Meeting with the HR person was the last step of the process, but I don't think that's typical. I met with 3 people besides the HR person, and they all seemed to follow the same script: Little to no small talk, followed by rapid-fire technical questions, such as "What is a Credit Default Swap," "If an Investment Manager had nothing in the portfolio but an ABC 30 Sept 2010 Put and an ABC 30 Sept 2010 Call, would you think that was strange? If not, why not?, and "If an investor invests $1MM in June and 500K in July, and their investment is worth $2MM in December and they redeem 25% of that, and Perf fee is 20%, how much do they pay in Perf fee, and what's their new HWM?" So if you go, know ALL your security products, and be prepared to do multiple verbal "story problems." And if that's not enough, HR will also give you a written test on that as well. I'm not too fond of verbal tests like this; in the "real" world, I prefer to diagram what it is I'm doing on a piece of paper, or, at the very least, have an opportunity to write down the numbers that are being thrown at me. Either I did well or the other candidates sucked worse than I did.