Example of Interview Questions

Remember the rules for self-awareness questions:
1. Predict, prepare, and practice.
2. Be honest, but emphasize the positive.
3. Keep your audience in mind.
As you prepare for self-awareness questions, ask yourself the following:
• What were the motivations and decision-making processes behind each of
the experiences summarized on my resume?
• What personal qualities do I possess that would make me a particularly
strong candidate for an investment banking analyst or associate role?
• How would other people (friends, colleagues, classmates) describe me?
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• What are my personal and professional weaknesses, limitations, and
vulnerabilities, and how might they impede my success in an investment
banking role?
• What have been my most significant failures and mistakes? What have I
learned from each of them, and how have I applied these lessons to other
endeavors?
Question 1
Why did you choose ABC University (or XYZ Business School)?
Question 2
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?
Question 3
Tell me about a time that you had to overcome a weakness to achieve a
personal or professional goal.
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Capacity Questions
Remember the rules for capacity questions:
1. Be prepared for confrontation.
2. Imply—but don’t state directly—that your previous achievements prove
that you’re highly capable of doing the work.
3. Remember that capacity refers to more than just intellectual horsepower.
As you prepare for capacity questions, think of specific instances in which you
have demonstrated the following characteristics:
• 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
• Abilities 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
Question 4
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?
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Question 5
Describe a time when something that you worked on—whether in an
academic, extracurricular, or professional setting—required considerable
personal sacrifice. How did you stay motivated to achieve your goal
despite the sacrifices it required?
Interpersonal Aptitude
Questions
Remember the rules for interpersonal aptitude questions:
1. Where possible, highlight the team-based components of the pursuits
listed on your resume.
2. No bragging, blabbering, or bluffing.
3. Get comfortable, but not too comfortable.
As you prepare for interpersonal questions, think of specific anecdotes or
experiences that will help your interviewer assess the following:
• Whether you are extroverted, social, affable, and likely to thrive in a dynamic,
team-based environment
• Whether you are likely to be a consistently positive contributor to the teams,
especially in high-pressure, time-sensitive situations
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• Whether your communication skills will inspire confidence among colleagues
and clients (this includes both effective speaking and active listening)
• Whether you take direction and criticism well, that is, without taking things
personally and creating conflict (i.e., whether you have a “thick skin”)
• Whether you can successfully navigate intraoffice personality conflicts
(especially avoiding them in the first place!)
• Your ability to manage difficult and demanding personalities effectively,
particularly when faced with competing priorities from different deal teams
Question 6
Have you ever had to work with someone that you didn’t particularly like
or get along with? How did you overcome personality differences to get
your job done?
Question 7
I noticed that here at Stanford Business School, you currently serve as
the co-president of the student association. I wondered if you could
describe your role in this group, focusing on the people management
(rather than the project management) component of your job. If I spent
some time here on campus and spoke to the students who worked with
you in this organization, what would they say that they liked (and
perhaps disliked) about working with you? Do you think that you were
an effective manager?
Question 8
Have you ever worked on a team that didn’t achieve its objectives? Why
do you think the team wasn’t effective?
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Commitment Questions
Remember the rules for commitment questions:
1. Know exactly why you want to be an investment banker.
2. Examine your resume and transcript for anything your interviewer might
perceive as a gap or inconsistency.
3. Remember that investment banks love to be loved, just like the rest of us.
As you prepare for commitment questions, make sure you’ve given some
thought to the following questions:
• Why am I pursuing a job in this industry; specifically, why am I pursuing a
job at this firm, in this specific function?
• How will I walk my interviewer through my resume in a way that suggests a
logical progression to a career in investment banking?
• Are my reasons for pursuing the analyst/associate track thoughtful and
credible?
• How will this job advance my own personal and professional goals?
• Can I provide a realistic outline of the roles and responsibilities of an
analyst/associate? What does an analyst/associate do every day? What is
appealing to me about assuming those responsibilities?
• Do I understand the extent to which the profession requires personal
sacrifice? How can I convince my interviewer that I have thought this
through?
• If I secure an offer at this particular bank, will I accept it? Why? What makes
an offer from this bank more appealing than an offer from another?
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Question 9
Describe what you think the role of an investment bank is.
Question 10
Why do you want to be an investment banker? Explain how you arrived
at the decision to pursue an analyst position in investment banking.
Question 11
So I know why you want to be a banker, but why here specifically? I
mean, if we at ABC Bank give you an offer, are you going to accept it
over your other offers?
Question 12
Aside from the hours, what do you think you’ll like the least about
investment banking?
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Technical Questions
Remember the rules for technical questions:
1. Keep your answers short and sweet.
2. Think concepts, not formulas.
3. If you don’t know, then just say that you don’t know.
As you prepare for technical questions, keep the following things in mind:
• For finance, accounting, and economics majors: What was the most
complex or difficult concept you encountered in your quantitative studies?
Would you be able to explain this concept to your grandmother so that she
would understand it (or at least so that she wouldn’t lapse into a coma)?
• For nonquantitative majors: Can you use your common sense, analytical
reasoning, and business intuition to walk through a case-style interview
question on valuation? If faced with a technical question regarding valuation,
what top-line concepts will you draw on to craft an effective answer?
• For MBA candidates with banking experience: Do you know the deals
cited on your resume inside and out? Can you answer detailed questions
about the financial projections, transaction structure, and valuation behind
each transaction?
• For MBA candidates without banking experience: Have you reviewed
your graduate-level finance and accounting courses so that you know the
material cold? Can you demonstrate a strong enough foundation from these
classes to hit the ground running as an associate?
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Question 13
If you had $10,000 to invest—but you had to invest the money in a single
common stock—which company’s stock would you choose, and why?
Question 14
I see on your resume that you worked on the acquisition of Company B
by Company A. I wondered if you could tell how the buyer arrived at a
value for the seller, and tell us whether you think it was a good deal.
Question 15
So far, we’ve talked a lot about multiples: You’ve mentioned EBITDA
multiples in your discussion of the analysis you did at Morgan Stanley,
you’ve talked about P/E multiples in your analysis of a common stock. I
wondered if you could tell me what a multiple really is—to say that a
company is trading at “eight times.” How would I make sense of that?
How is that meaningful to you? What does it tell you about the
company?
Question 16
If I asked you to tell me what a skyscraper in Manhattan was worth—
let’s say the one we’re sitting in right now—how would you go about
valuing that skyscraper?

