The quant trading interview, from CV to final round

Firms hiring traders receive far more applications than they can interview, so the first filter is fast and blunt: a strong quantitative degree, evidence of competition or rigour (olympiads, programming contests, serious poker or chess), and anything that shows you make decisions under uncertainty. A short, numerate CV beats a long one.

You cannot practise this stage, but you can make it easy to pass: put the hard facts first – grades, ranks, results – and cut anything a recruiter has to interpret.

Most market makers screen with timed online tests before anyone speaks to you. Candidates commonly report some mix of:

• Mental arithmetic against a clock – the best known is eighty questions in eight minutes. Practise with the 80 in 8 and the mental arithmetic drills.
• Number sequences: spot the rule, give the next term. See Number sequences.
• Fast probability where a wrong guess costs points. See Beat the odds.
• Ranking statements by likelihood and giving interval estimates. See Likelihood ranking and Interval estimation.
• Reading an order book for spreads, fills and arbitrage. See the Bid book.
• Short cognitive games that measure attention and switching. See Task switching.

These tests are scored relative to other applicants, and pace matters as much as accuracy. The skill is learnable: most people improve sharply over two or three weeks of short daily sessions.

The first live rounds are usually probability and expected-value questions worked through aloud: dice games, card draws, coin sequences, and "would you play this game, and what would you pay?". The interviewer is listening to how you structure the problem more than to the final number.

• State the setup back before solving it, including any assumption you are making.
• Reach for the standard tools by name: linearity of expectation, conditioning, recursive expected value, Bayes.
• Sanity-check out loud: is the answer between the obvious bounds? Does it behave sensibly at the extremes?
• If you are stuck, say what you would try next. Silence reads worse than a wrong first step.

Expect follow-ups that change the game – now you may re-roll, now the die has twenty sides, now you play against someone who knows the outcome. The pricing a game lesson works through exactly that family.

Most trading processes include an exercise where you make markets and trade: an interviewer asks for a two-sided price on something uncertain, trades against you, and asks you to requote. It tests whether you can turn uncertainty into a price, update when you are traded, and manage the position you build.

It has its own guide: how to play "make me a market". To practise it, run the market simulator, where a counterparty trades against your quotes and you are graded on width, skew and P&L.

Final rounds are usually several interviews back to back, often in an office. Expect harder probability, a longer trading game, questions about markets and products, and conversations that probe how you handle being wrong. Stamina matters: the fifth interview of the day is where preparation shows.

A timed mock paper is the closest rehearsal: a blueprint of questions under one clock, marked at the end, with no feedback until you finish.

1. Weeks one and two: mental arithmetic every day, fifteen minutes, until the 80 in 8 score stops climbing. Read the probability lessons alongside.
2. Weeks three and four: probability and expected value daily from the question bank, and the games and decision theory lessons.
3. Weeks five and six: market making lessons and simulator runs, then the remaining online test formats.
4. Final week: mock papers under time, and your firm guide for the specific process.