I applied through university. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Optiver in Sept 2015
Interview
The first two rounds are just quick math and number sequence. The on-site interview I took just now is about quick reaction to market-making. Basically I prepared a lot of puzzles and they did not help. The most important thing is to keep your mind clear and relaxed. As long as you understand the questions well and think instantly, you would get right answers. Nothing tricky. I did not do well and would be declined. Good luck to everyone else.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Draw a random card from a deck of cards and ask you the expected value/max loss/max profit/price your would like to pay or sell. They want to test your risk-aversion and quick calculation.
spent about 1.5 months pretty much purely dedicated to preparing for interviews for all the pre-penultimate programs (Optiver, IMC, JS, SIG, Citadel, etc). I used these resources:
Green book (Really good starter but I got bored of it after a few weeks)
EverythingQuant (Went through literally every single interview prep question, went through the interview guides, and completed the probability course just to make sure I covered all bases)
Briefly read through this guide
Watched coding Jesus in my spare time (not sure if this helped directly lmao but he’s a great creator and very informative)
Mental math test, beat the odds, online puzzle like games etc online, brain teasers during physical interview and a behavioral interview where they want to assess how competitive and assertive you are.
OA was weird and hard. there was only three sections (i think) this year compared to 5 last year. questions are weird and I don't know how they can judge your ability base on that.
