Bridgewater Associates interview questions

First step was a phone interview. This went very traditionally, all that you would expect. Interviewer asked about my current job responsibilities and some thoughtful questions. I was asked to come in for an in-person interview, this is when my experience with Bridgewater took a very weird turn. I read all about their culture and interview process from this website and others, so I knew what to expect and prepared not only to speak about my current experience, but also to prepare for their "culture" screening as well. Some takeaways: 1) Be prepared to listen to a 40-something year old talk about how he's been at Bwater for 3 months and he learns something new about himself everyday. And say this with a weird smirk like he knows some secret that all of us interviewees didn't. It was very sad to listen to someone talk that way. 2) The person with the longest tenure they put in front of us interviewees was there for 3 months. One was there for 3 weeks. Very strange. 3) Group discussion: the moderators really try to lead your thought process down a path they expect you to go. Beforehand, I thought the whole point of this was to see how you think for yourself, and how you think about a new and broad topic. Feedback I received on my performance during this stage of the interview process was that the moderators thought I didn't follow where they were trying to lead me, and that I didn't seem to connect the dots. I saw perfectly what they were trying to get me to say, but the whole b.s. part of Ray Dalio's writing stresses "independant thinking"....?? 4) After the group discussion ended there was a mix up with an over-booked conference room, and the employee leading me around proceeded to drop a very loud F-bomb (in a crowded office) over the mixup. Then they said give us like 10-15 mins to figure this out. Fine. They led me to the lunch room and said build a plate of food and eat during this break. About a minute after I sat down with my lunch, they said the interviewer was ready and that I should throw out my plate. Very strange. If it wasn't for the complete haphazardness of the day so far, I would have thought this was all arrainged. 5) 1:1 interview. The interviewer was the same 40-something year old that learns something new about himself every day at Bwater (again, very sad). He jumped around from question after question about my responsibilities in my current role, and didn't seem to understand anything about portfolio management beyond solely execution trading. His explanation of the execution trader role was very vauge. He was pretty rude when I asked some questions myself about the role, and actually said, "It seems you're trying to get me to say something I don't want to say." Very weird response to a question about the day to day actual responsibilities of the role. I am very glad they did not want to proceed with an offer. I now understand why there is such an unbelivable turnover rate for new hires there.

Group interview consisted of four other candidates and 5 Bridgewater employees. We were asked what qualities we would look for in hiring someone to fill the position we were being interviewed for. We worked on answering this question as a group, later being asked to pick 5 traits we deemed most important.