Afternoon everyone,
I have been given the go ahead to hire an intern at the HF I work for.
This will be my first time on the hiring side of the process so I wanted to reach out to the community and generally ask those of you who have interviewed prospective interns what tactics, questions, format etc. Allowed you to choose a really stand out intern?
I am confident that I can question these prospects to the edge of their ability from a technical standpoint, but am looking for ways to cut through the prepared responses and really get a true idea of who these guys/girls are to make a great addition. This internship position has the potential to develop into FT.
Any experiences you monkeys have had in which you found a real rock star would be great. Conversely experiences in which something was off and what seemed to be a great candidate turned out to suck are also appreciated. Any specific questions that you found telling of course would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.
I was asked this during my IB interviews, and I thought it was a pretty interesting question to have to answer:
If everybody who met you had to pass through a room in which you there was one thing of your choice that they could look at to get an idea of who you are/what you're like before they met you, what would it be and why?
It's a good question because it's a curveball that will throw almost every applicant (no one prepares for this), so you can a) see how the prospective intern reacts under pressure, b) how the prospective intern thinks on their feet and c) what the prospective intern thinks about him/herself and what s/he would want a stranger to think of him/her through what they choose to place in the room.
Interesting question, if I used it I might expand the premise by saying the stranger walks through two/three rooms. Out of curiosity what was your answer and how was it received?
I said my ipod and my reasoning was that you can learn something about people by seeing what kind of music they listen to. In my case, people looking at my ipod would see that I listen to many different kinds of music, and would learn that I have pretty eclectic interests/am easygoing and open to new things.
My interviewer really liked my answer, but this was quite far into the interview and we were getting along pretty well by then, so it might have had something to do with that. I was initially floored by the question and was kinda like "wtf...." but hearing it made me laugh and I said "that's a really interesting question, I've never gotten that one before, I need to think about it for a second." The interviewer seemed flattered ha and said that was the point, and to take my time. Only took me a couple of seconds to figure it out, but now I'll always remember that it really is ok to say you need a second to think, and it is much better than trying (and failing) to stumble through a haphazard answer. Note: I think this only applies to fit/curveball questions. I don't think it would be good for someone in an interview to stumble and need some time to figure out a standard technical question. If I was interviewing someone I'd probably ding somebody for doing that.
Who is a portfolio manager / investor that you really respect? Great, now name a mistake he/she made.
There's a lot of great insight to be had from the first part and part 2 kinda makes sure u really know the person. The worst answer possible for #1 is Buffett.
Why is Buffett a bad answer though?
I'll simply talk about him getting emotions in the way, with the bad acquisition of Berkshire Hathaway. But I'll say thats a good question in the sense that if you don't know the person well enough, you wouldn't notice his/her mistakes.
Why would Buffett be the worst possible answer for #1?
Similar to Floppity, talk to me about some of your losing trades. Everyone wants to talk about winners, but some candidates absolutely cannot talk about losers.
My view is that all lessons learned come from the losing trades, you should be able to deduce the candidates investment thesis, assumptions, catalyst, mistake, and plans to help avoid the loss in the future.
For UGs, some might not have a PA, fine, but they should all be paper-trading stocks/bonds/etc to have an answer for you.
Preach. I was the broke kid playing with paper. I plan on prodding about prior investments. "What is the last stock you bought and why?", "Would you consider that a trade or an investment?" Given their answer "Do you prefer to trade or invest?"
Now a question for you, purely out of curiosity: as an interviewer asking someone whether they prefer to trade or invest, is there a "right" answer in your book? I assume it would depend on the strategy of your fund/your personal strategy.
What is your favorite color? Why?
Wouldn't necessarily have to use that, but I think requiring a candidate to deeply analyze their inner motivations and why they feel a certain way, all the while outlining it cleanly, would be a great way to understand what biases an Analyst might bring with a pitch and how in-depth they're willing to go within themselves to understand a trade. Investing is rarely a black and white game and thus, you shouldn't have black and white questions.
Then again, it could have a candidate blabbering on about stupid shit and get nothing out of it.
A twist on a classic, i like to ask people to tell me one of their weaknesses/character flaws, but i also say they're not allowed to spin it into a positive. Interview guides tell people they should respond to the weakness question with something that can be turned into a positive (e.g., "Sometimes i'm not as efficient as I could be because I'm so much of a perfectionist, that i need to make sure everything is 100% right before i finish"), which is a total cop out. Candidates that are truly introspective do well with this question, and ones with canned answers typically struggle to answer. If they answer with an actual weakness (which is what i'm looking for), I follow it up with, "okay, now what are you doing to fix it?".
God this question is utter bs. If you are aware of a weakness of yours, you're already fixing it, so it shouldn't be a weakness anymore. If you say that you are not aware of any of your weaknesses, you appear arrogant.
What if you're aware of it but it's not yet fixed? That's still a weakness...
An interesting/tough question I heard someone mention on this board (though I've never used it) is: which line on your resume is the most bullshit, and why?
Generally though, I think your goal is to figure out how they really think, and you do that by asking something that cuts through the layers and layers of prepared responses they've come armed with, until you get to that realm where they have to literally think on the spot because they're addressing something they haven't anticipated. I think one way to do this is to ask any simple question and just follow-up with prodding deeper and deeper into their responses.
