I applied for the Graduate Quantitative Researcher position, but I have to mention that from the beginning I was treated like I applied for a Graduate Quantitative Trader position. This is what made my experience negative as it proved to be a waste of time for me.
1. The interview started with the Brainsfirst Neurolympics game. I made a lot of research on this topic and I found out that it is mainly used to evaluate football players. However, I failed to understand why it is relevant for a researcher or trader position, because I do not understand why your reflexes or ability to click really fast are useful in this line of work. However, they state that your scores are compared to other people that already succeeded in this line of work, so I guess that it has some sort of relevance. Unfortunately, I was compared to traders, and not researchers, since they messed up the job I applied for.
Afterwards I received a nice report which highlighted my strengths and weaknesses, when compared to traders. I guess that based on some high scores that I got, I received the invitation to the first interview.
2. Vieple interview:
8-minute long, 2 questions.
First question was "Why do you want to work as a trader at IMC?", 30 seconds to prepare, 2 minutes to answer in front of the camera.
I told them I applied for the researcher position and why I am interested in that position, and explained that it must be a mix-up in their system.
Second question was a maths/probability one, 30 seconds to prepare, 4 minutes to reply.
After a week or so, they announced me that I am invited to a face to face interview via Zoom, and I was asked for my availability. The email was very general, and did not mention whether it was for the trader or researcher position:
"The interview will start with some questions related to your background and your motivation for the position, industry and IMC. The second part will be more technical. You will get specific quantitative/mathematical questions, which have been developed by our own traders. The brainteasers are meant to explore whether you know the basics and how you approach a problem. The interview will last for approximately 45 minutes. As for preparation, you can practice your mental math skills and it is strongly advised to read up on market making and algorithmic trading, futures, and options."
3. My interview was delayed by a week, and I was interviewed by a different person. I have to say that the person who ended up doing the interview was really nice and I liked the way the interview went.
However, the first question I was asked was why I want to be a trader. After spending half of my time from the previous interview explaining that I want to be a researcher. This made me assume that the Vieple interview was a waste of time, since they didn't probably look at it anyway.
We discussed my background and motivation, which went great, and then proceeded to estimate how many circles there were in a picture and played a market making game based on my guess. Afterwards, I calculated that number and moved on to another question, which is described below.
After this, I was told that the interview was done (it took approximately 30 minutes instead of the 45 they told me initially) and I was encouraged to ask any question I might have. So I asked them whether the researcher interview (and whole recruiting process) is different from the trader one. I was told that it is different, and that they are usually looking at different skillsets for the two jobs, starting from the Neurolympics game, where I assume that you are compared to researchers, and not traders, to the whole process. I was also told that researchers sit down with quant team before the next interview.
I can say that the interview went neither great, nor terrible, I was pretty nervous and needed a couple of hints for the first questions with circles.
4. After a week, they told me they cannot offer me the TRADER position. This is the thing that really pissed me off. I invested so much time preparing for IMC (including the delay on their part) , and I told them 3 times that I am applying for the researcher position just for them to not listen to me at any step of the way. I can totally understand being rejected, my performance was not stellar and they probably have a huge pool of candidates, but being interviewed and rejected for the wrong position was a total waste of time.
I emailed them asking for clarification and after 2 weeks I was told that the process is exactly the same anyway, only the last step being different. By the same person who told me at the end of the interview that, if they knew I was applying for the researcher position, the process would have been different.
Overall, I am disappointed by their lack of interest in the people that are being interviewed and I hope that in the future they actually start listening to their candidates and provide fair assessment.