Make the most out of a resume

Without a strong support network and a lot of closer friends on the inside, without a well-designed and well-articulated resume, you will have a very difficult time getting to the second stage of the process, the interviews, where, yes, the importance of the resume will diminish. As a SA candidate you are not expected to have a wealth of internship experience, nor are you expected to have banking experience – if you do, you will clearly stand above the rest and have an initial advantage over the competition (I say initial since, as I mentioned before, the resume diminishes in importance once you begin the interview process – here your experience will still absolutely help, but you’ll need the interview skills as well to keep your edge).

If you happen to have some highly relevant experience, if not actual banking experience, then the job of putting together your resume becomes more a matter of expressing your internship responsibilities well, highlighting select other aspects of your candidacy (such as involvement in a club or two) and making sure there are no obvious/grammatical errors throughout. This is not a problem that most SA candidates face – most SA candidates face the opposite problem – not having the clearly relevant or actual banking internship experience and need to overcome that issue.

As I mentioned before, you don’t need to have clearly relevant experience to get into a SA program – it helps, but you can do it without it as well. With some work experience, your best bet will be to first and foremost sell your school’s brand, your GPA, relevant coursework – essentially some relevant and impressive factors from your educational background. From there, you will want to craft your limited work experience bullet points to be as relevant to banking as you can – working in operations/accounting can sound relevant if you focus on some analysis and even number crunching, even non-profit work or tutoring can sound relevant. If you have little-to-no work experience (and for those with some work experience after they’ve highlighted said work experience) after highlighting your school, GPA, coursework and so forth, you will absolutely need to sell your undergraduate club/organization involvement as both interesting and relevant to recruiters. Holding officer positions in clubs and having a visible impact on the organization can be a selling point as strong as most work experience, especially when it comes to SA recruiting. The key with selling club involvement on your resume is in selling the relevance of your work as it pertains to banking, while demonstrating how you’ve stepped up as a leader, whether of the club, a sub committee or just of the tasks your office is responsible for. Leadership, coupled with a relevant experience base is definitely going to impress recruiters, especially when lacking directly relevant work experience.

Working the interview

Everything is looking up and after all of the networking, resume editing, applying and hoping (if you’ve done any of this), you’ve made it – you’ve received the first round interview invitation. Walking into that first round interview is a welcome sight for many since the interview is now the focal point of the application (not the resume, background, etc – although they all still matter) and fate, in a matter of speaking, is once again in your hands – for a little while. Once you get past the excitement of getting the interview call/email, it’s time to start your preparation. While the SA and FT interviews are similar, especially for those SA candidates that have past internship experience or are finance/accounting majors, there are still some differences that need to be touched on.

Exceptions aside, the SA interview will often rely heavily on fit given the lack of a technical background in the applicant pool – meaning a lack of strong internship experience (that requires a comparable skill set to IB, if not IB) and/or a lack of technical coursework in Finance and Accounting. For many candidates, this internship would be their first “real” finance/technical internship – they may have had club involvement or other unrelated internships, but nothing of this caliber – not the worst internship to lead off with – that’s for sure.

SA candidates need to be prepared for all of the behavioral questions (check out my interview guide for more on the types of the questions and, of course, explanations) from background to goals, from strengths to failures and everything in between. Although the manner in which you respond to these questions will generally be similar to FT applicants, SA candidates need to be especially prepared for them since interviewers are going to rely heavily on these responses when assessing your candidacy.

One fit question in particular that a SA candidate should pay attention to is the goals question – whether phrased in the form of intermediate (3-5 year) goals, next step (post SA goals), or something else entirely. For FT candidates this question is usually not as dangerous since FT analysts need only to express an interest in IB and can then have various longer/intermediate-term goals – whether move to a boutique, buy side, etc. FT associate candidates on the other hand need to show an interest in growing with the firm (or at least they should since the associate position is essentially used to shape the next VPs). SA candidates need to think of the goals question more as associates do than analysts. Specifically, going for a SA position, you should know that next year you plan to accept a FT position with the bank and in the next few years you will be working towards completing the FT analyst program. Remember, the SA program is a grooming and interview tool used by banks to gauge who they want to become a part of their next incoming FT analyst class and if that’s not what you at least say you want, you’ll definitely be in a bit of trouble – no bank wants to hear that you are going to use them for their SA program to land at a better bank – or that you are only accepting this SA position because the better bank you applied to dinged you.

