I applied online. I interviewed at Jane Street in Oct 2018
Interview
Puzzzle submission.
1 round of phone interview: Easy questions but completely forgot abut linearity of expectations. Miscommunication about what "risk" means for 20 minutes and had the interviewer trying to explain to me about something that I already knew exactly what he's trying to say.
I'm probably not gonna move on.
The interviewer was very informative. The questions appeared basic initially, but they required deeper reasoning, strong fundamental knowledge, and careful problem-solving instead of simple, straightforward answers throughout the interview process.
The process was structured and intellectually challenging. It typically involves an initial recruiter screen, followed by probability, mental math, expected value, and game-style problem-solving interviews. Interviewers focus more on reasoning, communication, and adapting to feedback than memorized answers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have two opaque boxes in front of you. At each turn, you may choose one of two actions:
Place: put one coin into one of the two boxes, chosen uniformly at random.
Take: choose one of the two boxes uniformly at random, take all the coins inside, and empty that box.
You play for exactly 100 turns. Your goal is to maximize the expected number of coins you collect.
What is your optimal strategy?
Several phone calls to go to the final round. The phone calls consists of mathematical, probabilistic brain teasers which was not that hard for a mathematics major. Final round was to harsh for me, strong mentality is required