Market Risk, Summer Analyst

Accelerated Process. There were two phone interviews, both of which were done within a week of each other at the very beginning of December. You had to pass the first interview to move on to the second one. If you moved past the phone interviews, you were invited to a superday at their offices in New York in mid-December. They had two in total for the accelerated process with around 6-8 kids at each. There were 4 back to back half an hour interviews with two interviewees in the morning. After this, you had lunch and half the group were told that they could go home which meant they didn't progress forward. The remainder had between two and four one on one interviews with senior employees in the department. If you didn't get the offer, you were told you were on hold and would hear back within 4-8 weeks. They usually got back to you with this in about 3 days.

The interviews themselves were very largely fit focused. They wanted to know your interest in market risk. They also looked for some knowledge such as VAR, the different types and with a little bit of market discussion. Anything you brought up was fair game so if any mention was made of options they would ask you more detailed technicals. There were a few probability questions thrown into the mix as well. The interviews were by and large the same with regards to technicals regardless of what stage of the process you were in, so I get the feeling that once you covered some basic technicals the decision was entirely based on whether you were genuinely interested in market risk and were a good fit for the department.