I'm aiming to get into HFT companies like Jane Street, Citadel, Two sigma or if I can't get in them then FAANG. I'm wondering will I ever get a call from recruiter if I'm not from a top tier University. How can I get a phone interview with these companies without a referral? This is for SDE.
Yes you can still get an interview. Heavy on statistics and coding
They ask statistics for Software engineer also?
Yeah. If you want to get into hft and quant jobs you have to know both and finance extremely well.
Top tier college helps in getting an interview only in one dimension. For example, if you are from no-name college, but are Kaggle Grandmaster, you will for sure get an interview as a quant. Or, for example, if you are from no-name college, but contribute regularly to C++ standard, you will for sure get an SWE interview. You do not need a good college to be an exceptional ninja, but people from good colleges are ninjas with higher probability. Edit: some hiring managers hire people exclusively from top-4 college for whatever reason. You are not able to be hired by this manager. There is a good answer on Quora by Vladimir Novakovski about a hiring manager from Citadel who graduated the shittest college but hired only top-4 alumni.
Also for the people from HFT what did you do to study for the interviews. What books and websites do you recommend other than leetcode?
I interviewed before, you need to be good at statistic. Can expect probability questions
Can I DM you about your interview process?