BlackRock PAG Superday 10/9/2010
Hey guys,
Was anyone at PAG's superday on saturday? How'd it go? Did you hear back yet? I'm still waiting. Anxiously.
Thanks,
Anon1
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Hey man, I was at the superday as well..I actually had superday with both RQA and PAG.. It went ok, but you never know about these interviews.. i haven't heard back yet. I heard that it takes a while for blackrock
Cornell, UVA or NYU? :)
Ok, I heard that some people get immediate offers, so I got a bit worried.
Let me know when/what you hear back.
Thanks!
was this superday only for cornell, UVA and NYU?
Yeah, I think so. Maybe they do multiple PAG Superdays though. There were 20 of us.
yea there must be multiple. how technical were the interviews? how was it (in terms of difficulty) as a whole?
They asked about the market and fixed-income stuff mostly. The rest was purely behavioral. Not very difficult, or long either.
thanks, how long did it take to hear if you were invited to the superday (from the day of your first round interview)
3-4 days.
Anyone hear back yet?
Can you list some of the questions you were asked during the superday? I got the interview for PAG on Thursday. Many thanks
is anyone else waiting to hear back regarding an invite to a PAG superday? I had a first round a week ago and still havent heard anything...
What was the first round like?
What type of technical stuff did they ask?
How much was behavioral?
I could pretty much tell you guys how to kill these interviews. All the Interviewers followed the same formula…
… but…
I'm gonna wait until I hear back.
Did you guys interview with a particular sub-group within PAG for your second round?
hey,
i also interviewed for RQA last week. has anyone heard back yet?
Negative.
they said 1 week (by tomorrow). so lets hope for the best.
I wouldn't be too anxious. The PAG analyst job is very likely not what you believe it is. The day to day work is incredibly focused on technology with precious little actual finance. You will not learn much about portfolio management or even that much about risk management. Your main role is to make sure that a suite of risk reports is delivered daily to your client and when the automated technological process that creates these reports breaks, it is your job to fix it. Think of the position as more of a technological/infrastructure support role rather than a true FO finance based job. Furthermore, since the job is client facing, there's a whole "help desk" feel to everything (think about when you call Dell when your computer breaks). Good luck with getting an offer, but if you do get the job, I would recommend trying to find a position with more transferable skills. Oh yea, and your hours are like 6:30 AM to like 10 PM + weekends; banking hours but without the pay or exit opps.
Thanks for your response.
Yeah, I've heard similar descriptions. Did you work in PAG?
Oh, and one of my interviewers was saying that they were in the process of removing the groups "tech-focus." Know anything about this?
I left just over a year ago. According to some of my friends who still work there, there is a movement to remove some of the more "tech" elements via outsourcing, but the job is still very tech focused. At its heart, the role will never be that finance oriented (at least when compared to an analyst role at other portfolio management firms). You're really there to make sure that these automated risks reports are delivered timely and accurately. You're not anywhere close to investment research (which I assume is where you want to be, because that's the interesting stuff). You basically learn to verify that fixed income risk analytics are correct on the reports. You simply verify and then send. Frankly, you rarely ever crack out excel. The remainder of the time is spent developing or refining features of the reports for the client. So, it's a very "unique" job that unfortunately is not nearly as finance oriented as your interviewers likely make it out to be, nor will it ever be, it's just simply not that kind of job.
I had RQA superday last friday and PAG superday last saturday but didn't hear back from either.. did anyone hear back??
i haven't heard back either. if someone hear's back, can they please let us know? a lot of firms don't reply back.
getting a bit anxious. over a week now. any word?
I had mine today. My interviews were all extremely technical. I was asked about fixed income, swaps, and option pricing theory. This was pretty surprising, since my resume doesn't suggest in-depth knowledge of Hull's option pricing textbook. Luckily, I've been reading a lot in preparation for trading interviews.
Finally, be knowledgeable about markets. Know important rates, equities indicies, etc., and understand what they mean.
Anonymous999's comments are exactly the same things that I learned from today's interview. I'm not convinced that the skills you develop in PAG as an analyst are very transferable to other areas of finance. However, my impression is that people in PAG enjoy working at BlackRock and look for exit opportunities in other groups, internally.
Best of luck to everyone. Remember, always be closing. Telling is not selling.
Are you an MBA grad? Was this an analyst position you interviewed for?
Undergraduate interviewing for the analyst position. There were ~20 people there today and I think there will be a third PAG superday next weekend as well.
I was interviewing among 36 others at our school on Thursday.
It looks like theyre hiring agressively for PAG. Superdays galore.
I just signed up for an on campus interview for PAG next week, any of you guys have offers yet and not afraid to hand out some tips?
PAG was mostly behavioral q's. asked about why blackrock, what's ur fav/least class. He did most of the talking/explaining. Some technical FI question. Pretty easy. what does yield mean, how do you price a coupon bond and zcb. I think overall, fit was really what they were looking for. key to note that most PAG analysts stay within the firm after few years.
hey i posted this on the other forums but i had the 10/23 superday and heard back today......except........I missed the goddamn phone call. HR left a msg telling me to call back and I did and left a message. Hope this info eases some sort of stress, in a bad or good way. Most of you are probably on a waitlist. As for me, I may have even been rejected
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