I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Optiver (Chicago, IL) in Sep 2018
Interview
Applied via a college career fair. Received a HackerRank test the following day with a 24 hour time limit. Problems were of reasonable difficulty, though the last problem was long and involved multiple steps.
Two days later, I was scheduled for a brief phone interview, where I was asked about my prior experience and interests. After this interview, I was moved to the on-site round the following week.
On-site began with a 'code review' of my HackerRank answers. Interviewer asked about my thought process for each of my solutions, and asked how I would change my solutions after reflecting on them. He also provided slight tweaks or twists to each problem and asked how I might alter my code. Following this interview was a design interview which involved whiteboarding a system to solve a specific problem. After lunch, there was a behavioral interview which involved talking in-depth about my previous experience. Finally, there was an 'executive chat', which gave me the chance to ask an executive at the company questions.
I heard back about my offer soon after the following week. Compensation and benefits were very competitive, but I chose to go elsewhere for fit reasons. Overall, my experience was very pleasant. The process moved quickly, and interviews seemed fair.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What has been your favorite/least favorite course you've taken, and why?
OA; quite long, 3 tests
Behavioral interview: just a short talk with HR, motivation,…
Technical Interview 1: fundamental CS, nothing more
Technical Interview 2: system design, very vague but just go with the flow
Technical Interview 3: live coding, still leetcode but optiver style is a very descriptive problem, but the main thing could be boiled down into only few lines
Difficult OA. Design question. Included min/max heap with lazy deletion + fib number sequencing + hashmaps all in one question. Easy techincal in comparison. Just don't stop typing during the OA and make sure to read everything carefully.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Difficult OA. Design question. Included min/max heap with lazy deletion + fib number sequencing + hashmaps all in one question. Easy techincal in comparison. Just don't stop typing during the OA and make sure to read everything carefully.