The first interview was over Zoom with a recruiter who worked at one of the companies ION has acquired. The interviewer was really nice, mostly asked behavioral questions. After that is the Superday interview. I got invited 5 days before the interview was going to take place, so the process was very fast. The first day consisted of a Meet & Greet. This was a fun opportunity to talk to the other candidates and the employees who are currently in the LDP. So, the program is real in case you were wondering and has a number of LDP employees across the offices. I heard that no one was hired for the program in 2022 due to layoffs (but who knows). The event itself was pretty casual, but you should still be professional while talking to the employees as some of them may end up interviewing you the next day! If there are enough candidates, the actual Superday will split up half of the candidates into the morning shift or afternoon shift. Everyone's schedules will be a little different but consists of 2 one-on-one interviews, 1 case study, and 1 two-on-one interview. As mentioned, you might have met the people interviewing you the night before, so try to memorize their names so it's not as awkward. With that being said, the interviewers are various employees who work in different parts of ION and are still working during the day. I wouldn't necessarily say they are less attentive during your interview, but you can definitely tell that they are busy and have other work to do. You are given 1 hour to do the case study, which was about a company in trading that wanted to become a top market leader using ION's software. If you don't know anything about trading or price-matching, the case study will be difficult and hard to understand. So, if you're not a finance major, I would recommend brushing up on this topic as the panel you present to will ask you tough follow-up questions about the industry. They also asked me about current events in the finance industry, so if you have no idea about current events, these questions will be hard to answer. After talking to other candidates, it seemed like many of us struggled for this part and felt like we needed more time. I think the worst part about my experience was my 2-on-1 interview. The interview was with two younger employees who were very condescending and genuinely not interested in anything I had to say. I was constantly being interrupted and they had challenged all my answers. While I understand asking for more clarification, these employees were just berating me and already seemed to decide that they didn't like me from the moment I walked in. I think the hardest part about this whole experience is not really understanding what ION does. Their whole motto is "automation," but they give no insights into what their software does, or looks like, or the way its implemented. They flash you a bunch of Fortune 500 companies as their clients, but don't really describe the process at all. In addition, there's a lot of different facets of the company that are also unexplained. The employees seem to know what their individuals roles are doing, but none of them can provide a clear explanation of what ION does besides "automation", making the whole company seem sus. I would've overlooked my whole experience and maybe would've even had some positive things to say about some of the people, but the 2-on-1 interview was so awful that I just can't. As someone who is about to graduate from college and enter the workforce, this was a really negative experience and I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone who valued their time and personal well-being unless you enjoy being undermined and treated like you're stupid for being inexperienced. They do pay for your travel and meal expenses, but it's supposed to take up to 2 months for reimbursement, so we'll see if that actually happens.

Dopo un primo colloquio positivo con le risorse umane, ho preso parte al loro test tecnico. Ho una laurea in matematica e mi era stato assicurato che non sarebbe stato svantaggioso per questo test, grazie alla presenza di domande di logica, inglese e un codice da compilare in un linguaggio a propria scelta. Per i primi due argomenti non c'è stato alcun problema ma la fregatura (per la mia preparazione accademica) è stata la parte di programmazione che, contrariamente da come mi era stato detto, consisteva in 3/5 del test e soprattutto era infattibile per qualcuno con le mie conoscenze. Ovviamente nei giorni successivi mi è arrivata una mail con scritto che non volevano proseguire con me per il lavoro. Quello che posso dire è che non possono pretendere che fisici o matematici abbiano quella padronanza nella programmazione.