Bank on Banking

I’ve been getting plenty of questions on several interview questions – in particular, the stock pitch and the greatest accomplishment/biggest challenge overcome and other “grand” word questions. Let’s delve a little deeper into these questions and as always, let me know what other questions you have!

I don’t have a great answer for my “greatest accomplishment” as a college student. How should I answer this question in interviews?

Essentially, go with something, whether incredibly impressive or not, that challenged you and allowed you to learn a valuable lesson, grow as a person and/or build useful skills. At the end of the day interviewees get hung up on words like “Greatest, worst, biggest” and so forth, and they don’t need to. These are words used to make you sweat, to scare you and so forth. In reality, go with what you know, what you are comfortable with and what you can show growth from – the accomplishment needs to be important and impressive to you, it needs to matter to you, the interviewer will be impressed with what you got out of it and how hard it was for you to achieve, not the weight of the accomplishment itself.

Here’s some more help with your upcoming interviews:

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Crack the interview code with my Survival Guides

I have some questions on the interview process and what employers are looking for when asking certain questions: 1) how do I prepare for the “pitch me a stock” question, 2) what are they really looking for out of the behavioral interviews – do I need certain answers to impress them, and 3) how should I answer the greatest accomplishment or biggest challenge overcome question?

1. Do your research – find 2-3 stocks across 2-3 industries that you like and have an interest in. From there, do some general research on competition, the market, news, etc. From there, dig into the financials of the company a bit to pull out some ratios and stats relative to competitors. From there, form your opinions – you don’t need to go crazy, but I always recommend stocks in different industries so that you are prepared to pitch a stock outside of your interviewer’s industry.

2. It means you aren’t an asshole, you’re not a tool/obvious suck-up, and that you are decent to talk to. In short, the interviewer (and his/her team) can and wouldn’t mind dealing with you (working with you) at 11pm, when you’ve still got a few hours of work ahead of you.

My main interest is hedge funds and private equity, but from what I understand I have no shot at this straight from undergrad unless I go to wharton. Will other schools help me break into PE or HF and, if not, how do I go from IB to PE? Do I need to get an MBA and then get into PE or HF?

That’s not entirely true – any of the top schools give you a shot – WHYPS and a few others, but it is VERY tough. The best ways to break into PE and HF are either going to IB from u grad, then b school, then PE or HF, OR going from u grad to a solid BB IB position directly to PE or HF. You don’t have to go to B school to get into PE (PE especially) from IB, you can make the direct move – especially if you are targeting PE in general and not elite/top megafund PE. From any solid semi-target you will have access to many of the big banks and from an analyst position there you can break into PE.