written test with coding and some macroeconomic knowledge, then met with three officers with usual questions like why you apply, tell us about yourself, what's your hobby, and some research questions regarding methodologies from my CV. After that met with senior levels, and questions are not that difficult. Future plans, and why do you think you're a good fit.
Excel, panel interview, and last interview with the board. It wasn't difficult but they asked tricky questions where I had to brainstorm using my college experiences and stuff. And they had to go through my CV to ask some behavioral questions. This was the most tricky part.
The whole RA hiring process was pretty fast, after got the initial email. There was an Excel exam followed by an online interview, with three people from the same division.
I applied online. I interviewed at IMF in Aug 2025
Interview
I did a technical assessment for the Monetary and Capital Markets Department. I was given roughly three days to do an assessment that usually takes a week to complete. It was extremely difficult, even with the aid of LLMs. The questions were open ended and demanded a strong understanding of econometrics and machine learning. It took me 20+ hours to finish, and I ultimately submitted it late, which killed my application. The worst part however, was that they absolutely refused to respond to any inquiries. So you would essentially be spending 20+ hours of your time doing a pointless assessment for the marginal chance of proceeding to in-person interviews. Total lack of respect for a candidate's time and energy, there are much better places to apply to that demand far less.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The assessment involved four questions, the first was a forecasting question, the second was prompt engineering, and the last two dealt with NLP.
Research Analyst applicants have rated the interview process at IMF with 3.2 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 81% positive. To compare, the company-average is 70.6% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Research Analyst roles take an average of 34 days to get hired, when considering 27 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at IMF overall takes an average of 55 days.
Common stages of the interview process at IMF as a Research Analyst according to 27 Glassdoor interviews include:
Group panel interview: 31%
Skills test: 22%
Presentation: 16%
Phone interview: 9%
Background check: 7%
One on one interview: 7%
Other: 4%
Drug test: 2%
Personality test: 2%
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