IMC Trading Interview: Process, OA and Questions

On 7 July 2026 a candidate for IMC's Summer 2027 trading internship in the US described the online assessment as a "40 minute test": a personality questionnaire, then a set of shape and pattern puzzles. There was no arithmetic in it. In summer 2025, trader candidates in the UK, Europe and the US played BrainsFirst's NeurOlympics games instead. In 2023, US graduates reported 15 maths and probability questions in an hour.

If you prepared for the IMC test you read about online, you may have prepared for the wrong one.

Here is the short version. IMC's official process is an application review, then one or more assessments, then first-round interviews, then a final round made up of several interview "stations". IMC says "assessments vary depending on the role". Candidates report that the trader test has changed almost every cycle and differs by region, while every software engineering report since early 2025 describes two HackerRank problems in two hours. In the US, most candidates describe a CV screen before the test is sent, so it is usually not automatic.

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IMC Trading at a Glance

• Founded: 1989, by two traders on the floor of the Amsterdam equity options exchange
• Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Size: more than 2,070 employees, according to IMC's website in September 2026
• Offices: Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, London, Zug, Aarhus, Sydney, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Seoul
• Roles they hire: Trader, Quantitative Researcher, Software Engineer and others
• Application route: careers page or via the IMC Trading firm page on Quantt

For the firm itself, see our IMC Trading guide. For broader context, see our Amsterdam quant jobs page and prop trading firms guide.

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The Interview Process

IMC's European recruitment page sets out five steps.

1. Application and review. You submit a CV. IMC's US postings say AI tools help the recruiting team review applications, and that "all hiring decisions are made by people".
2. (Online) assessment. "If we're impressed with your application, we'll send you an assessment and/or invite you to move forward with an interview."
3. First-round interviews.
4. Final-round interviews. These "may consist of multiple interview stations". IMC books flights and hotels for onsite days.
5. Offer. "Our goal is to get back to you with feedback within a couple of days."

IMC's Asia-Pacific campus team describes the graduate and intern version in more detail: "We always kick off with an online assessment", then a behavioural interview by phone or Zoom, a technical first round with a trader or engineer, and a final assessment day in the office with "a mix of technical and behavioural stations". The same article mentions a minimum Distinction average.

Candidates add one step IMC's pages do not mention. In the US in 2023, the UK in 2025 and Amsterdam in 2026, trader candidates describe a one-way recorded video interview between the test and the live interviews. The Amsterdam version in 2026 was two motivation questions and one probability question, due within 48 hours.

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Did you know?

Tap a tile for a quick interview snippet — then keep going.

• IMC’s OA flavour

  Expect a blend of numerical speed, probability, and role-specific coding or trading intuition. Prep breadth beats memorising one firm’s meme question.

• Trader vs tech split

  Trading seats lean mental maths and EV games; engineering seats still see probability but push systems and code quality harder.

• Global market maker

  IMC is options- and ETF-heavy with a strong tech culture. Knowing why spreads exist (inventory + adverse selection) helps in trading conversations.

The IMC Online Assessment

Trader OA by Cycle

IMC does not name its test providers. Everything in this table comes from candidates.

Two things follow. First, no recent report describes a long mental-arithmetic test at IMC. If you have read that the IMC OA is 50 to 80 arithmetic questions, that does not match any candidate report we could find (this page used to say so). Second, several 2025 candidates said a high raw score in NeurOlympics did not guarantee progress. The games produce a profile, and one candidate's advice was to "look at the report, not your score".

The SHL Test

The 2026 US version is the one most people searching for "IMC trading assessment SHL" are about to sit. The personality section asks you to pick between statements that describe you; there are no right answers, and answering consistently matters more than guessing what a trader should say. The reasoning section is closer to an IQ test than a maths test: you are shown a sequence of shapes or grids and have to find the rule. Candidates describe some number sequences as well. We found no report either way on calculators.

The best preparation is untimed practice on inductive reasoning puzzles until you recognise the common rule types (rotation, alternation, counting, position), then timed practice. Speed arithmetic will not help you much here, although it will help later in the interviews.

Is the IMC OA Automatic?

