You've submitted your resume and are eagerly awaiting a response on whether or not you'll have a coveted interview with the investment bank of your choice. You're optimistic because you networked well, perfected your resume using TBB's resume review, and have excellent work experience. It's now time to prepare for an interview.
It's widely known that investment banks often provide little notice for interviews, particularly for undergraduate summer analyst roles. After submitting your application, you might hear nothing for four days and suddenly receive an email notification about your first-round investment banking interview being tomorrow. It pays to prepare for interviews in advance, regardless of whether you get them.
There is typically a two-round interview structure for summer analyst and full-time analyst roles at bulge-bracket investment banks and elite boutiques. The first round may be one or two 30mins - 1-hour sessions with junior to mid-level bankers. The second round is a "Superday," consisting of a series of back-to-back interviews with mid-level to senior investment bankers. You will receive behavioral and technical interview questions in both the first round and the Superday. That said, first-round interviews may skew towards technical questions as a filter in the process. In contrast, the Superday may skew towards behavioral questions as the focus for senior bankers is whether you will be a strong fit for the firm.
Given this context, how should you prepare?
Technical Questions
Many candidates spend the bulk of their interview preparation time focused on technicals. While this might be the right approach for some, depending on the level of financial acumen, it is not necessarily a winning approach for all. At investment banks, technical questions filter out candidates and ensure a base level of foundational knowledge for interviewees. You may have heard the adage that 'technicals are a check in the box,' which is largely accurate. No one receives an investment banking offer purely based on their ability to answer technical questions.
It makes sense to treat preparation for technical questions in a similar manner. You need to know the fundamentals - there are no two ways about it. You should not, however, spend all your time focused on them as they will not win you an offer.
At Top Bucket Blueprint, we view preparation for technical questions as an ongoing initiative. We recommend preparing for technical questions consistently throughout the school year (1-2 hours per week, for example). Technical questions often get asked in different variations, so it is essential to deeply understand the concepts rather than attempting to memorize answers to common questions. Once you receive notification of an interview, you can focus your attention on problem areas or on your delivery of technical question answers succinctly.
Behavioral Questions
As opposed to technical questions, decisive answers to behavioral questions win offers. Therefore, it's best to spend most of your interview preparation time creating and practicing succinct answers to common behavioral questions. You should have a planned and thoughtful answer for essential questions like 'Tell me about yourself' and 'Why Investment Banking?' that you can recite in an interview. The key is to know your answers to these questions very well but still be able to share them in an interview in a way that does not sound memorized or prepared. If you make it past the first round interview, you will be asked these questions in most Superday interviews with senior bankers, so it is crucial to have prepared answers for them.
Situational questions are also essential to behavioral interviews and should be prepared for. Questions like 'Tell me about a time you solved a problem' are commonplace. These behavioral questions can be prepared using the well-known STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result), with interview answers in the same format. It is often to have a handful of situations you know well that can be applied to a few variations of situational questions. For example, if you solved a problem with a team in a student club, you could share that story under the STAR format for a question on problem-solving or collaboration and teamwork.
It is important to note that it is unlikely that you will be able to prepare for all behavioural questions. Bankers like to throw curveballs in interviews to test candidates' abilities to think and deliver succinct answers on the spot. That said, if you can prepare well for most common questions, you will leave less of the interview up to chance in most instances.
Your Experience
Anything you put on your resume is fair for questioning in an interview. That's why, in our Top Bucket Blueprint Resume Reviews, we take a rigorous approach to ensure that everything on candidates' resumes is relevant and well presented. As such, you should be prepared to elaborate on any of the experiences on your resume if asked. The flip side to this coin also applies - do not put anything on your resume that you are not prepared to answer in an interview.
During our undergraduate investment banking recruiting, we found it helpful to keep extensive notes on our internship and extracurricular experiences with key projects and results listed as a supplemental information sheet. When preparing for an interview, you can review these notes to ensure that essential facts and figures are remembered for sharing in the interview.
Repetition is the Key
The art of the interview, particularly for investment banking and other finance roles, is in preparation beforehand. Once you are in an interview setting, you should be executing your preparation. There is an element of spontaneity when answering questions for which you are less prepared or for unusual questions. Still, you can usually prepare for much of the interview.
We recommend conducting mock interviews with friends, alums, or peers leading up to the recruiting season or while applications are underway. The number of mock interviews needed per person will vary, but we recommend doing five mock interviews at a minimum to prepare. With additional mock interviews comes more repetition and experience answering more varied interview questions.
While preparation for investment banking interviews can be somewhat daunting at first, following these principles and methods, the process can be simplified and made more time-efficient. If you're not getting the interviews you want at top firms, our Investment Banking Resume Reviews can help ensure your resume is competitive and improve your chances of getting an offer.
