My feeling about the process is really mixed. The HR and the business people were welcoming and interesting but from an IT point of view, it was so unprofessional, that I could only see it as a pure waste of time.
The process was :
- week 1: home exercise (2 days) to do ... on Excel
- week 2: interview with HR (1 hour) with brainteasers
- week 3: home exercise (2 days) to do ... on Excel again
- week 4: 3 interviews (4-5 hours):
- IT architecture exercise with operational people
- data reconciliation exercise with front-office
- a coder pad on Java (with 2 simple questions) with a developer
- then no news during 2 weeks, then rejection... and no feedback at all.
Pros :
- the HR is nice, professional, has a strong knowledge of her organization, and was -by far- one of my best experience in the industry (for that position)
- the Operationals & Front-Office have given interesting real-case exercises (that you could face during your job), and they were welcoming and I could ask about their business which is always interesting.
Cons :
- their process is about... everything except IT. With two exercices on Excel (first one just about formulas, second about emulating a cartesian product with VBA), how could you seriously pretend evaluating anything about coding ?
- the last interview with the developer was creepy. The questions were super basic... but I could see that the guy was not listening to me (he was tapping on his computer during the whole interview) and as a consequence, if he has no interest in listening to me... I will not get the job. To counter such kind of arbitrary, you usually face multiple developers, and I don't know why Jane Street do not do that.
- no feedback at all, when the process is long and you do it until the end, is extremely rude. Yes their time is precious, mine is surely not... but I don't see how writing an email with 2-3 lines of feedback is such a pain.