Questions in an Interview Part 2

Question 3
Of the academic and work experiences listed on your resume, I wondered
if you could discuss the role that required the most juggling or
multitasking of complex projects.
This is a capacity question, pure and simple. As a junior banker, you’ll often be staffed on
several different deal teams simultaneously, so well-developed sensibilities regarding time
management (and expectations management) will serve you well, as will a knack for effective
prioritization. The type of multitasking involved in investment banking also requires a
relatively high stress management threshold: Given the inherent unpredictability and intensity
of the job, recruiters want to ensure that you’re not likely to self destruct the first time you’re
faced with an unexpected challenge.
Bad Answer
Candidate: Well, I’ve always taken the view that it’s better to do one thing
really well than to do a lot of different things halfway. So in college, for instance,
I really focused on my studies rather than trying to spread myself too thin.
While this is a perfectly legitimate point of view, you’d probably be better off being a little less
candid with your response. As an analyst or associate, you will be expected to carry a full
workload of multiple projects, and you typically won’t have the luxury of focusing on one
project at the expense of another. By definition, juggling requires you to keep a lot of balls in
the air at once; if you drop one, your reputation may not recover.
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Good Answer
Candidate: Before business school, I worked for 2 years as an assistant
account manager with an advertising firm, which required a lot of multitasking.
As an account manager, you’re essentially the liaison between the client and the
advertising firm. First and foremost, our job was to keep the customer happy
with the services that we provided; if the client wasn’t happy with our work, we
were expected to resolve the issue by going back to the internal team to figure
out what went wrong and propose solutions. A lot of that was setting realistic
expectations: sitting down with the client at the outset of a product launch, for
example, and listening to what they envisioned for the campaign. Then, we’d
have to translate that vision into a workable strategy that our team could
accommodate. It was always a tricky balance, because you never wanted to say
“no” to the client, or they’d think you were inflexible, but you couldn’t say
“yes” indiscriminately because you needed to be sure that your company had
the resources to meet those expectations. The job also required a tremendous
capacity for remembering lots of details—you were continuously making promises
to clients that you had to keep to sustain and build the relationship. If
you overlooked a detail or let something fall through the cracks, you jeopardized
the firm’s credibility.
This is a nice overview of the account manager’s role in an advertising firm, but our candidate
is starting to ramble a little bit and is straying from the question asked. You want to give
enough context to set up your answer, but keep it succinct. The candidate hasn’t yet addressed
the specific ways in which his role required juggling or multitasking, which was the question
the interviewer posed.
Interviewer: So how did your role involve a lot of juggling?
Candidate: It involved handling numerous individual clients, managing multiple
campaigns, and addressing a lot of individual tasks that required completely
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different skill sets. I needed to be reactive and proactive, analytical and creative,
customer-focused and business-minded.
For example, I might arrive at the office one morning, expecting to devote the
first few hours of my day to writing a competitive strategy brief for one of our
publishing clients planning a new magazine launch. When I would check my
voicemail, though, I’d realize that one of our other clients—one of our
consumer products clients, for example—was annoyed because they didn’t see
the TV spot that was supposed to air the night before. Rather than working on
the strategy brief, I’d have to switch gears from analytical mode to customer
service mode. I’d call the client back right away to tell them I was looking into
the issue. Then, I’d start an internal goose chase to find out what went on. I’d
call our media department to find the spot aired. Meanwhile, I would have
gotten three other internal voicemails about three other issues that require my
attention: One might be a budget issue, for example, and another might involve
a deadline that the research team doesn’t think it can meet . . .
Whoa, Nelly! He’s off and running. You don’t need to tell this kid twice to get right to the
point. What he lacks in brevity he makes up for in detail, but sometimes your interviewer
holds brevity in higher esteem. Don’t get flustered if your interviewer cuts you off midsentence.
She’s got a lot of material to cover in a relatively short period; so once she’s satisfied that
you’ve checked one item off her list, she’ll want to move immediately to the next one. He’s
proven that he’s done a lot of multitasking, but did he thrive in that environment?
Interviewer: Okay, okay. You’ve clearly had to do a lot of juggling before. Did
you thrive in that sort of environment where you had to constantly react to
changing circumstances, or was that an aspect of your job that you didn’t
particularly like?
Candidate: In general, I liked the uncertainty of the job. I liked that every day
was different, and that you never quite knew what was waiting for you when
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you walked into the office on a given day. But I did get frustrated from time to
time when I had to react to crises that were completely beyond by company’s
control. A retailer would be disappointed with a particular product’s sales, and
they’d attribute that to the advertising, when in actuality sales in luxury goods
were down everywhere. That used to get to me a little bit, but not the constant
juggling. Even though I’d often think that it would be nice to sit down at my
desk uninterrupted for an hour and get something done, I’d probably find it
really boring to sit for too long concentrating on one thing.
