Less than 0.3% of the applicants for the internship programme at Citadel and its market-making affiliate Citadel Securities in Sydney, Australia have been successful in securing a place, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Applications jumped by some 36% when the firm extended the the programme to Australia last year, with informatics and math Olympians, and a chess champion numbering among the 10 new interns subsequently taken on.

The successful candidates came from both the University of New South Wales and University of Melbourne and have backgrounds in areas such as statistics, data science and engineering. During their 10-week stint with the firm, the new interns will work in the trading, quantitative research and engineering departments.