Regulatory Risk

The interview process is essentially Confirmation with HR - Excel Test - Phone Interview with HR - Phone Interview with Director - Excel Test - Final On-Site Interview. Confirmation with HR is just a quick document stating that you're eligible to work in the US, etc. Excel test is take-home and you have 2-3 days to complete. It's basically a bunch of documents, pdf files, excel spreadsheets, etc., that you have to answer questions to. It is quite deceptively detail-oriented. I recommend triple or quadruple checking each step. Phone Interview with HR consisted of brainteaser questions similar to those observed online. Phone call with director lasted about an hour; various questions on haircuts, bonds, and similar brainteasers to those found online. I was not able to proceed after this step and received no feedback as to why. In full transparency, I assume it is because I did not answer the haircut/bond problems fast or articulately enough -- in demonstrating my competency in these topics with the excel test, I assumed no further questions of that subject would be asked, and spent my time studying other aspects of the interview process. Keep in mind I was also juggling a plethora of interviews with other companies as I was actively job searching at the time. With ~2 weeks between the two segments, the specifics had faded from my memory. For example, off of the top of my head, I could not remember the three agencies' various credit ratings to determine if a corporate bond was investment grade or junk. In a real-life work situation, it would take less than a minute to look up, and you'd probably internalize this information within a week of actually working. It's a little silly in my opinion to give someone all of the source material for the original problem set, then on a phone interview ask them to recite that source material, with no prior indication that would suggest that you should memorize such 'useless' information. I say 'useless' because outside of this niche role, practically no one needs to know about haircut calculations. You could argue that I should not be applying for this role if I lacked that particular knowledge or experience, but my counter-argument is that their website emphasizes that they're looking for smart people who can do the math but not necessarily possess a finance background. As an aside, it also was a challenge speaking with someone who possessed a heavy British accent on an international phone call which was incredibly fuzzy. Considering I was applying to the NY office, to this day I am still confused as to why the Director in London was the one interviewing me for a position across the .