Basic Information

  • Company Name: Optiver

  • Name: Aminesh Gogia

  • Branch and Year: Electrical B.Tech, Post 3rd Year Internship

  • Role: Quant Trader

What topics or sections did the Online Assessment cover?

Probability Puzzles

Please describe the selection process in detail (tests + interviews)?

Round-1: Mental Ability - arithmetic series completion MCQs, probability questions with a given time per q (90 sec, 5 options, mark closest answer)

Round-2: A GD, where we were given a few conversion graph problems, and we had to do them together in teams of 4, discussing and thinking out loud, while traders sat and observed us, finally we had to explain to them our answer (mostly evaluation was about teamwork and communication)

Round-3: A trading game interview, where we traded on a fictitious quantity for around 5 minutes, and reasoned about trades we made, discussing about the interviewer about the best trade, worst trade and what could be done better

Round-4: HR, talking about specific incidents, qualities, SWOTS

How would you rate the overall difficulty of the process?

4

What resources (books, courses, YouTube channels, websites) did you find most useful overall?

Green Book, Brainstellar, Heard on the Street Websites like QuantGuide, OpenQuant, TraderMath, Gurmeet YT Channels of Optiver and QuantProf

Looking back, what would you prepare differently if you started again?

Nope, not really, someone could do tougher stuff like Peter Winkler, but others might argue that is an overkill QuantGuide and QuantQuestions are better than Tradermath for sure though, unless Tradermath have upped their level

One piece of advice for someone preparing for similar roles.

Focus on consistency, building intuition rather than just writing expressions, develop confidence in your thoughts, don’t gamble in interviews, have a reason for everything you say/do in a question/interview. Don’t be intimidated, this is a huge prospect, but not an all-or-nothing interview for life.