I applied through university. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Optiver (Amsterdam) in Feb 2015
Interview
Numerical test (mental arithmetic, sequences and mixed questions), phone interview with HR, inhouse HR and technical / aptitude test interviews. Many people dont pass first round, second round seems doable and last round is toughest.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Numerical test is as explained on this website. Phone interview was strict but fair, mainly motivational (why amsterdam) and competence and last 10 mins easy (as done by hr) technical questions. Last round HR interview with recruiter and trainer building on phone interview, technical interview partly in-depth (option knowledge) partly market making / probability type games.
spent about 1.5 months pretty much purely dedicated to preparing for interviews for all the pre-penultimate programs (Optiver, IMC, JS, SIG, Citadel, etc). I used these resources:
Green book (Really good starter but I got bored of it after a few weeks)
EverythingQuant (Went through literally every single interview prep question, went through the interview guides, and completed the probability course just to make sure I covered all bases)
Briefly read through this guide
Watched coding Jesus in my spare time (not sure if this helped directly lmao but he’s a great creator and very informative)
OA was weird and hard. there was only three sections (i think) this year compared to 5 last year. questions are weird and I don't know how they can judge your ability base on that.
Mental math test, beat the odds, online puzzle like games etc online, brain teasers during physical interview and a behavioral interview where they want to assess how competitive and assertive you are.