Ingredients of finance interviews

• HR – • Finance Concepts• Puzzles• Stress test & attitude questions

Puzzles

• Logical puzzles eg. Why are manhole covers round? How many matches in a 128 player knockout tournament?

• Guesstimates – Understand the case -> consider various approaches -> break it down into smaller pieces -> Make reasonable estimates. One can use a top-down approach to break up the problem, and then work your way upwards with the calculations. Make approximations to help calculations. Ask questions in case you need specific data - eg. No of ping pong balls that can fit inside the fuselage of an airplane, number of ppl in a local train during peak hours etc

• Calculation based:

Contd..

• Basic Probability based questions• Trick questions. Keep your cool. Don’t jump the gun on

these ones. In most cases these are elimination questions – eg. you are driving on a one-mile track. You do one lap at 30 miles an hour. How fast do you have to do the second lap to average 60 miles a hour?

• More involved puzzles – - Its ok if you don’t get to the end of such puzzles. Think aloud. Use pen and paper. The interviewer may guide you to the end if you’re on the right track. Line of thought is the key here.

Finance stuff

• Equities – basic concepts – EPS, dividend, preferred stock etc• Futures and Options – call option, put option, swaps, pricing of

options, etc

• Balance sheets & valuation – should know basics.. Might help in finance cases

• Interest rates, currencies & bonds – bond pricing, dependence of interest rates on currencies and vice versa

• If you have mentioned some finance course/project in your resume, you can be sure that you’re gonna get grilled there.. Prepare that part well. That can make or break your interview

• Brush up hss 101. Might help.

Misc things you should know

• Your resume • Finance jargon – you don’t want to be talking

about something else!• Sensex levels, interest & currency rates, oil

prices etc.. A general idea on what’s happening in the financial world.

• MA 10x and 20x courses, probability. They might ask you algebra/stochastic calculus for a quant profile

• Some companies might ask you to design algorithms too. Get hold of CSE folks!

Useful resources

• www.investopedia.com for finance basics. Good for beginners. Use the beginners tutorials on equities, options, interest rates & currencies, inflation etc ..

• Vault guides on finance interviews – general prep… really useful for last minute brush up

• Editorials – ET, the economist, financial times, bloomberg, etc

• Options and derivatives – John C Hull• CLR for algos, George summers for puzzles• Loads of puzzles/brainteasers etc are available on the

net