Investment banking questions
 

Assumptions:
-College ranking: about 5-20 (exclude very top schools)
-GPA: about 3.5
-Major: Econ/finance/accounting
-Achievements: No major awards or projects completed
-Interviews: Above average, well prepared for

How likely is it to get an i-banking job at:
1) Top firm
2) Any firm

The assumptions are pretty close to describing me and probably a lot of other students vying for the spots. What are some major "hooks" to getting these jobs aside from junior year summer internships? I know it's heavily GPA based, so once a threshold GPA is met, does the interview become the main factor?

Re: Investment banking questions
 

The short answer is that they're pretty much looking for two things.

1) Basic financial knowledge. What are the 4 financial statements? What is a WACC? What is enterprise value? You're not going to blow anyone away with your financial wizardry, no matter who you are. If you do get hired you will go through several weeks of pretty intense training anyway, so it doesn't make much difference to them whether you already know 1 week or 2 week's worth of material. They just want to make sure you have an understanding of the basics so they don't have to start from scratch and that you're capable of learning.

2) Someone they can stand to be around. You're going to be working super long hours and no one wants to hire someone they can't stand. The selection process, once they've weeded out the people that just have no business being there, sounds kind of like a fraternity as far as trying to establish who's compatible with who.

So obviously the interview is very important. Each company/interviewer will have a different culture and different attributes they're looking for. So it's not like you can just go in and "be funny" or "be clever" and get the job. My advice would be to spend as little time as possible talking about the actual job. Obviously you need to establish that you're qualified and able/eager to learn (that's big with them), but after that you're not going to do yourself any favors by giving a soliloquy on all the different ways you can calculate a beta. This isn't to say this part of the interview isn't important, because if they do happen to ask about different ways to calculate beta or to briefly analyze a company or whatever, and you can't answer it, you're pretty much done. But once you've gotten through the basics try to steer the discussion toward anything else that you can establish as a common interest. Sports tend to work pretty well in my experience.


I have no idea what your chances of getting a job at a "top firm" or "any firm" are. Not that it's going to make it any more likely I'll give you a numerical answer, but you might get a little more color on the subject if you lay out what you consider top tier.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

the people at iBankingOasis are probably your best resource on this, though anyone's opinion on how to get IB jobs is going to be fairly tainted by their own experiences.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

in all seriousness, ibanking could be taught to monkeys. it doesnt take much intelligence. all is required is that you suck the balls of your superiors and work yours off.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

In my limited research I found that they recruit in the fall. so you have plenty of time to prepare yourself.

I think getting the interview is probably the hardest part. Like Evan said, you need these people to like you. They are going to train you to do your job so what do they care if you memorized your textbooks.

Today i went to a job interview at John Hancock, I didn't really want the job, I mostly went to brush up on my interview skills since it was nearby. of course they woudldn't hire me due to citizenship issues. But after talking to the guy about his Alaskan cruise he basically offered to be one of my references.

I walk into an interview not with the attitude of why should they hire me. But why should they not hire me. I take nearly any opportunity to make them talk about themselves because thats what people love to do. This is assuming you know all the answers to the dumb questions they are going to ask you.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

Investment banking recruiters are looking for you to excel in something. They get plenty of applicants from kids who are 4.0's at Ivy League, but turn them down because they are a bunch of egg-heads. They would rather have a good student that excels in something special. I'm a 3.4 student at a top-25 school with a business major, and i just turned down an i-banking offer from merrill. the only reason i got the offer was because i have a very impressive resume and i sell myself very well at interviews.
Make them remember you...

Re: Investment banking questions
 

[ QUOTE ]
They get plenty of applicants from kids who are 4.0's at Ivy League, but turn them down because they are a bunch of egg-heads. They would rather have a good student that excels in something special. I'm a 3.4 student at a top-25 school with a business major, and i just turned down an i-banking offer from merrill. the only reason i got the offer was because i have a very impressive resume and i sell myself very well at interviews.
Make them remember you...

