Confidentiality during interviews
Just had an interview yesterday and I was asked questions concerning an experience at a fund. They asked questions concerning the strategies that are used and what we look for in our strategies. I felt like the question was getting a bit too specific as I was not supposed to disclose any information regarding our activities.
So I just wanted to know how would you answer these questions during an interview? Do you just tell them that you can’t talk about it, do you tell them everything, or do you try to talk about it without getting too specific?
I tried to do the latter but was very dissatisfied with my answer as there was a lot of hesitation (to try not to disclose too much information) and the answer was too vague. Any advice?
*WSO mobile is bugging out, not sure why it tagged me as PE
If it’s a certain French fund, they are famous for this and never talk to them.
Lots of job interviews are fronts for brain rapes FYI
Care to name them so people can steer clear?
I am pretty sure they are talking about Squarepoint
Second to that french fund...spent an hour+ with them only to get ghosted...
I always refused to discuss confidential info. How people reacted gave me info - the best people respect that you're ethical about your responsibility to your employer, and realize that means you will be ethical to them. The worst are brain rapes and it ends the interview. I was fine with missing those.
So do you just tell them something like "Sorry but I can't discuss the strategies that we use at our fund."? I told them something along the lines of "I can't really be too specific, I hope you can understand." but they kept insisting and asked for what kind of elements do we look for, what kind of data do we use, etc.
I'm sure you signed an NDA as part of that onboarding? If so, tell them the truth that because of that you're not at liberty to discuss anything that detailed. If they have ethics or a sense of not conjuring their own liabilities they'll back off like Oracle mentioned. If they kept pushing, throw it right back that you're not about to wade into any kind of legal issue.
Like I'm sure OracleofBromaha has done, and I have too, is the most detailed you should ever say is "I've worked with several UHNW partners and even some F100 c-level people. It was always a pleasant relationship. I helped them achieve their results and everyone walked away a winner." That's it, the end.
Oh man, i had an interview recently. I felt like one person in the interview panel kept 'drilling' into each of my answer. eventually i may have spilled beans in the privys of a deal and being inexperienced in the interview process, i sort of regret it and wish I manoeuvred it a bit differently. I felt like it was hard to keep it high-level or a more broad, otherwise you risk just not giving any real detail and they'll keep on drilling you anyway.
Also wondering where do you guys draw the line? How do you determine what you can and cannot speak about?
If you're talking quant, I think there's an art to offering enough information to demonstrate you're a good candidate and know what you're doing, but not enough that they can recreate it themselves without you- otherwise why would they need to hire you. You should be comfortable doing this because it weeds out the exploitative employers who you wouldn't want to work for anyways, and is in your own best interest. I wouldn't outright say you can't discuss something (this is less graceful), maybe just focus on the things you can say. We have a proprietary dataset (do not name it) that generally measures Y from an external vendor. If its well known in industry maybe its ok to name it. We found it has predictability on XYZ asset classes at H horizon. Or something like, most quant strategies in our horizon usually do X, but they tend have Y and Z issues. We really improved performance with some proprietary signal construction/statistical adjustments that improved X characteristic, or by focusing it down to specific scenarios S where it works better. If they insist, you know who you're dealing with and you can politely end the interview.
As a TLDR, I think its ok to give everything except for the 'secret sauce' or 'key insight' that enables someone to make a signal work. What that is exactly depends for each signal.
"sorry but I signed a NDA"
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