I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at BlackRock (New York, NY) in Feb 2013
Interview
Pretty robust, though I expect it varies depending on the team. Failed an interview the first time I applied, passed the second time. As a person with a non-finance and non-programming background, I had questions ranging from general knowledge to puzzles to project management to my extra-curricular interests in coding (some of them were pretty hard problems) and technology stocks. Interview process is fairly lengthy but they have a phone/on-campus screen and then only one SuperDay (final rounds) so it's not unfairly tiring. You get to meet a fair number of members of the hiring team in rotation, so there's a fair diversity. I believe that's pretty standard.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
(Open-ended) (I had mentioned that I follow tech stocks closely) How would you invest $N in, say, (insert tech gint like Google/Facebook/Apple/Yahoo/Microsoft) ? What options would you take - stocks, bonds, etc.
1 phone interview - recruiter asked me after to send her my availability and she never gotten back to me. waste of time, followed up with her like 4 times.
three rounds, phone screen by managers, on site 1 hour, task 1 hour, final round 1 hour. technical and behaviour both, hard, tension. good experience, but stressed period.good culture, good development.
I had one superday of 4 interviews. Questions were mostly behavioral. Tons of variations on the main behavioral questions. One technical question but it was very light technical. No live problem solving. Felt more like a vibe check.