Getting beyond the fit questions, some applicants will be faced with technical questions. Some candidates will be faced with the highest level questions such as “what are the 3 financial statements,” while others will be asked more complex questions on transaction impact on the statements, discounted cash flow, and so on – depending, of course, on your level of aptitude in these fields. Additionally, due to a common gap in technical knowledge, brain teasers can often become a headline of the SA interview (especially for more quant-inclined candidates such as math, stat, econ, etc majors). Brain teasers come in 2 main types – those questions that have a specific answer (degrees between the two hands on a clock at time X) and those questions that do not have a definitive answer (bowling bowls in a large building). In either case, the more important aspect of your response is in how you arrive at your answer, not the answer itself. In other words, candidates need to be comfortable enough to walk the interview through their thought process even if they arrive at the wrong answer – showing an articulate and lucid thought process will carry much more weight than just sitting quietly, or with your head buried in a piece of paper and delivering an answer (whether correct or incorrect). It’s fine to take a few moments and think, or write down some steps, but just remember to keep the interviewer engaged and aware of your thought process and the way in which you are working out your problem – these questions are to test how you think and solve problems (as well as your confidence and ability to communicate) – use these questions to sell your candidacy, not shoot it in the foot.

Forward-Looking Thoughts

Well thank heavens! You earned the interviews, nailed them and managed to land yourself a SA position – congratulations! Instead of being excited, however, you’re wondering if you should hold out for another opportunity and look for something better (such as a better name brand bank or if you are hired into 1 group but wanted another) – maybe push a few other contacts, keep networking, prep for a few more interviews, etc. The answer is: unless you are really close to landing another position and will find out before this deadline passes, absolutely not!

If you have to “settle” for your second or third choice of bank for IB, that’s not a problem at all. Remember, the SA program is nothing more than an opportunity to build experience/your resume for a few months and then earn a FT offer and/or leverage that experience into an offer with a better bank. Utilize your expanded list of contacts for the FT employment search in a few months with a much stronger resume. Additionally, you might find that you really like the bank you interned with over the summer and want to stay – in this case, if you’ve earned the FT return offer, you can relax during your senior year and not go through all of the stress of recruiting, interviewing, planning and praying all over again. Finally, keep in mind that landing a SA position with this bank, does not mean you will have the same fortune with a better bank, or even a lower-ranked bank – this bank liked you, you might not interview as well, a different reviewer might not like your resume as well, etc – you never know – for a 3-month program, take the experience and then worry about your next move – you do not want to end up accepting an offer with a lesser company, let alone in a lesser or even unrelated group because you held out for a better IB SA internship – IB SA is better than Operations SA (and most things in between) when it comes to FT IB recruiting.

On a similar note, if you have to “settle” for a group outside of your main group(s) of interest, that is alright as well. Again, it is only a summer position, and at the end of the program, if you are offered FT employment, you can then discuss other group opportunities. Throughout your SA internship, you will also want to network with as many bankers as you can in your favorite groups – this will certainly give you an upper hand when it comes time to request the move for FT. Connect with the bankers in your favorite groups, find out about FT opportunities, etc – they will be your best allies when it comes to your pitch to make the move. Remember, it is much easier to change groups once you are in, have a capable reputation and have networked with some of the group, than if you are applying blind, with no connections from another bank, school, etc.

Stay tuned for future posts, products and much more! If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, drop them below or send me an email HERE!

Generally speaking, a sell-day is your opportunity to impress the other teams and, ideally, join the team of your choosing. Up to this point you have been fighting for a position within the investment banking unit, but now that you’ve landed the position, both you and the bank itself need to figure out exactly where to place you within the investment bank – in other words product or industry, and more specifically, which product group or which industry group. In order to do this, the bank will throw a sell-day for their incoming analysts – usually more than 1, depending on the size of the class – where the analysts have the opportunity to meet the different teams and, perhaps more importantly, the teams have the opportunity to meet the analysts.