Hmmm, then how bored would you be working on a single Excel spreadsheet for an 8-hour
stretch that begins after you’ve finished your dinner? The candidate gets so caught up in
proving that he loves multitasking that he tips his hand a little bit at the end. The lesson
here? Don’t get too carried away telling the interviewer what you think she wants to hear.
Associate candidates should be very adept at multitasking, but it’s also probably best not to
suggest that you’re going to be bored out of your mind staring a spreadsheet for hours at a
time. The interview picks up on this and drills down a bit into his answer.
Interviewer: That’s interesting. It’s obvious to me that you thrive in a pretty
fast-paced and unpredictable environment, but if you’re accustomed to jumping
from one thing to the next all day long, I’m curious how you’d handle working
on a complicated analysis that consumed the vast majority of your time. Why
don’t you tell me about a time that you had to work on a single project for a
sustained period of time, perhaps doing a lot of data analysis or number
crunching?
This interviewer sure isn’t subtle, but then again, investment banking interviews often aren’t.
Now that she’s comfortable with this candidate’s multitasking capability, client interfacing
skills, customer service ethic, and ability to assume a high degree of client responsibility, she’s
in hot pursuit of demonstrated quantitative aptitude. Regardless of your academic or work
experience, this is an area you can always, always expect to arise in an investment banking
interview.
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Candidate: I didn’t do a lot of number crunching myself in that job, but the
position certainly required me to be comfortable drawing conclusions based on
market data analysis. When we’d work with a client on a given product, we’d be
responsible for reviewing spreadsheets of data and analysis that the company’s
internal strategic planners would typically provide. The client’s marketing strategists
would have crunched the numbers and done all of the trend forecasting
and market analysis, but we’d have to translate all of that data into practical
implications for our advertising strategy. In that sense, it was a good mix of
quantitative and qualitative rigor. The quantitative analysis was always interesting
to me, though, and through my MBA studies I’ve become even more
fascinated with the idea of using numbers to run a company.
Given the choice between honesty and embellishment, this candidate wisely opts for the former.
If possible, he may have decided to switch gears and cite a situation (perhaps during a summer
internship or undergraduate course) that required him to do a little bit of numerical
slicing and dicing. If he genuinely couldn’t point to a relevant example, he’s done a good job of
taking the “next best thing” approach; the ability to draw conclusions from raw data is
certainly a useful skill for an investment banking associate to possess. Depending on the
whimsies of this particular interviewer, she may probe his performance in his finance and
accounting classes, or she may throw a quantitative question his way to further test his facility
with numbers. Either way, he’ll certainly confront questions about the reasons behind his
career switch as the interview progresses.

How to answer in an Interview

I see that before business school, you worked at Fix My Business Consulting
for 3 years. Since consulting firms are so focused on developing
their analysts and associates, I’m sure you participated in a fair number
of performance reviews during your tenure. What did your last performance
review say?
Associate candidates in MBA programs are almost sure to confront questions about their
performance reviews in their previous full-time jobs. At the undergraduate level, a likely
variation on this question would be, “If I were to call up your summer internship supervisor,
what do you think she would tell me about you?” Before your interviews, give some serious
thought to what your reviews said and whether your areas of improvement will be red flags to
an investment banker. As always, it’s best to be honest, but introduce a positive spin wherever
you can.
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Bad Answers
Candidate 1: It basically said that I just needed to keep doing what I was
doing—that I was a real asset to all of my teams and to the firm in general and
that they didn’t want to lose me. The only real area of improvement was that I
tended to work a little bit too hard and that I should try to spend more time
out of the office.
This answer doesn’t really tell your interviewer anything, other than that you’re determined to
evade the question. Even if you really were a consulting deity, you should at least be specific
and thoughtful about your particular areas of perceived strength.
Candidate 2: In my last review, my manager pointed out that my performance
was always exceptional, but they questioned my enthusiasm and my commitment
to the job. Candidly, my heart wasn’t really in consulting. I didn’t like the
fact that I never really got to see the results of my work. Once I spent a year on
the job, I knew that I’d be better suited to a career in investment banking. I prefer
the faster-paced environment, the collaboration and camaraderie with my
colleagues, and the transaction-oriented nature of the work.
This candidate is not only evasive, but is using one question as an opportunity to answer another
one. In addition, a response like this will leave your interviewer wondering whether you’re likely
to jump ship after a year of banking. There’s nothing wrong with having your sights set on a
career change, but address your reasons for pursuing it when you’re asked, not when you’re asked
to describe your last performance review.
Good Answer
Candidate: Let’s see. Well, at FMB, performance reviews centered around several
different competency areas. There were probably seven or eight competency
areas, and I’m not sure that I can remember them all, but the primary areas of
focus were insight generation, product creation, teamwork, project management,
and client engagement. I was a business analyst, so for me, those areas measured
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the quality of my analysis, research, and deliverables, as well as my ability to work
with each of my project teams, juggle several simultaneous projects, and interact
effectively with clients.
Well done! This candidate outlines exactly which metrics her performance assessments depended
on. Even if you can’t provide as detailed an overview as this candidate, try to give your
interviewer some sense of what constituted exceptional performance at your previous employer,
especially if your previous employer wasn’t an investment bank.
Candidate: In terms of my last performance review, it said that my strengths
were content mastery and work product quality. It also mentioned my strengths in
new analyst coaching and mentoring, which I was particularly pleased with.
So far, so good. She’s outlined her response in “bullets”—her response is pithy, concise, and
lets her interviewer know where she’s going. In addition, she starts by discussing her strengths—
remember that the question was not, “What constructive criticism did you receive on your last
performance review?” Take the opportunity to highlight your strengths as well as your areas of
improvement.
Candidate: I was fairly comfortable changing gears and moving from one
industry to the next—basically, I could immediately get smart on the company
and industry that each new project involved. By the end of each project, I
would generally feel as though I was an “expert” in that space, and my team
leader would often call on me to share that content expertise with teams on
subsequent engagements.
On the product side, my team leaders were typically pleased with the clientreadiness
of the analysis and written work I produced. I was intensely detailfocused,
which I think served me well in consulting. Senior consultants want
junior people to focus on the “micro” issues without a lot of guidance so that
they could focus on the more strategic, “macro” issues.
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Amen! Senior bankers do, too! Attention to detail and self-sufficiency are important
“capacity” data points to mention as areas of proven strength.
Interviewer: You mentioned that you were particularly happy with the positive
feedback you received on your coaching and mentoring efforts. Tell me more
about that.
Candidate: Well, everyone says it, but the learning curve is pretty steep when you
go to a top consulting firm right after college, especially if you have little prior
experience with the work. There’s just so much new material to learn, and you’re
expected to learn it quickly if you want to add value to your client teams. The
first couple of months on the job were pretty difficult for me—I was hearing a
lot of this material for the first time, and I had never really built an Excel model
before or used PowerPoint. During those first couple of months, I felt like I was
just trying to keep my head above water. I was always asking questions, and I
couldn’t really envision that I’d ever be the person answering them. By the time I
was a second year, though (and to an even greater extent during my third year), I
had a pretty good sense of what I was doing, and I was asked to do a lot more
coaching and mentoring. It was satisfying for two reasons: Being asked to mentor
or coach affirmed that I had navigated the learning curve fairly well and could be
entrusted with coaching responsibility. Second, I just liked the process of coaching
and mentoring. It was satisfying for me to help new consultants though their
first year, especially since I could relate to what they were going through.
Remember that particularly for associate candidates, interviewers are looking for people who have
demonstrated managerial aptitude and who are likely to be exceptional mentors and coaches. It’s
one of the key distinctions between associates and analysts. Associates are expected to manage
teams of analysts and provide coaching and mentoring (official and unofficial) when necessary.
Interviewer: Well, it sounds like in the end, you were able to add substantial
value to both teams and clients, even if those first few months were a little bit
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rough. But in addition to the areas of strength that you described, did your
performance review describe any “areas for opportunity”?
Candidate: The big “development area” for me was team leadership—my
manager thought that I could be more assertive and proactive sharing my
thoughts in internal and external meetings. I think this was a result of those first
few months on the job that I described. Because I was trying to find my footing
during the first half of my first year, I wouldn’t really speak up in internal client
teams and meetings. I was basically trying to learn by observing and absorbing,
and also trying not to make some sort of obvious rookie mistake. And then I
guess it became difficult to break the pattern; even though I was developing
content expertise and getting better at the technical and analytical parts of the
job, I had gotten into the habit of not taking as much of an explicit leadership
role in team meetings.
Interviewer: That’s understandable to some extent. I can understand how team
leadership might come up on your first performance review, but why do you
think it came up on your last performance review, after you had been at the
company for a few years and developed more technical expertise? What steps did
you take to address the feedback the first time you got it? What steps are you
taking now?
Investment bankers expect that you’re not only conscious of your development areas, but that
you’ll continually work to improve them. If you’ve gotten constructive criticism more than once,
be sure that you’re ready to provide a credible reason why and provide evidence that you’re
working on it.
