13 questions reported in Man Group interviews, organised by the group that asks them. Every question carries a model answer and graded feedback on your own attempt.
Questions
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Hard
Model builds
Built in the spreadsheet grid
Multiple testing, out-of-sample discipline, capacity and decay. 8 questions
A first-round check that a research candidate can separate a strategy outcome from the market outcome it rode along with.
A paper portfolio returns 8% in a month while its benchmark returns 5%. What is the portfolio's active return? Is that enough to call the signal good?
A common first-round check that you can make differently scaled signals comparable before combining them.
A stock's 12-month earnings-revision score is 18. Across the investable universe, the score has a mean of 10 and standard deviation of 4. What is its z-score, and why might a quant researcher use it…
A foundational research-process question for candidates who may use machine learning on financial data.
What are training, validation and test sets in quantitative research? Why should a time-series financial dataset be split chronologically rather than randomly shuffled?
A research-team scenario used to test whether a junior candidate can communicate a disciplined go or no-go decision under a deadline.
At 4pm, a senior researcher asks you to add a new vendor's "customer demand score" to tomorrow's signal run. The vendor says the history reaches 2018, but its documentation does not state when each…
Quant research interviews probe statistical judgement over formula recall.
A researcher backtests 200 signals and finds one with a t-statistic of 2.5 predicting next-day returns. Should you trade it? Explain what's wrong and what you'd require instead.
Quant research interviews hand you output and ask what it means.
You regress a stock's returns on the market and get beta 1.2 (standard error 0.15), alpha 0.3% monthly (standard error 0.4%), and R² of 0.45. What do you conclude?
A research review question after a promising factor weakens in its most recent out-of-sample period.
A cross-sectional equity signal had a strong information coefficient for eight years, but its last 18 months are near zero. How would you decide whether this is noise, a regime change, or a research…
Standard for quantitative research and risk roles.
What are the assumptions behind OLS regression? Which are most frequently violated in financial data, and what do you do about it?
Strategic versus tactical allocation, risk parity and rebalancing rules. 2 questions
Asked because client behaviour often fails before long-term expected returns do.
How can a multi-asset manager control drawdowns without simply holding cash?
A standard multi-asset interview topic, and one with a well-known critique.
Explain risk parity. Why would anyone lever bonds, and what is the main criticism?
Business quality, position sizing, benchmark risk and turnover discipline. 1 question
Standard in quantitative and multi-manager interviews.
Define the Sharpe ratio. What are its limitations, and what would you look at alongside it when evaluating a manager?
Stochastic calculus, VaR and expected shortfall, and model limitations. 1 question
Senior quant-risk interviews test whether you can balance a plausible model improvement against control risk and commercial pressure.
A quant team wants to deploy a new equity factor-risk model on Thursday, before a major central-bank decision. It lowers measured risk for a profitable book by 20% because it treats recent sector…
Recovery analysis, capital structure relative value and covenant leakage. 1 question
A classic strategy that tests whether you can decompose a hybrid instrument.
Explain convertible arbitrage. What are you actually long, and what happened to the strategy in 2008?
Write your answer, get it graded on technical accuracy, completeness and communication, and see exactly which mechanic you missed.
Company tags reflect where a question type is commonly reported in interviews. They are not sourced from, endorsed by, or affiliated with Man Group.