Chapter 11: Paul & Dominic’s Guide to Getting a Quant Job 411
that through. If in the interview you hear something
that sounds bad, ask about it. This does not have to
be confrontational; you can use phrases like ‘‘How does
that work out in practice?’’ and ‘‘What sort of flexibility
is there to choose the work?’’ when told you’re going to
be counting buttons for the first six months.
Do not sound as if you work for Accenture Even if you do
work for Accenture or Arthur Andersen, you don’t want
to sound like you do. Avoid the sort of management
speak that resembles Dilbert cartoons. A common type
of interview question is of the form: ‘‘You find that
something has gone terribly wrong, what would you do
about it.’’ An Accenture answer is ‘‘I would see it as a
challenge that would allow me to work as a good team
player, as part of the global synergy’’; or perhaps you
might respond ‘‘I will grasp the opportunity to show
excellent leadership in integrity’’ which is interview
suicide.
This part may sound quite silly, but there is a grow-
ing trend for some universities to have formal coaching
in interview technique. In theory this should be very
useful. In theory. The real practice is rather scary. It
frustrates interviewers a lot to be faced with an obvi-
ously bright candidate who parrots clich ́es that some
consultant has fed into him. We say at the beginning
that you need to stand out, and given that the people
you are competing with may well include people from
your institution, it does you very little good.
By all means listen to these people, but take it with a
pinch of salt. When you know little about the process,
it’s easy to give too much weight to the few things you
get told.
Interview overlap It is tempting to schedule lots of inter-
views as close together as possible, because travel does