During the sell-day, you will usually sit for several short presentations, by each hiring group, each concluding with a chance to network with each individual group for a few minutes. This last part is the part that you want to pay strict attention to and make the most of – but we’ll come back to that in a minute. Doubling back for just a second, the reason why I mentioned each “hiring” group, as opposed to every, or each group within the investment bank is that as a FT incoming analyst, you will have been hired either as a new candidate or received an offer from the SA position. If the latter is the case, and you were, in fact, a SA who received a FT offer, you will only usually be at a sell-day if you expressed an interest in joining a different group and didn’t find a new home or didn’t want to decide until the sell-day. Those SAs that have accepted positions within their SA groups will fill seats in those respected groups. Therefore, if there were only a handful of seats open in, for example, Technology, and all of the SAs kept their seats, then Technology might very well not be at the sell-day, or on the ranking sheet, since they do not have any openings for new analysts and will therefore not accept any incoming FT analysts. It’s not a big deal by any means, but just wanted to clarify that point as incoming analysts often wonder why a particular group or 2 isn’t available or isn’t on a ranking sheet or didn’t set up a presentation, etc.

Before getting to the final leg of the presentation, the chance to network with the bankers, let’s get into the presentation aspect of the day. Essentially, each group will have several bankers representing the team and set up in a conference room to introduce you to the team in attendance, the group, what the group does, impressive league table stats, deal closing figures, noteworthy deals, interesting aspects and capabilities of the group and anything else that they can think of to pull you in – I’ve even seen bankers pull out charts showcasing their record of getting analysts into top business schools and strong P/E shops 2-3 years down the line. In case you haven’t realized, all of this is done to attract as many incoming analysts as they can to their group so that the group, essentially, has their choice of the best of the incoming analysts. The presentation will certainly resemble that of a capabilities pitch delivered to clients introducing the group because, basically, you are clients and the group is trying to pitch to you their team, and get you to rank them number one. Now remember, just because the presentation is the group’s big opportunity to “sell” you their product/industry, no aspect of this sell-day process is one-sided.

Just as the presentation is the group’s opportunity to pitch you on them, it is also your opportunity to express your first big interest in the field and in joining the team. Use this presentation as a chance to ask some questions based on the group’s discussions and make your presence known ahead of the networking opportunity – this will help you to get on the team’s radar and even make the team a bit more receptive to you when it comes time to network at the end of the presentation. The key here, however, as is the case in every aspect of this day, is to keep the questions and comments relaxed and within the limits of moderation. If you are firing out questions every 30 seconds you will come off as more of a distraction than interested applicant, and you will definitely run the risk of establishing a reputation or displaying personality traits not of interest to rest of the team or that do not fit with the group dynamic. Don’t isolate yourself by getting too eager and don’t show yourself as a suck-up, trying to upstage everyone else. Just relax, ask a few questions when they are asked for and when the questions are relevant and value-additive – don’t ask questions just for the sake of asking them. If you can do this, you’ll definitely be in good shape.

Now, getting back to my previous point – paying strict attention to the short networking opportunity at the end of each presentation – let’s briefly move into why that is the case. Essentially, once you get past the presentation, you will have an opportunity to network with the group – but by network with the group, I really mean that you have an opportunity to connect with some of the group members, make a good impression, roughly figure out if this could be a fit, and evaluate whether this is a group, based on some of the teammates’ personalities, is a good match for you. First and foremost, some students are going to want to work in M&A, financial sponsors, leveraged finance, energy and power, etc, and while they’d be alright with working in an alternative group, they really want to land a seat in their group of choice. So, how do you do this? The answer: by nailing the networking opportunity at the end of that particular group’s presentation. The key here will be to make the time at the end of the session to go up and introduce yourself to the group’s panel participants, especially a group staffer (if present) and senior bankers, as they will ultimately be the decision makers. Additionally, you want to definitely briefly introduce yourself to the rest of the panel as well to further increase your chances.

