I applied online and was contacted by an administrative assistant to the HR recruiter the next day to schedule a phone screen. This was on a Thursday. Once we agreed upon next Thursday for the phone screen, the assistant told me that she would be sending me a website link to take a three hour written test that I should take as soon as possible and definitely few days before the call. I got the email with the link to the test website on Friday. I took the test on the following Tuesday. The written test was three hours long. It instructs you to write in proper paragraphs (no bullets or abbreviated list forms) and in nearly publishable quality. This is a quite a high bar and slows you down considerably. I was unable to complete writing the answers. The test itself was basic (see below) and I could have schooled their most senior analyst on the topics covered as I have a strong and relevant academic (advanced graduate degree, MBA and a CFA charter) and professional background spanning several years. However, between the compulsion to write a publishable quality material in limited time and my tendency to write a detailed and thoughtful answer I didn't stand a chance. I think in this case my experience and knowledge actually worked against me. Now to actual questions. Here they are (paraphrased): (1) Pick a company in an industry of your choice and discuss its competitive positioning. Illustrate how you get to its valuation and factors driving it? This is a pretty significant task. They are asking you to discuss company's product portfolio, business model to monetize it and the market structure. Then they want you to perform a valuation analysis and dissect it. Basically a written pitch of publishable quality in about an hour. Also, note that Morningstar's investment style emphasizes determining intrinsic value of the company. This would indicate you do a DCF analysis to arrive at valuation. This takes time. (2) Imagine it is 2030. Discuss major trends of the day. be bold and don't be afraid to show your creative side. This is like showing red meat to a creative person like me. I wrote an essay that weaved major trends that targeted each of the S&P's 10 sectors. Again I wrote too much - but as an analysts we are supposed to be thoughtful and I think this is a brilliant question that begs more the 15 minutes. In fact, it becomes a useless question if one is required to answer in less than 15 minutes as that would be just regurgitation of thoughtless sound bites. (3) Discuss and compare ROA, ROE and ROIC. Use numerical examples to illustrate differences and key charactersitics of each. Again a straightforward textbook question but it takes time to construct a numerical example to do the needful and hit all the salient points (there are many). By the time I finished this answering this question, I was more or less out of time. (4) What have been your major investment mistakes and what have you learned from them? This was short - and I believe a non-value add question. It is not measuring anything because you can write whatever sounds good. I produced 3-4 lines of some meaningless froth for this question. (5) I am not sure but I think there was a fifth question that I can no longer recall. In any case, I believe I did a very good job on whatever I wrote but left significant part unanswered. I couldn't help but feel uncomfortable being subjected to a three hour written test at a short notice. It made me think that Morningstar was looking for a cheap recent graduate and not an experienced professional. I think this test will create too many false negatives or even turn good candidates off. Now to the phone call. The HR recruiter called me at the scheduled time. She was very professional and nice. We had a long chat that culminated in she asking me if given an offer how soon could I join. I felt good about the interaction. I asked her how I had done on the test and she said she hadn't seen the result yet. Less than 12 hours later, I got an form-letter impersonal email saying they would not be moving ahead with my application. Perhaps it was my test or perhaps she thought I was bit too senior for the position. If former, that would be stupid. If latter, that would be true (based again on the test). In summary, if you are an experienced professional you need to think whether you want to work for a company that wants you to test writing time-bound answers. I think this is indicative of an employer beset with bureacratic rigamarole and a mentality of 1970s.