IB interview that included poker comments

[chisness]

Few weeks ago I posted the question we've all seen a lot - whether or not to put poker on our resumes. I elected to leave it in the Interests section at the bottom so as to not harm me and to possibly help if someone who reads it is interested.

Few things that happened in the interview (for IB):

1) Straightup asking what I had been doing for past summers. If you do poker as a part time thing and get real internships (this is smart), then you'll be OK. In my case, I was basically forced to go into poker (and expect that this would be the case for most interviews) pretty abruptly. So why not put it down on the resume so they're not surprised?

2) Older interviewer asked about table selection then joked that I'd be going after him. Younger interviewer asked which site is my favorite and if it was hard to get money online now. They didn't leave much room to talk about skills, but seemed somewhat impressed when I said something about reviewing hands to minimize repeating mistakes.

3) Once he heard the poker stuff in addition to my actual work experience all being in engineering he basically told me I'm better suited for trading or equity research. I tried to explain why I'd prefer IB (I think that's my only play at that point), but I think it was pretty much interview over here.

If I had to do it over, (other than definitely getting an internship) I'd put down poker on my resume to legitimize the time I put into it and the skills you can learn from it. Literally every interviewer is going to touch on your past summer, so either let them appreciate it or don't waste your time with that company.