Submission 5 Optiver Asia Pacific

SUBMISSION 5: Optiver Asia Pacific “Ready Trader One - a competition designed to engage and evaluate talent?”

Optiver Asia Pacific designed, built and deployed a competition designed to engage students with the problems they'll conquer while working here. The game balanced technical challenge, collaborative teamwork, and unique creative strategies. Players competed for an expedited interview process and a $50,000 first prize.

The Idea

Working within high-frequency trading is hard to explain to those outside the industry. We want potential candidates to experience the competitive, collaborative nature of our daily challenges. To do that, we designed a competition we called Ready Trader One. Teams needed to build a trading bot in Python that operated in a simulated market, while also devising a pricing strategy that would trade profitably and ethically against other players.

The Execution

The build had three components - competition, website and marketing. The competition mechanism required teams to submit code that could trade competitively in a simulated market, which we designed and hosted in-house. The website hosted the competition, allowing teams to register, and learn the basics of options trading, pricing theory, and designing a competition entry. We deployed digital marketing assets to attract students across ANZ and encourage their participation.

The Result

A total of 223 teams registered, with 493 people keen to take part. The final public round had 101 active entries competing for the top eight spots. We live-streamed a Grand Final, complete with commentary from our Education team, direct to the teams in the top eight. We invited other participating teams to watch a recording of it after we'd notified the winners.

We made seven direct offers to candidates from the talent pool generated by this campaign. We also saw an application spike of 70% compared to 2019. We also received strong positive feedback from players, candidates, student societies and internal stakeholders about the game and experience of working with us.

VOTE –OPTIVER