Great article! I remember finance/hedge fund recruiting from college. Looking back, it is absurd for buy-side companies (whose entire business is to develop conviction of unconstrained markets/businesses) to ask hyper-constrained coin-flipping probability riddles as a filter.
One time when I got a coin-flipping question, I told the recruiter that there was precisely zero signal in the question, and I then offered up a few alternates that he could use for other candidates. (Happily, I did not get the offer!)
From talking to various folk about this, it has become clear to me that multiple interview setups is probably ideal. Personally I find the four 1-hour bits significantly luck-based, even if designed well. Lots of noise. Though I did read a book a long ago that I remember had a pretty good plan for reducing that noise (Hire with Your Head). I am finding myself more fond of the project-based setups, though I know some people personally who absolutely can not do a "homework assignment", which is fair enough. There's a venn diagram at play between what the interview is measuring and how good the candidate is, and different interview setups will intersect with "quality of candidate" in different ways.
I agree. I don't think there is a one size fits all. Some people prefer project based, some prefer day interviews. For the companies that have given me take home questions, I have spent a lot more than a couple of hours on it. It's fun a couple of times and then it becomes a huge drag on time.
Great article! I remember finance/hedge fund recruiting from college. Looking back, it is absurd for buy-side companies (whose entire business is to develop conviction of unconstrained markets/businesses) to ask hyper-constrained coin-flipping probability riddles as a filter.
One time when I got a coin-flipping question, I told the recruiter that there was precisely zero signal in the question, and I then offered up a few alternates that he could use for other candidates. (Happily, I did not get the offer!)
From talking to various folk about this, it has become clear to me that multiple interview setups is probably ideal. Personally I find the four 1-hour bits significantly luck-based, even if designed well. Lots of noise. Though I did read a book a long ago that I remember had a pretty good plan for reducing that noise (Hire with Your Head). I am finding myself more fond of the project-based setups, though I know some people personally who absolutely can not do a "homework assignment", which is fair enough. There's a venn diagram at play between what the interview is measuring and how good the candidate is, and different interview setups will intersect with "quality of candidate" in different ways.
I agree. I don't think there is a one size fits all. Some people prefer project based, some prefer day interviews. For the companies that have given me take home questions, I have spent a lot more than a couple of hours on it. It's fun a couple of times and then it becomes a huge drag on time.