So this afternoon I had a call with this dude, informational interview. I was filling in for someone else since the guy had a specific interest in project work that I had just wrapped up so I agreed to it. Usual questions around lifestyle, hours, project work, etc . etc. and then he asked me to do a case with him. Being a genial fellow I agreed and we started. At some point we were discussing some strategic options and the impact on shareholder value and the following exchange occurs:
me: "So out of the three options, which would you go with?"
him: "You mean which one maximizes shareholder value?"
me: "sure"
him: "ok I would go with option C because we can also hedge with commodity options. The volga may be an issue, along with the delta decay especially if we want a long-term horizon but overall option C is the best."
me: ".... wait, what?!?"
him: "Do you not know options theory?"
Please use common sense in your interviews and don't try and prove you're smarter than your interviewer, no bonus points. And there is absolutely no reason to ever use options theory in a case interview.
I'm pretty sure most people on these boards are beyond saving in the prickdom arena :-\
haha, you're the interviewer and the interviewee said that? haha. hope you dinged him, or at least knocked some common sense into him.
a joking scenario. But then I realized there are a ton of D bags who don't know how to adopt commen sense. Did he try to play it off as a joking matter? How did the rest of the phone call go with him?
No, he didn't try to play it off at all He was actually surprised that I was surprised that he was bringing up Greeks in a case interview. Now I have a vague understanding of the concepts but I definitely cannot carry out a conversation on it, and that alone puts me in like the top 10% of consultants. Most consultants couldn't tell you what an option is, let alone apply it in a case. The rest of the phone call went downhill; we just ended the case, I answered a few more questions and reported back to HR that the guy "was maybe not a good fit for the firm."
You should've just started throwing out fake greek letters, call him an idiot for not knowing, and hang up.
You don't want to go on and on, then punctuate your statement with "oh, you've been in the industry for 5 years and you don't know this". Rude. However, in my humble opinion, if he would have said "you can hedge this using....." (even if it got technical), without getting cocky, it's probably a sign that he's really smart/interested. It's good to get as technical as possible without overwhelming your interviewer (just my student's perspective).
oh, and what's "volga" (a scandinavian parameter of BS?)
That's not true, if he tries to introduce options theory in a case interview that just shows a lack of understanding, both socially and professionally.
If you're in a trading interview, there's no room for discussion of the 4Ps or Porter's 5; same sort of thing.
Yeah really, should have asked him about what he thought of Iota, and you could have responded, Iouta hang up when you tryed to act like you are smarter than me.
I come from a trading background, a person I interviewed with once was a trader for a few years, you can't ever generalize consultants.
I think you are referring to vega.
I do agree with ideating.... even if you did work years in the trading business... one of the hallmarks of the consulting interviews is the ... "you in the elevator with the CEO and you have 5 minutes to sum up your analysis" i think one of the last things you would ever want your consultant doing is bringing up your esoteric hedging strategy to help his company lol. Not only that... if i was the CEO I would be pissed that I hired a consulting firm to help me and their solution was to use derivatives... this kid seemed more interested in trying to prove how much he knew about the esoteric stuff as opposed to pointing out how well he would do in the job.
Along with these points.... the other issue is the kids personality which is hugely important in business .... even more so in consulting. While an asshole trader can get by because he's more of an isolated component.. you really cant go in with an attitude and expect to do well in consulting. I think this kid dinged himself regardless of coming off as an arrogant prick...
However.... after going through some really annoying case interviews where they had laminated slides and clearly had only one correct answer to each of their pretty broad questions... i would have loved to been a dick... threw out some absurd stochastic calculus/options theory to make some financial product to meet the goals of the company just to piss of the interviewer.
Also.... the first thing I got in any of my case interviews was NOT to use financial strategies as it was a management consulting firm.... companies sign on to investment banks to do that.. not consulting firms
Not Consulting, but GS has set up its comp structure to reward hiring people who are smarter than their interviewers. You get a percentage of the salary of the person you hired.
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