My recruiting experience at J.P. Morgan

“Why don’t you apply to J.P. Morgan?” my mum suggested. “I’ll never get through the first stage!” I replied.

I don’t know why I had a fear of applying to J.P. Morgan – but I just assumed I’d be rejected. Without a doubt, it’s one of the most highly regarded companies in the world and I never thought of myself as one of the highest achievers academically.

When I eventually built up the courage to apply, I looked through the website at what the Technology Analyst programme consisted of, the application process and ironically enough read through some of the blog articles! When it came to applying, I answered the application questions as honestly as possible and with the competency questions, I kept the answers pretty simple (not using any fancy jargon or five syllable words).

After submitting the initial application, along with a cover letter and my CV, I received an invitation to complete the numerical and verbal tests. After half-heartedly attempting many of these before, I decided to take this one more seriously and actually took the time to refresh myself with some practice tests available online. This definitely helped and I was thrilled when I received the invitation to a first round interview!

The first round consisted of a ‘technical’ interview, which weirdly enough I enjoyed! I then had a competency interview with another friendly technologist from the company. The questions weren’t designed to trick me, just to genuinely find out about me, my career aspirations and previous experience. The second round was made up of a group exercise, written exercise and then a face-to-face meeting about the exercises and why I responded how I did. Obviously I was nervous, perhaps a little more in the second round, and genuinely thought I’d messed it up. However, the assessors try their best to calm your nerves so they’re able to really see your personality shine through. I felt like they were trying to find out more about me and see if I’d be a good fit in the company, rather than just testing my coding skills.

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