Candidate: I think that in any profession, there will be elements of each job that
come naturally to some people and not to others. For me, I loved the process of
learning about companies and industries that I didn’t know a lot about—I really
enjoyed the research component, and I loved all of the interviews that I did with
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companies’ management. That’s probably part of the reason why my performance
reviews emphasized my ability to develop real expertise within a given company.
On the other hand, team leadership takes a little more effort for me. First of all,
I’m the type of person who learns by watching and observing and asking questions—
I tend not to speak up proactively unless I’m confident that I can add value.
Plus, it’s hard to remind yourself to speak up in a consulting scenario when you’re
an analyst—you’re the junior-most person, and your job involves so many details;
sometimes, the discussion is so “big picture” that you tend to speak up only when
asked.

Capacity Questions in an interview

Capacity questions seek to answer the question, “Can you do the work?” As a
general rule, recruiters ask fewer of these questions of associate candidates
who have already excelled in investment banking analyst programs before
business school. If this describes your background, interviewers will typically
assume that there is little need to probe your ability to do the job, and they’ll
instead focus on the areas of demonstrated strength (as well as opportunities
for professional development) that characterized your analyst performance
reviews.
If you don’t offer prior banking experience, however (and this is the case for
the vast majority of analyst candidates), be prepared to convince every prospective
employer that your achievements outside the world of investment banking
will translate into success within it.
Examples
The following are examples of capacity questions:
• Tell me about a time when you worked on a highly quantitative or analytical
project. Describe the context, the project, and the outcome.
• What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced to date? How did you overcome it?
• Describe a typical day for you.
• Describe a time when you achieved a goal that required significant personal
sacrifice. How did you stay motivated to achieve the goal, despite the
hardships that it involved?
• Judging from your resume, you must be extraordinarily busy. What do you
think is the key to successfully juggling so many different activities, all while
maintaining your high GPA?
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• I’m looking at your transcript, and I’m noticing that your two lowest grades
were in introductory accounting and intermediate economics. Why should I
be comfortable with your quantitative aptitude given your relatively low
grades in these classes?
• I noticed that you haven’t taken a single class involving numbers during your
first 3 years of college. How can you convince me that you’re good with
numbers?
• Give me an example of a project (either academic or work-related) that
required significant attention to detail. Do you consider yourself a detailoriented
person?
What They Tell Your Interviewer
With enough preparation and forethought, your answers will convince your
interviewers that you’re a good corporate athlete who can consistently produce
a quality work product regardless of the level of complexity or time pressure
involved. Whether you focus on the hundreds of statistical analyses you performed
while working at the Federal Reserve, or whether you spend more time
discussing your experience on your university’s rowing team, recruiters will
hone in on the extent to which you have demonstrated the following:
• Exceptionally high performance standards
• Considerable intellectual curiosity, quantitative aptitude, and analytical ability
• Willingness to work extraordinarily long (and often unpredictable) hours
• Willingness to do unglamorous and tedious grunt work
• Ability to learn quickly and work efficiently
• Consistent attention to details, even under significant time constraints
• Ability to stay calm and productive under pressure
• Capacity for juggling several complex projects (at various stages of
development) simultaneously
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Why They Matter
When we asked insiders what attributes make a successful banker, one phrase
came up again and again: a willingness to “run through walls.” There’s a reason
that this expression arises so frequently; it’s the sensation that most closely
approximates investment banking at its worst—unnecessarily harsh, physically
painful, seemingly impossible, and simply not worth it. Unfortunately for
recruiters (and fortunately for job-seekers), there is still no reliable way to
simulate the challenges that a junior banker faces in the context of a 30-minute
interview. There’s no good proxy for determining whether a prospective analyst
can consistently crunch perfect numbers regardless of the number of consecutive
sleepless nights he endured the previous week. To make recruiters’ jobs
especially difficult, relatively few candidates (particularly at the analyst level)
have extensive prior experience in investment banking when they apply.
With relatively few data points available to accurately predict your on-the-job
success, recruiters are left to infer your tolerance for hard work based on your
other endeavors. As a candidate, your job is to convince your interviewer that
you’ve demonstrated the same skills before—either in an investment banking
context or in other pursuits. Former athletes are particularly effective at
positioning themselves in this way, since they can credibly say that they’ve
devoted a considerable amount of time to a single endeavor, made significant
personal sacrifices to succeed, and endured substantial physical discomfort
along the way. Further, former athletes typically possess a competitive spirit and
a determination to excel, both of which translate well into investment banking.
