Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2012. References to Spanish recruitment practices and to Wall Street hiring “since the crisis broke out” describe that period.
Some Spanish companies are innovating in their selection processes, adding systems that act as a filter for candidates. That way, it isn’t all about the CV. Many applicants feel uncomfortable, because these interviews break with convention and nobody has prepared them for it, whether it’s a group job interview or a series of questions that put the interviewee on the spot.
Some of the questions candidates find awkward are by now the usual ones: “Why should we hire you rather than someone else?”, “Describe yourself in a single word” or “How would you act if…?”. Questions like these sometimes make applicants sweat. Then again, for now, job interviews in Spain are still a walk in the park compared with what are considered the toughest job interviews on the planet, which until now came from US consulting firms, where they push candidates to the limit.
Even so, the firms that until now had the toughest selection processes in the world (Boston Consulting, Oliver Wyman and McKinsey & Company) have also been outdone by Wall Street.
Since the crisis broke out, Wall Street has been looking for the best of the best: people who make decisions under pressure, cold-hearted people able to survive in a jungle where it’s eat or be eaten. And that is exactly what they need to see in a job interview.
This August I met a broker who works for a major investment banking firm. He shared part of his own selection process, saying that at times he didn’t know whether to burst into tears or strangle the interviewer.
He says he went through hell, although once he started working in the tough world of Wall Street he understood why that kind of filter is necessary. The interview was hard, but that’s daily life in the markets: given the delicate situation, the pressure is there all the time, and you have to make decisions that sometimes take your breath away.
The Wall Street interview
He explains that one Monday he got an introductory call, just to tell him that on Tuesday he would receive a call for a phone interview.
“The phone interview lasted about two and a half hours, and the only questions were about the details I had already put on my CV. The rest of the time we talked about the markets, the stocks I liked most, whether I had an investment portfolio, whether I thought gold was in a bubble or still had room to run, and so on. To be honest, I felt comfortable the whole time. The worst came the next day.”
There were five other guys in the waiting room to be interviewed. The interviewer was very clear in warning us that only one of us would be hired. Once inside, the first question the interviewer asked me was the first bucket of cold water:
“What’s wrong with you that you don’t have any job offers yet?”
Not that the rest of the questions were any easier to answer:
- Are you sure you want a long career at this company? If the answer is yes, then comes the question: if in three years our competitors offered to double your salary, would you stay with us or take the offer?
- If a product to prevent baldness came onto the market, how many potential consumers would it have?
- Sometimes we work up to 100 hours a week here. Would you have a problem doing that?
- How many tennis balls would it take to fill this room?
- How would you kill a crocodile with your bare hands?
Afterwards, all the applicants went to another room where there were five interviewers, and we rotated every five minutes.
We moved on to a market simulator, where we were told that after one hour anyone without a positive return shouldn’t say a word, just pick up their things and leave the building. Quite a test, considering the simulator was rigged to the point that the market fell 7% in three minutes. That was done to see how we reacted, and to be honest there were all kinds of reactions.
They sent me to another interview on a floor of the building that didn’t exist. We went more than seven hours without anyone offering us so much as a glass of water.
Finally I reached the final interview, where we carried on with a new series of questions such as: “What do you consider more important for success, knowing how to do something or the will to do it?” And even one of those questions you never forget: “If, to get this job, I told you that you’d have to let me sleep with your girlfriend, would you agree?”
And that’s Wall Street, a place where you have to stay calm even when you’ve lost your calm. Most of these are trick questions, and others are just to see your reaction and check that you don’t blow up easily.
For example, on the question of whether will or know-how matters more, the truth is that you can have all the will in the world to make a paella, but if you don’t know how, it won’t turn out well. And the same applies the other way round: if you know how to make paella but can’t be bothered to make it, you’re no better off.
As for letting someone sleep with your girlfriend, you clearly have to answer, and the easy answer that would show integrity is a flat NO, since a YES would tarnish your image. Then again, you could also answer: “Not my girlfriend, I want to marry her, but I have a sister or a friend who’d be delighted” 🙂
Featured image: Acediscovery, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
