Hello from the quantGuru!

General career
#1

Hi everyone!
I’m the quantGuru at Leap and I currently work at a bulge bracket investment bank. I am here to create content related to Quantitative Research/Analyst careers and interviews and I intend to use this platform to share my experience and knowledge about the quant industry. I am truly inspired by the work Leap’s founders are doing to help new comers (to any industry) and I genuinely hope that the material I am going to post, would be helpful for everyone considering a Quant career. As designated Quant Guru, I will go through your technical questions (think math, brainteasers, maybe coding questions) and help answering them. I am excited about the prospect of collaborating with you, and I am here to support anyone of you in need.

Fun fact about me: in 2021, I had 36 interviews. You can say my interviewing skills and techniques have been extensively tested, and I hope the learnings from these fresh experiences would be useful to everyone here.

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#2

from what I hear, quant interviews can be quite difficult and technical, and even though i am a math major, the problems that I’ve see are really hard, and i struggle a lot with the brainteasers, for instance the jane street interview questions are crazy. I feel like there is no way i would be able to answer these questions if i didnt know the answers beforehand :frowning: . if @quantGuru or anyone else has any tips to prepare for brainteasers and probability questions, i would really appreciate, a bit lost here.

Also, are there any frequently asked questions when it comes to brainteasers?

#3

Regarding brain teasers, it really just takes time and lots of practice. I highly recommend A Practical Guide To Quantitative Finance Interviews by Xinfeng Zhou (“The Green Book”) with great tips to solve different types of problems and review of basic mathematical and probability concepts. In my experience, easy questions usually involve some sort of expected value and dice problem. Be sure you know probability & statistics concepts very well (Bayes Theorem, random variables, expected value, conditional expectation, covariance, normal distribution etc.) so if you haven’t taken these classes, find material online to brush up on it. Be patient and keep doing problems, after a while you’ll get the hang of it and they can even be kinda fun!

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#4

Hi @knightrider00, you should follow the answer provided by @genzlover. “The Green Book” is by far the reference for brainteasers, and is widely used by interviewers across the industry. Most of the brainteasers I got, were either directly exposed in the book or subtle derivations of what has been exposed there. My advise to you is to focus, at first stage, on Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, consisting of more or less 50 questions/brainteasers. These questions are frequently asked and you need to be able note only to know the answers, but more importantly understand and be able to derive the answer on your own. There is no shame in not being able to came up with the idea on your own, but you need to study the solution provided in a methodological manner. Please do not leave any questions on these two chapters untouched, and if you have trouble understanding a solution, please open a meet and I will provide more insights into the solution until you establish a good level of understanding. After Chapter 4 and 5, I would guess you should study Chapter 6. I am assuming you have a maths background and that Chapter 3 will be just a mere refresher, and at the end have a look at Chapter 2, which are more of logical puzzles that you can be asked. For more logical puzzles, you can check out this TED YouTube playlist.: TED-Ed Riddles : Season 1 - YouTube
I know this might seems too much to take on and it is. But do not give up, if you spend enough time preparing this way, you will realize quickly that you are ready to tackle most brainteasers, and you will hopefully grow a taste for solving them.

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#5

thank you so much @quantGuru and @genzlover, this makes a lot of sense and is very helpful. I guess i need to do as many practice brainteasers as possible. If i struggle specific problem, i will post here :slight_smile: