am I in the wrong industry if I have this weakness?
I'm not interested in a trading career but I want to pursue a career that is market related so I felt I could get the best responses in this forum section. It seems that more and more interviews contain brainteasers and mental math. An interview can be going great but I completely screw these up.
I'm definitely more of a visual person and I am pretty accurate with math calculations when I do them on paper or can see them in front of me. I also went through any math curriculum while in school using a calculator. I majored in a quant major btw.
I'm certainly above average in math (at least 80% percentile in most math related standardized exams that I took in my life) but I sometimes end up looking like an idiot during interviews and want to hide under a rock afterwards.
During the interview, if the interviewer suddenly brings up that he will be asking me multiple brainteasers and mental math questions, I crap my pants and lose confidence before I even get the question because I had mostly bad experiences with them. It's like a conditioned response. While I have gotten better at managing my emotions, I still get somewhat flustered and I worry about how I'm being perceived (as it's an interview after all), the time pressure to blurt out an answer, and making really dumb mistakes (wrong number of 0s or wrong decimal placement) from other clouded thoughts. I'm the personality type who doesn't do well when put on the spot. When I reflect back on the interview, the questions were generally very easy but I just had to structure the question properly or be aware of shortcut methods. It's easy to see the shortcuts that I should have used looking back but I didn't think of them under the interview stress.
As I mentioned, I'm not interested in a trading career but something market related possibly in research. Is it really about preparation or should I reconsider my industry of choice? I fail to get offers mostly because of this.
You are a person who doesn't do well when put on the spot? You might have a hard time doing a market related career, because you will be put on the spot from day 1 (depending on what you will be doing). However, I believe that this can be trained and that you can work on this. Are you an outgoing person? If not and if you are in a city, just start talking with people who look like they would be up for talking or maybe go to a bar and chill with strangers to come over your fear.
What positions are you looking into? Can you give us more background about yourself? Where are you currently? Are you still in college? etc.
It might help if you practice brainteasers with a friend. You can find lots of them online.
I believe that this kind of mental math ability is not something inherent, but something that can be practiced and improved. Spend some time here: http://tradertest.org/ and you'll get better.
Also what interviews ask these types of questions other than prop shops these days? I didn't get any of these questions when interviewing for BB S&T.
As long as you talk through your thought process dealing with the brain teaser, I don't think most interviewers would mind you writing or drawing the main points of the question. Worst thing you can do is to work on the problem in silence and then give them the wrong answer.
In fact, you should jot down the main points of the question just so you don't have to ask about the question itself and ask for more applicable parameters.
Same thing with the mental math problems. Just break down the question and talk them through the process.
I've been interviewing at investment banks and investment mgmt firms in various different roles. Not S&T but I still got multiple brainteasers and/or mental math. I didn't prep for them at all because I didn't expect to get any and I ended up looking like I can't do basic math afterwards which was embarassing for a person with a quantitative degree. It seems that more and more interviews include these randomly as part of the process. The reality is that I'm very detail-oriented and quick when actually on the job with any calculations as I double/triple check everything. I've relied on formulas in Excel or calculators though as these are more accurate and quicker than a human. Anyway, I'll just start prepping and hopefully my weaknesses in these areas don't hold me back in this industry.
i have always sukked at puzzles and brain teasers...in certain cases it will lose you a job but it certainly isnt a problem. I find zero actual correlation between what i do (macro trading) and being able to solve these types of problems...so just do your best, try to prep for them, and if they hurt you in an interview try again someplace else. And I agree you can get better at these games through practice so work on it if you jhave interviews coming up.
You should ask this in the research forum. This is the trading forum and what you're saying would be a showstopper in trading.
Also, you're probably getting dinged because you're presenting yourself poorly, not necessarily due to giving a wrong answer. A lot of interviews are structured to ask progressively harder and harder questions until the interviewee fails, at which point the behavior is analyzed.
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