I was initially contacted via LinkedIn by a recruiter for an Embedded Analyst/Deployment Strategist job in NY (regarding Palantir Finance). They solicit tons of people over LinkedIn. Do not think this gives you an in or makes you a sought after candidate. You'll soon find out that no one who interviews you actually reads your resume. Even the recruiter will barely know any details about you.
My recruiter was helpful and set up an initial interview. I'll list some of the questions I got from this interview and the others. The initial interview was a basic screen, nothing too crazy. After that interview I was invited to the NY office for a 2 hour round of interviews.
I have some finance background from school. I consulted with my recruiter, who assured me that there would be no technical questions whatsoever (I asked because I wanted to know if programming would be tested). He assured me that "everyone I would be interviewing with at the NY office is non-technical" and would be asking me brain teasers and fit questions as well as testing me on my knowledge of the company and product. Fair enough. I headed into the interview after having learned as much as I could about Palantir and Palantir Finance.
The NY office is a bit obscure but the interior is fairly nice and Silicon Valley-ish - lots of playthings and colors. I was told that the interviews would last 2 hours and shuttled into a room.
My first interviewer was an FDE. He had not read my resume hitherto. He asked me a couple of fit questions, some situational questions (all fairly generic but I can't remember every single one). Your first on-site interview will likely be a screen like this. At the end he seemed satisfied and went to fetch the next interviewer. This is where it got interesting.
Like I said, I was applying to be a DS for Palantir Finance and I had some background in cash flow streams, option pricing, statistics, that sort of thing. My interviewer (I won't mention his name but he wrote a Forbes article on Palantir Finance) walked in brusquely, sat in his swivel chair, leaned back so he was sitting at a 45 degree angle, and draped his arm over his side. It was very clear from his body language that he wanted to 'break me' or 'see what I was made of'.
He proceeded to ask me a series of questions that presumed I had worked before as a trader or quant. Keep in mind that nothing in the DS/EA job description mentions anything about requiring any finance background and I was assured by the recruiter that there wouldn't be any technical questions - certainly not at the level I was asked. I was a bit taken back but kept my composure and tried to engage him as thoughtfully as I could. He sounded very bored with my inability to understand what he was getting at - despite the fact that he wasn't doing a very good job of explaining the questions. I decided to be a sport and continue to do my best.
But then things got weird. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INTERVIEW, the guy whips his phone out of his pocket and starts TEXTING while I was answering a question on the whiteboard. And he remained unresponsive when I asked him for clarification. At this point I didn't know what to think. As I said earlier, his body language all along had been very clearly one of "i'm bored, i'm going to entertain myself watching you dance on hot coals". But texting in the middle of an interview and zoning out when the interviee asked questions? Eventually he snapped back and began engaging me but it had become clear I had no idea what he was talking about.
I asked him some perfunctory questions at the end of the ordeal and then he stammered something about going to talk to the HR person. I waited a couple of minutes and the beaming HR person came in, asked me how I was doing, what I thought so far, if I needed any water. Basically, insulting my intelligence and wasting my time. It had been at most an hour so I knew the interview wasn't supposed to be done. She sweetly told me that there wouldn't be anymore interviews at this time and they would get back to me in a couple of days with "next steps". I was very professional and maintained that I was interested in hearing back from them and enjoyed the process. She escorted me out of the building. I saw my 2nd interviewer on the way out and waved to him but he quickly looked away. At least I got a smirk out of that.
A few hours later I got the ding by email.
Some questions I got asked (can't remember all)
What's the hardest part of being an entrepreneur? Did you consider starting any other companies? How about going a more stable route out of college? (I owned my own business at the time)
Questions I got asked by the second interviewer (so that you can see whether I'm exaggerating when I say my experience was, to say the least, unexpected) are below. I can't remember all of them.