By introduce yourself to the panel, I don’t mean state your name and conduct an interview, I mean that you should really be yourself. Express your interest in working for the group (but don’t be a suck-up or phony person – nor do I mean drop a few F-bombs and get your slang on – you’re still being judged, or, perhaps for lack of a better work, “interviewed” – do class is still key), be sincere in your interest in getting to know the teammates and ask questions about group dynamic, team activities, access to senior bankers, even questions on deal flow are fine as well – you really just want to show that you have an interest in the team, while maintaining those likable qualities that, presumably, got you hired in the first place. You want to fit in the bankers on the panel and be able to have a brief laugh or two while making your acquaintances – this will definitely help to set you apart from the rest of the candidates and help boost your appeal when it comes time for the teams to rank the analysts that they want. Additionally, make sure to get business cards from as many of the panel members as you can and definitely send follow-up emails later that day – it might not significantly boost your chances, but people have blackberries, and reaching out to keep your name fresh definitely doesn’t hurt. Remember, just as the group wants you to pick them as number 1 so that they have their pick of the analysts, you want the groups to pick you as number 1 so that you can have your pick of the groups, and the best way to do this is by making a great impression on the team.

After you’ve gone through each presentation it’s now time for the final stage of the process – the selection forms. At this point, if you haven’t received it already, you will be asked to take and fill out a selection card with the name of each hiring group listed along with a blank space next to it. You will then rank the groups in order of appeal to you from number 1 to whatever number of groups there are. Once you’ve done this, you drop the card off and there you have it – your selections are in and the fun for HR begins. The groups will essentially go through a similar ranking process, with the end goal being to get the majority of the incoming analysts into one of their top 3 or 4 groups. In other words, if there are 12 groups on the ranking form, the goal is to get you into one of your top 3 or 4 choices as opposed to your bottom 5 through 12.

Good luck on all of your sell-days and as always, if you have any questions, send them HERE and leave your comments below! Stay tuned for future posts on what an analyst really does, missing the 3rd year/associate offer, and much more!

To touch on just a sample of the questions captured by this comprehensive guide, let’s look at a few behavioral questions and topics:

“Why banking”

“Goals and other fields of interest”

And some technical questions:

“Tell me about a recent M&A deal you’ve taken an interest in”

“If I asked you to evaluate whether company X would be a good investment using just one financial statement, which one would you use and why”

This guide isn’t just for the hopeful bulge bracket banker by any means. Whether you are looking at investment banking positions with bulge bracket firms, middle market shops, or any boutique, this guide is an essential tool to conquer every interview.

Furthermore, this guide can be applied to more than just investment banking – if you are looking at strategy, advisory, corporate finance, commercial finance, credit products and so much more, this guide (with just a bit of tweaking for some of the more banking-specific questions) will be an incredibly valuable tool (and ideally the only major tool you will need) in your pursuit to nail the interview and take that big step towards achieving your goal and earning that position!

No longer will you be left in the dark before your interviews. No longer will you have to pay big prices for guides that cover the exact same material in far LESS detail and without the thorough explanations, point for point answer structure and sample answers. Quite frankly, we were due for a change, and a change has come – don’t fall victim to the trap that a higher price means a higher quality of service; here are a few misconceptions that need to be cleared up:

A higher price means better quality – False! Don’t believe that paying a higher price means you will get something of better quality. The fact is, bigger sites that are only out to pump out products and sell services, such as Vault and so forth, can and frankly have to charge higher prices due to their subscriber base (why they can), and advertising expenses and overhead charges (why they need to). I am not trying to make a ton of money on everything I put out and I don’t have any overhead – I am working on the site in my spare time from my laptop – I am interested in putting out the best product that I can to help aspiring bankers land and thrive in this business (but before anyone asks, this is not a charity either and I am a businessman, so yes, I am charging for it – but not $50+ dollars).

All guides are created equal – False! I have put together this guide based on my experiences as a banking interviewee, and, more importantly, based on my numerous experiences as a banking interviewer. I know what bankers want to hear, I know what they DO NOT want to hear, and I can keep you on the right path so that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot the next time you are asked to describe one of your failures (for example). Don’t be so quick to trust all of those guides written by professional interviewers, or resume writers who are outside of banking, or even outside of finance. If you haven’t sat through numerous banking interviews, and haven’t conducted numerous banking interviews you shouldn’t be putting out a guide that claims to be able to conquer the banker interview.