Usually not. Four US candidates across 2025 and 2026 describe a CV screen first, including one who said IMC states this in the application portal, and one who said Chicago "does resume screening". Two others in an August 2026 thread said their test arrived within minutes of applying, so it can happen. IMC's own wording is that the assessment is sent "if we're impressed with your application", and a 2024 US intern posting asked applicants to allow up to three weeks for review. Waits of up to about five weeks for the test were reported in the 2026 US cycle.

Software Engineering OA

This is the most stable part of the process. At least four candidate reports from 2025 and 2026 describe a HackerRank test with two problems, and three give the time as two hours. The same two problems appear across several reports: a stack with a bulk conditional removal operation, and a binary search problem about the maximum height a relay of towers can reach. Our coding interview questions are good practice for both styles.

Quant Researcher OA

Only prep sites describe it, as a short maths, statistics and probability test on HackerRank. We could not confirm this from a candidate.

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After the Assessment

For traders, the live interviews follow a pattern candidates describe consistently: a behavioural or recruiter conversation, then a technical round with a trader, then the final day. In the 2027 US cycle, candidates report a recruiter screen, the test, and first-round interviews from late August 2026.

The final day is where the famous trading game lives. IMC's own pages say only "multiple interview stations" and "technical and behavioural stations". Prep sites and candidate write-ups describe a trading simulation or market-making game, a quantitative station with senior traders, a behavioural station and time on a desk. We have not seen a reliable source for the number or length of interviews, so we will not give one.

The game is not about winning. What the interviewers watch is whether you move your prices sensibly when new information arrives.

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How Interviews Differ by Role

Trader

The most-hired role. The interviews test probability, expected value, mental arithmetic and decisions under uncertainty, and the final day adds the trading game. Our market making interview questions cover the quoting style of question.

Quantitative Researcher

A more academic version of the trader interview. Heavier on statistics, regression and time-series analysis. Coding in Python is often required.

Software Engineer

A standard technical interview with a performance-sensitive flavour. C++ is common on the most latency-sensitive teams; Python and Java appear on data and platform teams.

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Real Question Types

Mental Maths

Question 1: What is 17 × 23?

Approach: (20 - 3) × 23 = 460 - 69 = 391. Or 17 × 20 + 17 × 3 = 340 + 51 = 391. The interviewer is timing you, so aim for under five seconds.

Probability

Question 2: Optimal stopping You roll a die. You can either accept the value or reroll, but if you reroll you must accept the new value. What is your expected value?

Approach: Reroll if your first roll is below the expected value of a fresh roll, which is 3.5. So reroll on 1, 2 or 3 (probability 0.5) and keep 4, 5 or 6. E = 0.5 × 3.5 + 0.5 × 5 = 4.25.

Question 3: Conditional You have three coins: one always lands heads, one always lands tails, and one is fair. You pick a coin at random and flip it. It lands heads. What is the probability it lands heads on the next flip?

Approach: Bayes. P(1H) = (1 + 0 + 0.5) / 3 = 0.5. P(2H) = (1 + 0 + 0.25) / 3 = 0.417. So P(2H | 1H) = 0.417 / 0.5 = 0.833.

Trading Game

Question 4: I have an urn with 100 marbles. Some are red, some are blue. You don't know the split. I will pay you the number of red marbles in pounds. Make me a market.

Approach: With no information, the expected number of red marbles is 50. A reasonable starting market is 45 at 55. As I trade with you (or refuse to), update. If I keep buying at 55, I might know the count is above 55, so move your market up. The interviewer is testing whether you adjust.

Pattern Reasoning (Trader OA)

Question 5 (our example, in the reported style): A sequence of grids shows a black square moving one cell clockwise around the edge of a 3 × 3 grid each step, while a circle in the centre alternates between filled and empty. What is the fifth grid?

Approach: Track each element separately. The square has moved four cells clockwise from its start, and the circle, which alternates, is back in its starting state. Most SHL-style items are two or three simple rules layered on top of each other; finding them one at a time is faster than staring at the whole picture.

Coding (Engineer)

Question 6: Token bucket rate limiter Implement a rate limiter that allows N requests per second, with bursts of up to B tokens. Each allow() call returns true if the request is within the rate limit, false otherwise.

Approach: Keep a token count and a last-refill timestamp. On each allow(), refill based on elapsed time up to a maximum of B, then deduct one token if available. Constant time per call.

