2 rounds focusing on technical skills before final round interview with senior MDs. Some competency questions as well as general background. A reasonably standard interview process but ultimately not the opportunity for me.

Long review here, but hoping it benefits someone. I interviewed for an associate position in Spring 2020. Video call interview. Monday 8:30am, San Francisco time. I join the call. The HM mentions it’s a bit early for an interview (mind you their recruiter set it up) and yawns a few times in the first 10 minutes. Collegiate personality. In the next hour, he interrupts our conversation to take two phone calls (I get it, people are busy, but twice is a bit rude). The last 15 minutes he is no longer on video because something needed his attention at home and needed to multitask. Maybe family? Renovation? I couldn’t tell, I repeated myself a couple times during questions. It was strange, but I get it, I work from home too and family/things come up. Here’s where things got a bit offensive: I asked him what kind of protections and programs they have for underrepresented minorities and LGBTQ employees (I fall in both categories) as my last question at the end. The HM misinterprets and says FTP does not have any affirmative action programs like at other investment banks and then goes into a conversation about how at their spouse’s company (a big social media company) they have to interview a select number of minorities before they can offer a position to anyone and how they don’t do that at FTP. I tried to clarify and tried to make a conversation about that social media company (as I have family there too), but instead I had to repeat myself because I think he was doing something else. I’ve always worked hard to get where I’m at now; Merit-based and I’ve interviewed at other investment banks and have had a good career thus far. Affirmative action solves some problems, but instead of turning the conversation about underrepresented minorities, protections, inclusion, and culture, the HM turned it into an affirmative action conversation. I don’t plan to get any job based on my skin tone and for the HM to go down that route is offensive. In fact, as other brown & black people may know, being an underrepresented minority in banking (Latino, Black, NA) has not been an easy ride and has actually shut more doors IMO than it has opened. A look through FTP’s LinkedIn page shows you how few underrepresented minorities work at FTP (I didn’t find any based on images/publicly available backgrounds), nor do they have anything referencing this topic. That should have been my first sign. If you’re an anti-Affirmative Action fan, consider FTP.