IMC New Grad Trader Interview Experience — Reflex-Game OA Then a One-Take Video Screen

I applied online for IMC Amsterdam's graduate trader role in March, and right after I submitted the application it automatically sent me the first round OA. The first round was a 45-minute Neurolympics game — you can try a shorter demo version of the same kind of questions before the real thing, but the real test is longer. I did really badly on this round, both my speed and accuracy percentiles were low. When I was practicing, the next two rounds of the game each took roughly 5000-6000 attempts, so I'm guessing you'd need at least 10000 practice attempts to actually do well. They clearly care a lot about reaction speed, so those last two tests matter a lot.

A few days later I got an email saying I'd passed that round, and they sent me a Sparkhire one-way video assessment where you record yourself answering questions. There were three questions total, two behavioral and one probability question, and all three had already been posted on the forum before. For each question you get 30 seconds to prepare, then it automatically starts recording your answer. You only get one shot at recording, so I was a bit nervous.

• What's your biggest achievement so far? (I think you get 2 minutes to answer)
• Why do you want to become a trader? (I think you get 1.5 minutes to answer)
• Two random variables are independently uniformly distributed on [0,1]. What is the probability that the larger RV squared is greater than the smaller RV? (You get 3 minutes to answer)

I'd prepped answers to all the behavioral questions ahead of time, printed them out, and stuck them next to my screen, then just read off the page when it started recording. Since the camera had to be on, I ended up working out the last question live on the spot, taking about 1.5 minutes to explain my answer. A few days later I got a rejection. Maybe they thought my behavioral answers sounded too smooth, too rehearsed, or maybe I'd already failed the first round and it auto-sent me the second round regardless. My takeaway is that you shouldn't spend too much time on the first two rounds, because it's possible they reject you right after the video assessment no matter what you do.