Interviews:
Investment Banks usually have 2-3 rounds of interviews, which can include telephone interviews, online testing, assessment centres, stress interviews, analytical interviews, brainteasers...
Sample Questions (usually used in the first round)
- Walk me through your resume.
- Why Investment Banking / Sales & Trading / Private Client Services?
- How do you value a company (particular to investment banking)?
- Why did you choose Tuck?
- What were your fall term grades? What was your 1st year score? Why didn't you do better in ____ class?
- What qualities do you think are important for this industry? Do you possess those qualities?
- Do you understand the structure of our summer program / your job requirements?
- What is your greatest weakness?
- Why should we hire you?
- What do you do for fun?
- With what other firms are you interviewing? Are you also interviewing with consulting firms or for opportunities outside Investment Banking / Sales & Trading / PCS?
- If I gave you an offer right now would you accept?
- Rank the firms with whom you're interviewing in order of preference.
- What questions do you have for me?
- What made you choose your undergraduate school? Why did you major in ___?
- To what other business schools did you apply? Which ones accepted you? Why did you not choose them?
- What was your favourite class so far?
- What are your 5-20 year career plans?
- What is your proudest accomplishment? Your most challenging personal experience?
- Tell me about a time when you led a team or took responsibility either at school or in your prior job?
- How do you work in teams? How do you handle a non-contributing team member? What do you add to a group when you take on a team assignment or group task?
- Describe a failure. What did you learn from it?
- How do you handle stress?
- Tell me a joke.
- Why would two companies merge? What major factors drive mergers and acquisitions?
- Why might a company choose debt over equity financing?
- Where is our firm's stock trading?
- Where is the Dow Jones today? S&P? NASDAQ? 20-year or 30-year T-Bonds?
- Where do you think interest rates will be 2 year from now?
- Where is the market going?
- Tell me three items on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal.
- Do you personally invest in stocks? Which ones? Why?
- Walk me through a typical cash flow statement, balance sheet, or income statement.
- What is EBITDA?
- Company X's net income is ___; how do I compute their cash flow?
- What is goodwill? How does it effect net income?
- Why would a company choose pooling over purchase accounting?
- What is working capital?
- What are deferred taxes?
- How does your past career qualify you for a position in investment banking / sales & trading / PCS?
- What do you hope to accomplish this summer?
- Rank the firms in the City. Where do you fit? Who is our competition? What differentiates our firm? What are our strengths / weaknesses?
- Describe a typical day for a full-time associate.
- What is your greatest concern about Investment Banking / our firm?
Round 2-3:
Round 2 and round 3 (if there is one) are much more about technical knowledge. You absolutely have to have an outstanding answer for why you want to work in this business area. You absolutely have to be able to describe what you think you will be doing day to day if you get hired by this business area. You have to have high technical knowledge of the area you are interviewing for. You need to understand where the interviewer is coming from.
Further Advice:
Other knowledge you need to have includes an ability to give an opinion, with reasons, on the major macroeconomic issues, an ability to handle brainteasers which they sometimes use to supposedly test your mathematical and reasoning ability, 3 or 4 trading or investment ideas to see whether you have a real interest in the financial markets, an ability to handle the group exercises, presentations and case studies (which you can definitely practice for and get much, much better than other candidates), and of course knowing what kind of interview style they are looking for. You will only learn that by practicing with people who have been through the process before you.
The bottom line is this – interviewing is about selling yourself, so the natural sales people are the first to get the job offers. However, there is just no substitute for technical knowledge. It is a nightmare when you are going for full time interviews because all your competitors know a lot more than they did a year ago. For summer internships, it is easy because most students fall into the trap of believing the HR line at the presentations about how they do not require you to have technical knowledge, they just want to see the “real you”. So if you have made the effort to learn some technical knowledge, you will easily outshine other candidates who do not have any.