Chapter 11: Paul & Dominic’s Guide to Getting a Quant Job 407
Sadly, the quality of cell phone speech is hideously
degraded, and on many systems you can’t both talk at
the same time. This is occasionally awkward when both
speakers have the same first language, but if both have
English as second language neither comes out of the
conversation impressed with the other.
Do not attempt to do a phone interview on a cell phone.
Focus Forging a rapport with the interviewer is a good
thing, but some interviews drift off topic as the people
involved chat. However, there is a time budget for each
interview, and most managers have specific objectives
in checking your ability. If they don’t get covered it can
hurt your progress to the next stage. Although it is the
interviewer’s responsibility to get things done, it’s your
problem if he doesn’t. This is where the politeness we
mention elsewhere is important. When you feel that time
is moving against you, ask to make sure that everything
they need to know is covered.
Asking questions Actually there are stupid questions. Bad
questions are ones which embarrass the interviewer, or
force them into corners, that’s their job. Do not try to
score points off the interviewer, either you fail and look
silly, or worse still, you succeed. It’s a bad idea to bring
up any screw-ups that the bank has been involved in,
or where the manager has to admit that he hasn’t read
your CV.
Buzzwords Your interrogator will often come from a sim-
ilar background to you, but even within maths and
physics there are many specializations that are mutually
incomprehensible. You’re just emerging from a disci-
pline where you think in terms of these names and
equations and it’s easy to emit a stream of noises that
your interviewer can barely understand. It’s actually