Capacity questions test not only your willingness to work hard, but also your
ability to learn quickly. Although investment banks devote substantial resources
to training their incoming analysts and associates, training programs cover a
considerable amount of material in a relatively short period. Deal teams are
lean relative to the volume of work to be done, time frames are often tight, and
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there is little tolerance for missing deadlines. To add value to the transaction
team, junior bankers must learn quickly and work efficiently, often with little
supervision. Since senior bankers’ time is both valuable and limited, they
appreciate analysts and associates who only need things explained once.
Rules of the Road
Rule 1: Be prepared for confrontation.
Because your interviewers are assessing your fundamental ability to do the
work, questions in this category (along with commitment questions) tend to be
the most confrontational. Be prepared to discuss your C-plus in macroeconomics
or accounting, the curious absence of anything financial or quantitative
on your resume, or the three consecutive summers you spent lounging in the
Caribbean. (Even if you don’t have any low grades or low-key summers to
worry about, don’t be complacent: One of our insiders was asked about the
single A-minus among the sea of straight A’s on her transcript). Regardless of
your background, you may encounter a series of rapid-fire multiplication
questions or a wacky brainteaser designed to rattle your cage and test for an
allergic reaction to numbers. Come prepared and stay calm—the wrong answers
won’t disqualify you, but tears most certainly will.
Rule 2: Imply—but don’t state directly—that your previous achievements
prove that you’re highly capable of doing the work.
Recall our discussion above: The more directly comparable experience you
have, the more comfortable recruiters will be in your ability to do the analytical
heavy lifting on each of your teams. As you prepare for your interviews, keep
the profile of an analyst or associate’s responsibilities in mind. If you’ve worked
as a summer analyst for an investment bank, written highly analytical papers in
college, crunched numbers for a government agency during a high-profile
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internship, or excelled in athletic endeavors, be sure to discuss these topics
(enthusiastically) during your interview.
Conversely, don’t belabor the point for less relevant pursuits. Trying to convince
your interviewer—through excruciating detail—that the summer you spent
working on a Montana dude ranch is highly applicable to investment banking
may not achieve the desired outcome. Particularly in the case of seemingly
unrelated pursuits, it’s best to let your interviewer draw conclusions about your
capability (unless, of course, you’re asked). If you make this leap yourself, it’s
likely to come across as forced, canned, and presumptuous.
Rule 3: Remember that “capacity” refers to more
than just raw intellectual horsepower.
Particularly at the junior levels, a “can-do” attitude counts for as much as
analytical aptitude. Regardless of your academic training or work experience,
don’t forget to highlight experiences that suggest you can learn quickly (perhaps
you taught yourself Italian in your spare time and are now fully conversational),
work well under pressure (don’t forget the summer you worked as a short order
cook in Cape Cod), and have a healthy attitude toward grunt work. One insider
describes her interview with a senior VP and business unit manager at a leading
Wall Street firm: “This guy had the final say as to who was hired into the group,
and he had this thing about hiring people who had waited tables. He’d ask
everyone he interviewed —analysts, MBAs, lateral hires—whether they had ever
waited tables. If you hadn’t (and I hadn’t), you’d better be able to describe
something you had done that proved you weren’t opposed to doing tedious,
unglamorous work.” Investment banking may be a white-shoe kind of
profession, but as a group, bankers like people who aren’t afraid to get their
hands a little bit dirty.

Rules of the Road at a Glance

Self-Awareness Questions
Do you know where you’re going and where you’ve been?
Remember:
• Predict, prepare, and practice.
• Be honest, but emphasize the positive.
• Keep your audience in mind.
Capacity Questions
Do you have the necessary horsepower?
Remember:
• Be prepared for confrontation.
• Imply—but don’t state directly—that your previous achievements prove that
you’re highly capable of doing the work.
• Remember that capacity refers to more than just intellectual horsepower.
Interpersonal Aptitude Questions
Are you prone to road rage?
Remember:
• Where possible, highlight the team-based components of the pursuits listed
on your resume.
• No bragging, blabbering, or bluffing.
• Get comfortable, but not too comfortable.
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Commitment Questions
Are you in it for the long haul?
Remember:
• Know exactly why you want to be an investment banker.
• Examine your resume and transcript for anything your interviewer might
perceive as a gap or inconsistency.
• Remember that investment banks love to be loved, just like the rest of us.
Technical Questions
Do you know what’s under the hood?
Remember:
• Keep your answers short, sweet, and simple.
• Think concepts, not formulas.
• If you don’t know, then just say that you don’t know.
Unasked Questions
. . . and throughout, your interviewers will be asking themselves:
• Can we put you in front of a CEO?
• Will you be fun to work with at 3 in the morning?