So I applied online for trading internship in Amsterdam. I had previously seen them at a finance event where I was informed by their recruiter that if I were offered the internship it is probably useful to have some basic finance knowledge before starting, but that absolutely no previously knowledge was required for the application process (beyond what we were directly told to prepare). Remember this as it becomes relevant in a bit. (*) After I applied they didn't get back to me nor my friend for about two weeks, we finally emailed them to ask what was going on and they immediately got back to us- clearly they had just not bothered to open our applications. As a result of this I was sent an online numerical test a couple of days before the deadline, so had essentially zero time to prepare for the following rounds which ensued immediately. I then went in for a test day consisting of three rounds; numerical as before, sequences and some bizarre mix of the two. We were informed to arrive at the test centre at a given time, the recruiter for Optiver did not arrive until almost an entire hour after this time. I passed all three rounds. I was then emailed at that evening/night to ask for my availability the next day, I had to be available for 4 of the 6 hours they were interviewing in. I was given the earliest slot (bear in mind I was therefore told of my interview less than 12 hours before this interview was set to take place). This interview was said to be an HR interview, very brief to discuss my motivations for applying; this was absolutely NOT what the interview was. The interview was a finance quiz (remember (*) above). I had intended to learn a bit before the technical interview (which would've been the next round) but it was too late- my lack of finance knowledge meant that I was eliminated there and then during the interview, despite (*). It would have been so easy to prepare if I were told honestly what the interview was about. They (or at least the recruiter) did the absolute minimum they could get away with. They were also unorganised and I would even argue somewhat dishonest. The process was made as convenient for the recruiter as possible at the expense of convenience for the applicants.

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)