Investment Banking Interview Prep | Questions & Tips

field itself. Applications open up beginning of the new year, so this year it was January 1st, and most of your networking starts in October or November, so 2 to 3 months before the applications actually open up. And this is will be the bulk of your recruiting experience is sending emails, cold emails to investment bankers, and then getting on coffee chats with them. At the time when I was recruiting, I was sending 30 emails a day, typically allocated between 9:00 p. m. to midnight every single day just sending cold emails. And my hit rate on these emails was 2%, which means that two out of 100 emails would get responses that would lead to a coffee chat. Then it turns into a referral where if they like the chat itself, they will refer you to another person or HR itself. Once you get enough referrals and get enough good chats in, then you're more obligated towards a first-round interview. Once you get that first round, the interview

process usually moves pretty fast. So nowadays, it's typically a HireVue, a video interview where you would record yourself speaking to these responses, and then you would move on to a super day, typically one week after. And then in your super day, you'll be talking to more senior folks. These would typically be every 30-minute sessions where you're talking to different people on a team, maybe about markets, about behaviorals, about technicals. And then once these go well, then you get the offer. So the actual interview process itself is more like 1 to 2 weeks, while the networking portion is more 2 to 3 months ahead of time. When you're actually on the job, you see that there's a repeat amount of questions that get asked, especially technical questions. So when you're preparing, you're probably answering and

practicing with over a thousand different technical questions, like every variation possible. But it's more effective of a learning method to practice like past interview questions, like I mentioned before. And I've been keeping track of interview questions over time, so this is definitely a secret where if you're practicing past questions, it gives you more clarity in what they would actually ask. In my experience, behaviorals were much harder than technicals because I've always been a math person, so technicals is either

right or wrong, you memorize or you practice it and you can get it correct. But behaviorals is what sets you apart. At the same time, they feel very unnatural to prep, right? That's not how you naturally speak. When you're speaking, you don't think of structure constantly when you're talking to your friends, right? But behavioral, you have to have a structure and it all mapped out and practice over and over again. In a lot of cases, the stories aren't even 100% reflective of what you actually experienced in the past, but because you have to allocate some sort of response to that question, you have to kind of stretch the truth a bit in that scenario. So because it felt really unnatural, it was much harder for me. And it took me many interview processes to actually get the behavioral section down. The questions that you definitely need responses to is your tell me about yourself {slash} walk me through your resume, just give me a brief history about yourself and why you're fit for this position. Number two is why investment banking. This probably comes up maybe 80% while tell me about yourself is like 100%. Why investment banking? What's the rationale? And typically, I would like to break it down to three main reasons just to give structure to your response. Number three would be why this firm. So if you're interviewing for Morgan Stanley, for example, it would just be a response to that question. And most of the time, the tips I would give to students is talk about actual conversations you've had with people at the firm itself. If you allude to people that are already there, it makes your response a lot more legitimate. You would have your typical behavioral questions after that where you might get them like 10% of the time, such as conflict within a team, experience leadership, strengths and weaknesses. And this is where your story bank would be very helpful to answer all of the miscellaneous questions they could ask. The technicals, after reviewing all the questions I've been asked over the past 3 years by some of

the largest banks, it seems like the very common questions are still the ones that come top of mind, which is walk me through a DCF, $10 of depreciation, common three-statement questions such as like walk me through an increase of $100 of PP& E as well as $100 of debt, how the three statements link, very common, as well as walk me through the three main valuation methods. And one other one that's kind of connected to that is which valuation method typically yields the highest valuation. That's one that's surprising very, very frequent from what I've seen. I think some things to

avoid is formatting has to be perfect. All right, if there's one small formatting mistake, they would instantly close the email or they will instantly close the resume if they're reviewing resumes. So if there's something that doesn't align with how they think, they're not going to like it and they're going to stop it right there. The reasoning is because on the job, attention to detail is probably one of the most important skills as an analyst. So constantly, they're getting feedback about, okay, they're missing this bullet point or this period or this footnote here. So they naturally are trained in their mind to look for that when people are reaching out to them as well. So having the formatting perfect is extremely important. Other things I would definitely good to have, especially on resumes, is a decent GPA. 3. 5, I would say, is like the base. I've seen people get the job lower than 3. 5, but it's very difficult. And then 3. 7 would be make would make you competitive against other people trying for the same job, typically for bulge bracket. For elite boutiques, it tends to be 3. 8 from my experience. On top of that, have relevant work experience. So having some sort of investment banking internship in the past, as well as some sort of private equity internship in the past, would make you stand out. However, most of my students I have nowadays all have some sort of this type of experience. So from what I've seen, it's been getting more competitive every single year. It's a very old industry, so it follows a lot of like standard practices. Like standing out and being creative is almost looked down upon. It but having like the basics, like the formatting everything correct, having one specific resume guideline, is the standard. The main tip that I would share is what I've seen within my students is that the ones that succeed treat investment banking recruiting very seriously. What that means is treating it almost like a full-time job, right? When I was sending 30 emails a day, I was spending 3 hours sending those emails. And then once you start converting those emails into chats, that would be another 2 to 3 hours every single day. On top of that, you still have to be on top of your behaviorals and technicals, which it could allude to another 2 to 3 hours. So on average, you'll be spending more than 8 hours a day on investment banking recruiting itself. Or when you're not doing it, you're always thinking about it. You're thinking about that chat that's coming up. Or prioritizing investment banking recruiting in general is my biggest tip. A lot of my students kind of think of it as a side thing. Like school is still the main thing, but they can spend like 5 hours a week on prep, maybe sending emails. And if you have this sort of mindset going in, you're not going to beat out the hundred thousands of competition or competitors that you have in securing this offer. Hey, by the way, if you're looking for a full list of the questions you'll definitely hear in your investment banking interviews, as well as real resumes that landed jobs at top banks and boutiques, we put together a free resource in the description below. —