I just got back from final rounds at a middle market investment banking firm in NYC. Recruiting hasn’t been going as well as I’ve had hoped. I have no more interviews and I never moved past the phone screen for the bulge bracket firm. The alumnus who gave me my phone screen really liked me and a VP that I know there put in a good word for me. Unfortunately though, I still didn’t get picked for a first round and I strongly believe it’s because I listened to my school’s career center. They told me to take off my GMAT score because it made me sound like I was only looking for a two year stint before I head off to b-school. I hemmed and hawed for a good ten minutes before I finally gave in. I feel so stupid. Every interview I’ve had, the GMAT score has been a strong positive and perhaps had I had it on my resume, I might’ve gotten the edge to get a first round. My friend says the career center might have been trying to level the playing field for the three other BU students who were selected. I don’t know; I really wish I had gotten an interview with the firm…
So the only bank I’ve interviewed with is this middle market investment bank. The opportunity arose on a Wednesday when my friend stopped me at school and goes “Hey, my friend at XXXX is looking to get some BU students into her firm. Let’s go to the computer lab and submit your resume”. Since then, I’ve gone through a first round in their Boston branch and now a final round in New York City. I felt a bit insecure today hearing all the other kids talk about how they’ve been on two-four other superdays. I got glimpses at their resumes and didn’t see a GPA below a 3.7 (my GPA is a 3.3). But I feel pretty confident that I impressed my interviewers.
My first interviewer was extremely perceptive and that made him rather tough. He was impressed with the Silver Lake Private Equity Case Competition, experience at a VC fund, interview at the private equity firm (even if it’s a sourcing model), and GMAT score (“I have to say, you’re the only person I’ve ever met with a higher score than mine”). I didn’t even get a technical question from him because he told me he could tell I know my stuff and he only asks those types of questions if he believes the interviewee won’t get it right. Besides that though, he noticed that I have many interests and asked me whether I could go through 3 years focusing solely on investment banking. He also asked me why not sales and trading given my aptitude for mathematics and interest in poker. ”I can imagine you’re also trying hard to get into another venture capital / private equity firm; why are you here?”. He also really grilled me on my one weak point, the GPA. Tough questions that really got down to the point of whether I am a good fit for investment banking. Definitely made me think but I reasoned my way out of those negative conclusions (e.g. I want a strong financial modeling skills and at the VC firm, they do barely any of that / I’m more interested in the fundamentals of business and ibanking deals with corporate strategy. S&T on the other hand does very cursory analysis etc etc etc). I think it went well though
The rest of the interviewers were all really nice. While there were some kids from Ivy-league schools, I felt like I had a leg up on them because they struggled with finance/accounting questions. One kid was talking to another about how he got stumped on “How could Net Income be larger than Operating Income?” It’s a pretty basic answer: gains/losses on asset sales, FX trading, etc but I guess if you haven’t taken an accounting course you might not know (though he said he took a financial accounting class at his liberal art school?).
For me, those questions, as my first interviewer predicted, were really easy. ”What are the ways to value a company?” I impressed the Leveraged Finance dude by talking about how DCF can be further split into three methods: adjusted present value, dividend discount, and WACC. It was all really basic and I found the questions to be not much harder than what I would expect from an exam at school. The only brain teaser I got was pretty simple too.
After the interview, I went to visit my sister. She works at bulge bracket bank as a proprietary trader. Stepping on to the trading floor right after my day at an investment bank made it very apparent the differences between the two cultures. The trading culture is abrasive. My sister’s co-worker, who I’ve met before, played poker with, etc, just kept tooling on me. I was telling my sister how that guy wouldn’t ask me a technical question and how I asked for a brain teaser because I enjoy doing them. Immediately my sister’s co worker impersonates me in nerdy manner to illustrate how big of a tool I am for requesting a brain teaser (touche). Then someone yells for him from across the rows of monitors and he goes “What?? …….The fuck you want??” He’s also the guy that responded to my thank you e-mail with “I feel that you’re wasting your time with this e-mail because I can’t get you a job” and told me to get the fuck out of his apartment because I answered a phone call from my girlfriend at the poker table (fyi, he’s been with his girl since college and he has no problems holding her purse). Apparently he’s like this to his new analysts too. His response: “yeah but XXXX takes it really well!” and then goes tell his analyst that he’ll take him seriously once he stops looking like a (fucking?) baby (the guy is >6′ tall, must be like 200 lbs, but has a baby face). Elle – oh – elle.
After that, we played poker. My sister’s co-worker pulls up a spread sheet, we all gather round a wood board placed on top of a trash can and start playing cards. Buy in $100. Game was so loose and easy. Made $225 profit in the hour that we played. This one guy was playing pretty loose aggressive however he never knew how to back off. Another guy just played loose passive. All I had to do was sit, wait for good hands, and bet big because they would call me down. The profits went all to my sister though because she’s the one who backed me.
I don’t know. I think I would really fit in more with a trading environment. Chilling at my sister’s place reminded me of my friends in high school. We were all mostly children of immigrants, smart, and competitive. We use to play poker in the back of pre-calc class together and compete on things as trivial as Tetris on our calculators. When we played online poker we’d keep a stack of chips to shuffle in our hands just like my sister co-worker does at his trading desk. The investment banker culture is not like this at all. I guess being a client facing business, they’re much more polite. They’re also mostly white and I didn’t get a sense of competition in their culture. However, that can be good. When you’re working 100 hours a week, the coworker who greets you with “the fuck you looking at?” probably gets annoying real fast.
Alright off to sleep. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to post about soon.