[/ QUOTE ]
Thinly veiled brag post? Meh.
Also, lol @ the part in bold. This is so far from the truth its not even funny.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

you'd be surprised how many 4.0 ivy kids they actually DO turn down. once you get an interview, no one really cares about your resume, its all what you know and how personable you are.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

And I give you a quote from my last month’s interview with Goldman:

“What people don’t understand is that just because you have a 4 point from an Ivy doesn’t guarantee you’ll even get an interview. We turn those kids away all the time. Why? Because most of the time they are ‘eggheads’ whose transcripts look amazing, but other than that, the only thing they excel at besides going to class is video games. It’s just frustrating interviewing those kids. How are you supposed to interact with a client when the only thing you can talk about is derivatives and how many monsters you killed in Halo last night on your f***ing Xbox 360? Those kids just don’t make it here.”

You can dispute that argument, but he wasn’t the first person that I’ve heard that from…

Re: Investment banking questions
 

You just said that they don't get interviews, but that interviewing them is frustrating.. hmm.

Maybe its different at other Ivy's, but here a 4.0 is a really, really tough thing to do. My friends going into I-banking next year with a 4.0 are working at Blackstone in Restructuring (2), Morgan Stanley (1), and Lehman Bros in Banking (1).

They really didn't have any trouble. Maybe its different here (Penn) because of Wharton, but the kids with the 4.0s dont have issues.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

i woudl check out Ibankingoasis as well and the vault forums although the later are "worse" overall.

in my experience, after you have recieved the interview everybody is pretty much in the same boat. the kid with 3.5 from Carnegie Mellon and overachiever with a 3.8 from harvard.
Interview skills are key. The least you can do is learn the company and the industry in and out. Why you? Why IBD or ST? Why this firm? In terms of knowledge of finance, I'd agree wtih Evan. Again from my own experience, they ask what is the relationship btw financial statements/how do you value a company 8/10 times. You can learn all of this if you download the vault guide to financial interviews.

Apart from the tech questions, know yourself, tell a good story that is consistent with your resume, try to be humble but confident. There is really no clear cut cases. I know of somebody that has an impressive knowledge of econ, the markets and math for his age, worked for a year at a trading/HF start up in Europe, is a Varisty athlete, president of ABC, has been day-trading for a while and has amazing stamina (can work for hours). At a networking event in NYC a guy from GS actually told him that he is overqualified. To everybody's surprise, this guy had trouble getting an IBD position this summer but he did get one eventually.

Getting an internship is crucial. If you can't get one in a BB, get one in smaller bank, PB or wealth management, ops at some bank, financial services, small HF...anything. Any internship is better than none. No internships = no interview.

Networking is also key. If you go to an ivy you are all set. If you don't prepare to take out your knee pads. E-mail everybody in the career network (personally i would not attach resumes right away or be direct, initiate contact, get convo going, than go for it), but dont be discouraged when only 1 in 15 replies. Go to every networking even in the area!!! If you are serious about this, it will become more or less like a 6th class. Always follow up, send thank you notes and don't be afraid to call. I remember it took me a few days to master the courage to call, i reserved a room, layed out all this crap on the table and talked for like 2 min. But i think it makes a difference. One MD told that basically he was surprised at how little people call him when it is so easy and much more direct. It will separate you from the rest in their eyes.


oh and dress nicely, spend money if you have to. dont be fat - not many fat junior people in finance.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

[ QUOTE ]
You just said that they don't get interviews, but that interviewing them is frustrating

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm just going to point out that if you change the "but" to "because" this sentence works pretty well.

[ QUOTE ]
My friends going into I-banking next year with a 4.0 are working at Blackstone in Restructuring (2), Morgan Stanley (1), and Lehman Bros in Banking (1).

[/ QUOTE ]
One more thing, can you just clarify that you know 4 graduating seniors from Wharton with 4.0s? I'm going to go ahead and call bs on that.

Re: Investment banking questions
 

[ QUOTE ]
oh and dress nicely, spend money if you have to.

[/ QUOTE ]
Not that I disagree here, but I think overdoing this point is probably worse than underdoing it. They know you're in college and they don't expect you to dress as well as they do. Wearing certain things that are flashy will draw more negative reactions than positive according to everyone I've talked to. Some examples are: Ferragamo (or similar) shoes, gold cuff links (or any cuff links really, wear silk knots if you insist on wearing a french cuffed shirt but you're probably better off with barrel cuffs), tie clips, pocket squares, etc.

There's a real class distinction between junior and senior people in most banks. Doing things like dressing above your class in a flashy way is pretty universally looked down upon in my experience. Obviously don't go in wearing jeans and a t shirt. Wear a suit and look presentable, just don't try to stand out with your clothes. It will do more harm than good.