Practice · Quant prep · IMC
IMC interview questions
IMC describes its process in four steps and is open about what it wants to see: how you handle a problem you have not met before, and how you work with the people across the table.
The process, from IMC's own pages
- Online assessment. The process starts with an online assessment used to decide who is invited to interview. Source
- Behavioural interview. A phone or video conversation about your background and your fit for the role. Source
- Technical interview. Problem solving with a trader or an engineer. Source
- Assessment day. In the office: a mix of technical and behavioural stations. Source
- A programming exercise. IMC has described a second-stage interview in two parts: a discussion that works like talking a problem through with a colleague, and a programming test on an approximation of its trading system. Source
What candidates report
Candidates describe the online assessment as short timed modules: arithmetic, number sequences and logical reasoning. The details change between years and regions, so treat any specific format as indicative.
What IMC is testing
IMC's own advice lists what it is judging: how you learn, how you handle unfamiliar problems, how you push through uncertainty, and how you work with everyone you meet. In the technical round that means listening for hints and asking questions when you are stuck, which IMC recommends in so many words.
The sequences in the online assessment reward knowing the common families: differences that grow, ratios, a doubling plus a constant, two series interleaved. The problems below mix those with the pricing and arbitrage reasoning that the trader interviews move on to.
Six practice problems
Written by us to match the types IMC is publicly reported to ask. None is a copy of a IMC question.
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What comes next: 3, 5, 9, 17, 33, …?
Show the answer
65
Each term is double the one before, minus 1: 2 × 33 − 1 = 65. The differences 2, 4, 8, 16 give the same answer, which is a useful check.
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What comes next: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, …?
Show the answer
42
The terms are 1×2, 2×3, 3×4, 4×5, 5×6, so the next is 6 × 7 = 42. Equivalently, the differences go up by 2 each time: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12.
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A fair coin is tossed until two heads have appeared in total, not necessarily in a row. What is the expected number of tosses?
Show the answer
4
Each head takes a geometric number of tosses with mean 2, and the two waits are independent, so the total is 2 + 2 = 4. Compare 6 for two heads in a row, where a tail wipes out the progress.
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Two brokers quote a contract that pays £100 if it rains tomorrow: one at 30 bid, 34 offered, the other at 36 bid, 40 offered. What do you do, and what do you make per contract?
Show the answer
Buy at 34, sell at 36: £2 per contract
The quotes do not overlap: one broker will sell at 34 and the other will buy at 36. Doing both locks in £2 whatever the weather. Whether it rains is irrelevant to the trade, which is what makes it an arbitrage rather than a bet.
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Mentally: 17% of 250, plus 25% of 170.
Show the answer
85
x% of y equals y% of x, so 17% of 250 is 250% of 17, which is 42.5, and 25% of 170 is a quarter of 170, which is also 42.5. The total is 85. Swapping the percentage and the base is often the whole trick.
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You toss a fair coin 10 times and are paid £1 for each head, but each toss costs 60p and you may stop at any time. How many tosses should you make?
Show the answer
None
Each toss is worth 50p on average and costs 60p, so every toss loses 10p in expectation, whatever has happened so far. Stopping at any point cannot turn a sequence of losing bets into a winning one, so the best choice is not to play.
Practise under time
IMC-style round: Ten questions on probability, puzzles and expected value, easy to hard, 30 minutes.
How to prepare for IMC
Practise the sequence families until you can name the rule in under a minute, and run timed arithmetic every day before the online assessment. For the technical round, rehearse talking through problems with someone, taking hints without losing your thread. For the programming part, be comfortable writing and testing small programs in one language.
If IMC is on your list, the assessment hour tells you whether your test performance and your reasoning in the interview are where they need to be. The assessment hour.