A 32+ question guide cannot cover the material I need to succeed – Absolutely False! Remember, this guide is designed to provide you with the tools necessary to conquer the most common and frequently experienced interview questions. While many other guides claim to offer more questions, most of the time they are simply: 1) separating every single question (rather than combining multiple parts of highly related questions into 1 question as I have), and 2) ask the same question in 10 different, although pretty damn similar ways. I provide you with the explanation, blueprint and sample answers necessary to handle any of these slightly verbally modified questions (since the question itself is still essentially the same) – bankers can think on their feet, and I didn’t think it was necessary to charge a higher price for a product simply because I am giving you essentially the same answer 8 different time by just slightly changing the phrasing of a question – you can recognize a “why banking” question or a “weakness/strength” question and I didn’t see a reason to charge you a higher price for the same product (excluding the otherwise higher word count).

Furthermore, regarding the last misconception, I am already working on another guide that will be entirely technical questions for those candidates that feel they might need a more detailed and finance/accounting-specific guide that is still geared strictly towards conquering the technical aspects of the banking interview. I know that some of you will ask why I decided to not combine the guides, well that answer is simple: not all of my readers will need a guide to advanced technical questions, and, on the other hand, not all of my readers will need a guide to the most common/frequent interview questions. Rather than paying a bigger price for a guide that you will only use half of, you can choose to purchase one guide or both (since the combined guide would have been priced the same as both guides combined will be priced) and ultimately decide where you need the most work. More will come on this topic soon – but I just wanted to let all of you know that I am hard at work to provide you with all of the tools necessary to land that dream job in investment banking, and this inaugural survival guide is absolutely essential if you are serious about breaking into banking (but can admit that you might need a little help with the interview).

So now that we’ve gotten all of the pitching, sample questions and misconceptions out of the way, let’s get down to the real issue – the price. How much does it all cost? As I came close to finishing this guide I really started thinking about pricing, and what I should charge for it. I decided that I want a lot of people to be able to afford this guide if they want to, and that I would reward those people that get on board early.

The price: just $17.95!

Let me just say that this price will eventually go up (not to $50 or anything like that), but I wanted to try to reward the supporters of this growing site by offering, what I consider, a pretty low introductory price.

My last point, the process itself: quick and simple. You purchase the product through Paypal (the link is below), and then within a few hours I will send the guide to you (by “I”, I mean either I will send it to you or someone that I know will forward it to you from my site email address – just so that you’re not thinking you will have to wait for me to get out of work to send it out to you). That’s it. If you have any questions or suggestions, you can, as always, shoot me an email, and feel free to post any comments that you might have below! For the main Survival Guide page, click Here.

Learn what to say, how to say it, and, just as important, if not more so, learn what not to say. Stop waiting for the offer to simply fall into your lap and start dominating your interviews with BankonBanking’s Survival Guide for: The Banking Interview today!

The obvious

I know that I don’t need to mention these points, but it can’t hurt. For any interview, you need to know your material – both the technical knowledge and the fit/behavioral examples and responses. Additionally, you need to have a firm handle on your interview skills – body language, presence, eye contact, and correct the stutterings/pauses/ums/etc. Finally, you need to get some sleep the night before and be well rested ahead of your interview in order to be sharp and ready to go. For the superday, all of this still holds true, but magnify it by a few times to get in the right ballpark. In other words, the superday is designed to test all of the technical knowledge that they expect someone of your background to know – several times, and test your responses and consistency with your fit/behavioral questions – several times. Basically, know your stuff, know it well and be ready to get hit from multiple directions (meaning you could be asked the same question many times in a few different ways over the course of the day).