I agree with the prodding part. At a superday, an interviewer asked me to quickly go over what my first round technical interview went over. I skimmed over the questions I answered, and when I got to defining EV, he said let's dig into that a little bit, and proceeded to ask me more and more and more technical questions about minority interest until I finally got one wrong. Luckily it was a situation where they wanted to see how much you knew and getting it wrong didn't stop me from getting an offer, but that interview was definitely a genuine conversation and the interviewer definitely got to see how I thought about things and figured things out that I didn't already know.
I plan on doing the same. Starting very broad and drilling down. I feel the "conversation" style interview will be better suited for the role as opposed to the stress test interview. That being said, are they mutually exclusive? I suppose I can mix direct technical questions (Stress) with broader understanding questions (Conversation). Issue would be the reluctance of the candidate to putting themselves out there with an expansive response to a conversation question, after being hit with a series of direct right or wrong technical questions. Might be overthinking that.
Okay, before I start, keep in mind that this is taken from my experience interviewing folks for quant roles. I do however think a lot of it applies to interviewing in general.
Firstly, I seriously detest conducting interviews in the typical question-answer format. I'm really not interested if they can answer boilerplate questions on stochastic calculus or probability theory; being able to answer those kinds of context-less problems is in no way an indicator of whether you'll be a productive and creative team member.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't qualify their skills and abilities, but you should do it in a way that really demonstrates they can actually perform them on the job. This requires you the interviewer to do some prep-work; look at their resume, highlight experiences that you think might bring out the specific skills you're interested in, and discuss them in the interview.
As an added bonus, this conversational approach typically gives you a better idea of how the candidate is as a person, since they're likely to be in a more relaxed state (if they're not, that's a warning sign that they might have lied about something on their resume).
Yes, I know it's a lot of work to do this for every interview, but you'll be working with this person for the next couple of years; do you really want to hire someone based on canned responses only to realize they know jackshit or a complete asshole?
Once you're done talking about their experiences and figuring out whether they're technically qualified for the role or not, discuss a non-traditional, practical topic you feel really isn't emphasized enough but is crucial to being a successful team member.
For me, its usually determining whether they're disciplined or not, and typical questions follow the lines of, "so what's your model development philosophy/process?". If they're the real deal, they don't need any time to think about it because its practically encoded in their DNA, and can discuss minute details along with high level concepts seamlessly. If someone can satisfy this criteria (along with the qualifiers and general fit stuff), I will lobby the hell to get them hired. I won't completely discount someone based on this response unless they go, "lol I don't need a process" because this is something that can be learned over time.
By this point in the interview, I've usually made up my mind on whether this person's got my vote or not. Regardless, I'll usually follow up by discussing a problem we had that caused a lot of headache, to see if they have an alternate view on how it might have been solved. For the clear yes or no people, this is more or less just a formality, but if I'm on the fence and the interviewee throws out a really creative solution, they typically move up into the 'yes' group.
For what its worth, I've had great success with this approach, and been rewarded with team members whose work I can depend on and company I enjoy, both in and out of the office.
Its also helped me weed out horrible candidates...in one instance too late. Our team had hired a fresh MFE grad while I was on vacation. He wasn't due to start until a month after singing on, so we setup some time to talk when I got back. The moment we sat down I could tell this was going to be a huge mistake. He could barely express a coherent idea, and would basically recite the textbook definition to any topic we discussed. Once he actually started work, he failed to produce anything meaningful, and after 7 months we had to cut him loose.
So, I wrote this up mistakenly thinking it was for a FT role, but I guess it could also be applied to interns. I generally feel they need a lot more hand holding in the process and have tend to experience verbal diarrhea when they feel they're out of their depth. On a personal note: when you've identified a weakness, its not an excuse for you to jump down their throat (aka the "drill-down" approach); help them back on their feet and continue the interview. They're just kids, man, and you're not doing yourself any favors if they can't answer a question because they're rattled, not because they don't know it.
See my response to NotthehospitalER. Not being able to answer a given question because I was too rattled was a recurring theme of my initial interviews. Really my first goal is going to be to put the interviewee at ease, probably by starting off speaking about my own experiences then laying out the structure of the interview before diving in.
What is the first thing you look at when you research a business?
In my experience the stock pitch and/or just making the interview a conversation about the market/any stocks that come up is the best way to discern who is a great candidate.
This would work well, but only if you drilled down into their stock pitch and questioned them thoroughly (not assuming you don't know this, just plainly stating it). Many candidates will pitch a stock and it will sound great, but if you dig just a little you'll realize they have just memorized some stuff and don't really understand the business/reasoning behind a lot of it.
I also agree that questions about the interviewee's views on where the market going are a good way to discern who is a good candidate. Especially because (in my opinion) these types of questions are more about your opinion and your thought process rather than your answer, but many candidates will feel like they need to get a "right" answer and it will make them a little nervous...you'll also get to see how they handle pressure.
It takes all of about two minutes to see if a person really knows what they're talking about. It's much easier than you would think.
The question about the markets is not about handling pressure, but about seeing who is willing to admit they don't know everything and to determine really how much they pay attention to the markets.
The best questions I've had asked me to pitch a stock. And then to pitch another one.
All the above stuff is bullshit. I honestly don't care if somebody is able to think on their feet to make up something ridiculous about what room reflects their deepest hopes, fears, and wet dreams.
This job is skills based, not unicorn based. Show me the skills, I'll show you the money.
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