I applied through university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Optiver (Amsterdam) in May 2016
Interview
Contacted after an on-campus event. Went through a telephone interview first, being asked about background, motivation and to explain what a market maker did. Then invited for the second round. It started with three tests (1st 80 numerical questions - 8 minutes, 2nd 26 sequence questions - 30 minutes, 3rd 40 numerical questions - 10 minutes). Check online for similar tests, these are widely available. HR interview followed, where we went over my CV mostly, after that came a barrage of questions to see how quick I was with my thought process. Technical interview was the next, mostly probability questions and market making on random things. It is important to remain calm, connected and honest about your mistakes. They want to see how well you perform under pressure, instead of just coming up with right answers and staying still. Desk interview was the final one, where I was asked about option theory and some trading tools.
The process lasted only 3 weeks and was very smooth and the communication was super fast and professional. The interviewers are really helpful and easy to talk to. An enjoyable process all in all.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Make a market on the number of kangaroos in Australia.
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.