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Quick quiz

IMC-style warm-up

Mental maths and probability staples.

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How to Prepare - A Four-Week Plan

Week 1: The test you will actually sit. Find the most recent reports for your region and role. For the 2026 US trader test, that means inductive reasoning puzzles. For software engineering, timed HackerRank-style problems at medium difficulty. Keep 15 minutes a day on the mental math trainer, since arithmetic comes back in the interviews.

Week 2: Probability and game theory. Work through A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews (Xinfeng Zhou) chapters 1 to 6, plus the brain teaser sections of Heard on the Street.

Week 3: Options theory. Read the first half of Options, Futures and Other Derivatives (Hull). You don't need to derive Black-Scholes, but you do need to understand the Greeks intuitively. See our Greeks and volatility in options and option pricing models explained.

Week 4: Mock trading games. Practise market-making games with a study partner. Have them give you simple payoffs (the sum of two dice, the number of red marbles in an urn) and quote two-way prices in real time. This is the most useful single preparation for the final day.

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IMC Prosperity

IMC also runs Prosperity, a team trading competition with algorithmic and manual rounds. Prosperity 4 ran from 14 to 30 April 2026 with 18,803 teams of up to five players and a $50,000 prize pool. IMC calls it a "first step towards a professional trading career" and features a student who turned his Prosperity 3 result into an IMC internship, but it does not promise interviews. Prize eligibility is limited to certain regions, so read the terms before entering.

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What IMC Looks For Beyond Technical Skill

Interviewers will challenge correct answers to see how you respond, and give deliberately open questions to see whether you ask for clarification. In the trading game they watch whether you update your prices when new information arrives.

The two traits that matter most are calibration (knowing what you do not know) and adjustability (changing your mind when shown new evidence). Candidates who anchor on a price and refuse to move do badly, however clever the original answer was.

For broader context on the skills firms across the industry value, see our quantitative analyst career guide.

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Where This Guide Goes Wrong

Almost everything about the content of IMC's tests comes from a small number of candidate posts, and the trader test has changed format in each of the last few cycles. What was true for US interns in July 2026 may not hold for Amsterdam graduates, or for next year. We have no reliable data on pass rates or how many people IMC hires, so we do not give figures for either.

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Compensation & recruiting notes

IMC's US postings publish base salaries; its European postings do not. Bonuses are discretionary and not published, so total pay figures elsewhere are estimates, not numbers from IMC, and vary by role, office, year and performance. Hiring processes change; nothing here guarantees an interview, assessment format or offer.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the IMC online assessment?

It depends on your role, region and year. Candidates for the 2027 US trading internship describe a 40-minute SHL test: a personality questionnaire and inductive reasoning puzzles. In 2025, European and US trader candidates played BrainsFirst NeurOlympics games. Software engineering candidates consistently report two HackerRank problems in two hours.

Is the IMC OA automatic?

Usually not. Most US candidates in 2025 and 2026 describe a CV screen before the test, and IMC says it sends assessments "if we're impressed with your application". A few candidates report receiving it within minutes of applying.

How many interview rounds does IMC have?

IMC's official process is an assessment, first-round interviews and a final round of several interview stations. Candidates also describe a recorded video interview after the test and a recruiter or behavioural call before the technical round. IMC does not publish a fixed number of interviews.

How much does IMC pay graduates?

IMC's US postings for 2027 list a base salary of $250,000 for Graduate Quantitative Traders and Graduate Quantitative Researchers in Chicago, and $200,000 for Graduate Software Engineers, plus a discretionary bonus. IMC does not publish pay for Amsterdam. See our quantitative analyst salary guide for wider estimates.

What is the difference between IMC and Optiver?

Both are options market makers founded in Amsterdam, with similar trading-heavy interview processes. Their online assessments are different: Optiver has long been known for its 80 in 8 arithmetic test, while IMC's recent trader tests are reasoning and game-based. We have a dedicated Optiver interview guide.

Can I reapply if rejected?

Yes, but not in the same season. IMC's US postings say "you may submit one application per role each year" and that unsuccessful applicants "may reapply when the next recruitment season begins in 2027". IMC also encourages you to focus on a single role.