Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews [Paperback]

Timothy Falcon Crack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2002

The book contains over 130 quantitative questions collected from actual investment banking, investment management, and options trading job interviews. The interviewers use the same questions year after year and here they are! These questions come from all types of interviews (corporate finance, sales and trading, quantitative research, etc), but they are especially likely in quantitative capital markets job interviews. The questions come from all levels of interviews (undergraduate, MBA, PhD), but they are especially likely if you have, or almost have, an MBA. The questions cover pure quantitative/logic, financial economics, derivatives, and statistics. Each quantitative question in the book is accompanied by a very detailed solution and by helpful advice. The latest edition also includes about 100 non-quantitative actual interview questions. Timothy Crack has a PhD from MIT. He has won many teaching awards and has publications in the top academic, practitioner, and teaching journals in finance. He has degrees in Mathematics/Statistics, Finance, and Financial Economics and a diploma in Accounting/Finance. Dr. Crack taught at the university level for 17 years including four years as a front line teaching assistant for MBA students at MIT. He now heads a quantitative active equity research team at the world's largest institutional money manager.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Timothy Crack (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970055218
• ISBN-13: 978-0970055217
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,426,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Do NOT interview for any analytic job before reading this!, November 21, 2003

By 

"ll1l1l1ll1l1l1l1l" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews (Paperback)

This book is specifically targeted at those applying for highly-quantitative jobs on Wall Street, and any job seeker in that area would be nuts not to take advantage of the inside information Professor Crack reveals.

The reason I am writing this review, though, is that I believe the sample interview questions and advice are invaluable to anyone interviewing for any job that involves a lot of analysis.

I am not in the finance field, but rather in technology consulting. Having practiced with Heard on the Street, I found the "tough" interview questions I encountered to be downright easy, and I breezed through several rounds of interviews, landing the job I wanted at a major computer company best known by its three-letter acronym.

If you're headed to Wall Street, reading this book is a no-brainer. If you're headed anywhere else that involves numbers, logic or analysis of a non-financial nature, you'll still be glad you read it.

65 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really, really useful if you're in the field, October 17, 2000

By 

Vitya (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews (Paperback)

I'm a financial engineering student at an Ivy League institution. Just got the book from Amazon. Awesome book, so far the best help in preparing for technical aspect of the ib (quantitative positions) interviews that I have encountered. I thought it would be sort of a black and white xerox copy - instead it turned out to be really well published. The book is rather weighty (>300p), contains a plethora of questions with detailed explanations, 0 filler. The guy is very good about cultivating the attitude of, "It's the thinking process and not the number in the answer." Overall, I would definitely recommed this. Given the amount of general info you can garner off free advice sites - vault/wetfeet, this may as well be the number one book on your preparation list.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for the most competitive finance jobs, March 21, 2006

By 

spaceman (Northeast, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews (Paperback)

This book was critical in helping me get an internship in trading with a high-profile hedge fund this summer. Throughout the interviewing process, over 50% of the technical questions that I received were discussed in this book.

While the book is geared towards more technical positions and does involve a fair amount of math, I would still recommend it even if you are looking for a non-technical position with a hedge fund or an i-bank, since this book contains a lot of brain teasers and logical questions that are commonly asked in all finance interviews to test how well you can think on your feet and under time pressure.

Bottom line: Very comprehensive, very rigorous, the best I have see for hard-core finance jobs. This book is definitely heads and sholders above all of the Vault guides.