight, car service, hotel, and dinner the night before. Full day of 1 on 1 interviews (30-45min / ea) with CEO of trading subsidiary, director of research, top traders / 'product line managers', chief information officer, chief risk officer, others. The firm's structure is very small and very flat: there are a few top traders by commodity group (e.g. oilseeds, grains, energy), a trading flow desk (which later moved to Chicago), financial risk management desk of a few people (hedging book of exotic derivatives sold to farmers/consumers), a large research group to provide estimates of ags/softs commodity fundamentals that underly most of the risk taking. Not met: mid/back office, a risk group that calculates VaR & position limits using SAS. Traders were either from the midwest or foreigners (much of the office are foreigners from other offices on an extended assignment). Questions included the usual (walk me through resume, etc.), a few trading questions using supply & demand numbers and CBOT listed commodities, probing questions into my economics research, chance for mine questions about the program and firm. Modest selling of the program/firm was focused on a friendly/open culture with lots of smart collaborative people. Lunch was a terrible location (Uno's), but it was snowing I think.