Graduating with your undergraduate or MBA program

Does this sound familiar?
You’re heading into the final stretch of your undergraduate or MBA program at a
top school, and you’re excited about the vast stretch of open road that lies ahead.
You’ve heard strange but wonderful stories about the world of investment
banking, and you’re intrigued by the prospect of checking out this extraordinary
universe for yourself. You’ve never been one to look before you leap, so you do a
little bit of research before you set off. You’ve read WetFeet’s Insider Guide to
Careers in Investment Banking, followed by Beat the Street: Investment Banking Interviews.
Armed with the sage advice in each of these guides, you’ve attended company
information sessions, trawled through banks’ websites, and spoken to friends who
currently hold the highly coveted banking roles that you’ve heard so much about.
You feel as though you genuinely understand what you’ll be doing on a daily basis,
the sacrifices the job demands, and the opportunities it affords.
You feel certain that you’re well on way to securing your spot. All of the recruiting
media that you’ve seen so far suggest that every investment bank is literally steps
away from world domination (e.g., “We are a global, multi-trillion dollar corporation
whose rapid growth and international presence are unmatched by any of our
competitors.”) and suggests that you, the candidate, are crucial to its very survival
(e.g., “We depend on people for our success—people like you—smart people with
ideas—ideas that can change the world.”). On-campus information sessions that
you’ve attended seem to confirm this belief; the recruiters representing each
company insist that they are simply looking for bright, motivated people. Buoyed
by recruiters’ encouraging words, you’re ecstatic when you’re invited to interview.
You arrive at the career center—well prepared to discuss how your experience in
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Interview Roadmap
pizza delivery relates to investment banking—and bang: You’re deluged with
questions about how you’d value a Manhattan skyscraper and what exactly you
think you’d be doing as an investment banker anyway. As you leave the meeting
with the image of the interviewer’s derisive sneer etched in your memory, you can
only wonder what happened to their insistence that they were only looking for
“bright, motivated people”?
Now, take a deep breath and relax! Chances are, none of this has even happened
to you yet, and even if you’re terrified that it might, WetFeet is here to help! The
good news is that although investment banking interviews have been known to
catch the unprepared candidate off guard, they’re perfectly manageable for people
like you (smart people—people who do their homework, people who want to do
fascinating work). For all the tall tales they’ve engendered, investment banking
interviews tend to be fairly predictable and relatively consistent from one interview
to the next. As one insider put it, “Two hundred thousand people have had this
job over the past 10 years. There’s no secret to what it takes to be successful or the
issues that interviews are likely to focus on.”
Beat the Street II is a companion volume to Beat the Street. It provides more detailed
explanations of the types of questions you’re likely to encounter, along with a list
of recruiters’ all-time favorite questions in each category. At WetFeet, we believe
that you’ll respond to tough questions more effectively if you know what your
interviewer is really getting at with each one. For each category of question, we’ve
compiled a list of specific skills and attributes that the interviewer will be seeking
in your response, as well as a brief review of why those characteristics are so
important for a successful investment banking career. Finally, we’ve prepared some
sample questions that will almost certainly arise in your interviews, along with
guidance on how you can answer them as effectively as our hypothetical
candidates.
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Interview Roadmap
For those of you who haven’t seen this volume’s predecessor guide, Beat the Street
provides an overview of the different areas within a securities firm that typically
hire external candidates each year: investment banking (corporate finance and
M&A), sales and trading, and equity research. It outlines the most effective ways to
conduct company-specific research, prepare your answers for the questions most
likely to arise, and anticipate differences among the first-round, second-round, and
final interviews. The guide includes a broad overview of the basic accounting and
finance principles most likely to creep up in your interviews. Finally, Beat the Street
offers examples of the most frequently posed interview questions, along with
worksheets designed to help you design effective, personalized responses.
A word about how to use this guide: As we discuss later, investment banking
interviews vary significantly depending on the background of the candidate and the
often capricious whims of the particular interviewer. Although we’ll give you the
tools you’ll need to anticipate the questions most likely to arise and we’ll advise you
on how best to formulate an effective answer, only you can craft a response that
truly highlights the particular strengths and experiences that you bring to the table.
As such, don’t get too distracted by the specific work or extracurricular experience
described by the candidates we’ve profiled (and under no circumstances should you
panic if you don’t offer the same range of experiences that they do). More important
than these candidates’ qualifications is their ability to navigate potentially tricky
questions by framing their experiences effectively. And finally, keep in mind that no
written guide can capture the intangibles like enthusiasm, conviction, confidence,
poise, and presence—all of the factors that often distinguish an extraordinary
response from a mediocre one.
With that in mind, get behind the wheel, fasten your seatbelt, and start your engine:
You’re ready to hit the road.