Software Development Intern

Jane Street traders and representatives came on campus (UNSW in Sydney, Australia) - I attended some networking events and spoke with a trader and a HR person. I applied online soon after and got a response 3 days later asking for suitable times/dates for a 45-minute first round phone interview. The first interviewer was a developer from the Hong Kong office, and the questions were fairly interesting. I got a response around 3 hours later for setting up a second round phone interview. At this point I was now in the US for a different internship, and HR was very flexible with the organization of the interviews. The first three rounds were all coding questions, but my fourth phone interview consisted of some interesting math questions. For all of these phone interviews I got responses 1-2 days after, so it was all fairly quick.

After the fourth phone interview I was invited to a day of interviews in New York. They set up the flight, hotel, etc. in a few days and I arrived on a Saturday morning and explored the city for the weekend. I got to their office on Monday 9:45AM and was shown to my interview room. At this point they told me to take anything I want from the kitchen and got me to make my lunch selection. After talking to the HR person for a bit, two developers came in and we talked for around an hour. This was followed by two more developers, then lunch, then two more developers, then the head of tech (who gave me an office tour), then a trader. I left at 4PM. The interview questions were all interesting, although one guy refused to give any hints when I got stuck (I eventually solved it). Interactions were pretty informal, with some joking around and even some occasional swearing. Two days later, I got a call saying that I was successful.

My advice is: network and get to know HR well - they can be very helpful. In the interviews, it's not so much about getting the right answer as it is about asking the right questions, clarifying/questioning assumptions, etc. Doing this really shows that you pay close attention to details and edge cases.