I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Jane Street (London, England) in Nov 2017
Interview
Went to ETC (challenge they organised in out uni), talked to people at careers' fair, applied online. Got back fast, decided on time fast. In the end, called 40 mins late, didn't apologise, just started asking questions. Had a shared screen for coding, was given a hard problem straight away, no brain teasers, no probability. Another guy from my uni got the same question, but at least in the 2nd round! Interviewer was very unhelpful, gave no clues, probably got bored with me after the first 10 min, so didn't make any effort. Kept saying how the time was up and he needed to go, so we just cut it short. Ridiculous.
It was a very quick and painless process. Recruiter very responsive, kind interviewers. High implementation and difficult problems, so failed onsite after 3 interviews and a Question and Answer Session.
Did not pass the initial coding round. I tried to explain my thought in details to the interviewer but failed to translate my thought into code. So far interviewer is very nice.
I applied online. I interviewed at Jane Street (New York, NY)
Interview
My experience interviewing at Jane Street was definitely challenging, but also surprisingly collaborative. Instead of focusing only on whether I could get the right answer quickly, the interviewers were much more interested in how I approached problems and explained my thinking. I worked through a few coding questions involving data structures and algorithms, and there were also some probability-style questions that tested logical reasoning. The interviewers were clearly very sharp, but they were also approachable and encouraged me to talk through my thought process the entire time. When I got stuck, they would sometimes guide me with small hints so we could keep exploring the problem together. Overall, it felt less like a typical high-pressure interview and more like a thoughtful technical conversation with experienced engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
“What is the expected number of coin flips needed to get two heads in a row?”