First interview with recruiter about previous experience and to solve statistics problems.
Second stage - a home test task to develop a trading strategy.
The recruiter was without a camera, extremely slow and not focused, like he is sleepy, busy with other tasks or just not bothered to express his thoughts clearly.
He didn't discuss the way of thought through the task and only forced the right solution he memorized. Once he forgot that I already gave the right answer and started explaining the same thing back to me.
His replies sometimes were out of place and stereotyped as if he doesn't want to pay attention to what I'm talking about. Although in general he was polite and patient.
The test task is unclear formulated and is open to different interpretations to what they expect. It is related to the company business and is not paid. This way they perhaps gather free know-hows and benchmarks from the market as well.
1st round: 10-min HR call. Very cold and superficial. No question about my background, motivations or working style - only whether I agreed to do a coding challenge.
2nd round: take-home trading strategy. Feedback was limited to 2 single sentences from the HR person: “Thank you very much, the answer is correct. Could you please solve the second task.”
3rd round: another take-home strategy with unclear and incorrect instructions. After I pointed out multiple issues, HR acknowledged the mistakes and said they would follow up. They came back months later only to say they had moved on with another candidate.
I understand that algo trading interviews are demanding, but this process felt poorly managed and disrespectful of candidates’ time. It also gave the strong impression that the company was fishing for ideas rather than running a structured hiring process.
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