高盛集团英文面试全过程

 

Phone interview 1:

1.Why GS?

2.What’s net income, EPS?

3.Why trading?

Phone interview 2:

1.Experience of trading? (I said a forex one) 

2.Then give me an example you r doing a trade by your strategy.

3.What’s 2000^ (1/2)?

4.When s it when the two hands go together? Between 1:00- 2:00

Final Round

13:00-15:00, 2/18/08, 62/F, Cheung Kong Center, 2 Queen's Road, Central.

4 trader, 3 of them are ED, one VP (I guess, COZ he also got his own office),

 all from Equity Derivative desk. Approx. 30 mins for each.

(1)

0.Go through the resume

1.Why GS?

2.Why trading?

3.Tell me how much you know about the structure within GS (FICC, Equity, IBD…

)

4.Why not FICC?

5.Give you HK, NY, Tokyo offices for choice, give me your preference, and why

.

6.Tell me the industry you are looking at? What do you think of it’s future?

What’s the stock with biggest market cap? What’s market cap… I said Cheung

 Kong…but not correct… 

7.Tell me a stock you r watching? ( I picked Chinacoal)

What’s the price of it on HK exchange? What’s it on SH exchange? What’s th

e code?...Give me a target price of it? Why so?... Why do you want to long th

e stock? I m challenged desperately, as I know little… So be prepared for at

 least one stock, on everything of it..

8.What’s square root of 150?

(2)

A very nice ED, major in Math… Remind me of Ito…

0.Self introduction

1. Given 3 cards, one is a joker, the other two not joker. Pick one randomly,

 and then you r told that which one of the two left is not joker. So if you w

ant to have the joker, you want to have the one previously picked? Or swap wi

th the other one left.| What’s the probability of having the joker if you sw

ap the two?

2. five dices, flick them, and you ll be paid for the sum of the numbers. You

 have to pay a premium for the game. Do it for 3 times, what would you like t

o pay to play it?(bid) What’s the ask? (I said bid/ask 17/18, COZ mean is 3.

5*5= 17.5)

He pays for the ask for 3 round, what should I do to the bid/ask as a market 

maker (I said 17/18.5)

What about 3 more times for the ask (I said 17.5/19)

So now you r short 6, what about someone hit the bid for 6 times( position li

quidated) ( I said back to 17/18)

3. He asked me what I m good at, I said Math and Stat, and then he said: you 

know what, I m a Math major……orz…

Then a lot more math Qs come…

4. Give you an at-the-money call option, 1 year maturity, 30% vola, give me t

he price…=.=.. I was like…ah..I think I need the Black-Scholes formula… “

Oh..you know Black-Scholes.. tell me how to get the result from the BS equati

on”… I was like… well.. My math couldn’t get me to solving the differenti

ation equation…”Fine…”..= =

5. Tell me what’s Normal Distribution, what’s the mean, what’s the theta…

 Teach me of it as if I m a baby…

6. Is 2003 a prime number, in one min ( Yes.)

7. Do you think the number of prime numbers are infinite? (yes) Convince me w

hy.

8. What’s the biggest achievement in Math’s history…

9. Why do you think you r good at Math?

10. One room, 50 ppls, you could ask all of them their birthday(MM/DD), tell 

me the possibility of having someone with the same to yours (1-(364/365^50))

(3)

0. Go through the resume

1. Tell me some trading strategy you suggest, to a client of GS? (I say simpl

y short on HSI..) Why? What’s your opinion on it in detail, in one year pros

pectus… challenged again on detail target..) then how would you like to hedg

e against the index..(I said the H-share china enterprise index, basically I 

m betting on the widening of the spread between H share index and HS index)

2. What’s delta, gamma, vega?

3. Given a short pos. and a long pos. in the same option, which got a bigger 

vega..(I dunno…)

4. Given a 10-day-maturity call and a 100-day one, which got a bigger vega (t

he 100-day one)

5. A game, flicking a coin, the game end at the first time you got a tail, an

d you gonna be paid for 2^(the number of head you got before the first tail);

 But if the first time you flick is a tail, you got nothing. Tell me the prem

ium you want to pay for the game(similar to the Japanese’s one), give me the

 bid/ask.( I said we can’t count the intrinsic value by calculation the mean

, because it’s infinity, but I don’t quite know how to find a proper one…H

e conducted me..several times..and I got a reasonable answer, 3/5)

(4)

0. Go through resume, why trading?

1. Tell me 3 examples of teamwork… (hell… I crammed 2, and he said ok… I d

on’t have a third one actually…) 

2. What have you done as a team leader? How to com through conflict in a team

work?

3. Give me a scenario, 4 HK local, 4 mainland, you r a leader, you need to pi

ck 4 out of 8, what would you do( Surely 2 HK, 2 mainland…)

Then he kept talking about how GS focus on diversity within the firm, in reli

gion, race, nation..all over.. like 10 mins…)

4. What other industries are you looking at? 

5. Why not banking? Why not consulting? What you do in Bain?

6. How are you sure you fit for trading?

I’m really excited during the whole procedure, COZ I m sure this s what I li

ke, comparing to banking, esp. when I see the traders trading on the 3-screen

 Bloomberg-Reuter stuff… Vivian called me up 15 mins later, when I m about t

he take the MTR. She s quite excited to tell me that the desk extended me an 

offer and I saved the HR office a lot of effort as the desk only want one ass

istant this summer… I m excited about it too definitely…