The marathon

As I’ve already hinted at in my previous point, you should think of the superday as a marathon – if you start off really bad, it’s tough to get ahead by the end. If you start off good, but fall apart at the end, the result is the same – you lose and generally have a poor showing. The key is to start strong, keep it going throughout and close with no less intensity, focus and drive. The goal is to come into the start of the first interview as a confident, capable and eloquent candidate, and close that very last interview in the exact same manner (with each interview in between just as strong). As far as strategy goes, again, not much different than a marathon: drink plenty of water (to avoid coughing or having a dry mouth during your interviews – although it could just be a lack of water, it could easily be seen as a sign of nerves, uneasiness or even panic), pace yourself (meaning don’t get too excited and too eager – keep yourself upbeat and excited, but not to the point where you will burn out by the 2nd interview), and really enjoy the few minutes between the interviews (and the interview break, which is where you are not assigned an interview for one session – this is your “break” for the day) to gather your thoughts, take a breather and have a quick recharge/snack ahead of the next round (ok, maybe this last part isn’t the same as a marathon, but you get the metaphor). Staying fresh and excited will definitely help you to keep your composure, form strong answers and stay ahead of the competition.

Remember your answers

For technical questions this is a no-brainer as technical questions have a “right answer” and a “wrong answer.” Behavioral questions, on the other hand, are far more subjective and are based on your experiences and opinions. You don’t want to go into an interview and give 6 different answers to straightforward behavioral questions such as “why banking,” “what is your leadership style,” or “why bank X”. Interviewers take notes and compare their notes after the superday. Keeping your answers consistent (not word for word – but experience with experience, lesson with lesson, rationale with rationale) will allow your responses to sound genuine and valid, as opposed to made up on the spot and falsified.

On a related note, don’t memorize your answers word for word. Although this is the opposite of not remembering your answers at all, it too is bad for your interview. You don’t want to sound so rehearsed that everything comes off as sounding scripted, insincere and, honestly, robotic. You want the interview to feel as though you are coming up with these answers on the spot, but since they are your experiences, you aren’t stumbling through them and changing facts and reasoning each time. So while you should absolutely have your answers to common questions – such as leadership scenarios, weaknesses, strengths, etc – ready to go, you never want it to sound like a monologue. Instead, have more of an outline and main idea ready, without every word and every sentence scripted out. By keeping it fresh, keeping it interesting and keeping the conversation original (as opposed to memorized), you will add sincerity and validity to all of your responses.

Stock your questions

Have several questions ready to go for the interviewers – you should have at least 3 questions ready to go for the interviewers for 2 reasons: 1) you don’t know what the interviewers will go through at the beginning of the interview about themselves and you always want at least 1-2 questions to ask them at the end of the interview, that they haven’t covered, if time permits, and 2) you don’t want to ask every interviewer the exact same single question – mix it up a bit – show that you are interested in the bankers, the opportunity, the industry, etc – not just running through a script. A few examples include: “If you were asked to express your reason for your interest in banking through just one experience, what would it be” or “if you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing about this job before you started, what would it be and would it have made you think twice about pursuing the career?”

As an aside, end of interview questions aren’t going to make or break your candidacy (although some boutiques might weigh them a bit heavier as boutiques are often random in their decision criteria). That said, it is a simple way to exit the interview on a high note and leave a good impression. It’s pretty easy to think of a good question or two and deliver it, so why not? Just do it.

Don’t get lazy

No matter how tired you are, and this goes back to point 1, do not get lazy with your answers, with your eye contact, etc – always treat every interview as if it were the only interview and the interview that makes or breaks your acceptance. Make the most of this opportunity – don’t leave the interview thinking “crap, I could have done better” or “damn, I wish I didn’t have said this or that.”

One of my colleagues knew a candidate that had 7 superday interviewers (7 interviews in 1 day). He rocked the first 3 or so, then got a bit lazy, and then closed really strong for the last two. Now, he thought he rocked the entire thing and had the offer in the bag – he was, unfortunately wrong. It turns out that 6 or the 7 interviewers really liked him and 1 interviewer didn’t – the applicant “rubbed him the wrong way.” Rather than change that 1 interviewer’s mind, they dinged the applicant – over 1 interviewer. Does it happen all of the time and everywhere, I don’t know, probably not to that degree, but it does happen. The bottom line is: treat every interview of a superday as if it were the only interview of the final round – don’t give any one of your interviewers a silly reason (like getting lazy or cocky) to not offer you the position.

Stay tuned for future posts and a fresh product coming out this weekend!