First off, I initially got the interview through cold emailing. There are only ~10 employees at the firm and one of the MD's is an alum of my university. I emailed him asking to speak over the phone about his experiences in investment banking and he replied asking for my resume. He never answered my follow up emails for about 2 months when an associate at the firm emailed me back asking if I was still interested in an interview. I went in to the office for the first time just to speak with the associate. Meeting with the associate was definitely more like a conversation than an interview. He told me about his background and the firm. While I told him about myself and why I was interested. I think he wanted to know my interest level in banking and what level of commitment I could give. The following week I met with an MD. This was also very conversational, but still more in depth than my interview with the associate. The MD was more interested in my previous academic and work experiences. He wanted to see that I was competent to do research work for the firm. For my third interview, I spoke with another MD. It was obvious that this MD was more involved in the hiring process and overall office management. He wanted to know why I was interested in banking and we spoke for a good amount of time about my finance, accounting, and economics coursework. He was looking for my experience in using Bloomberg, looking at 10-Ks, computing ratios, and understanding of finance. We talked about different projects I've worked on and topics I've studied in class. He wanted to see an example of a previous finance-research related coursework that I've done in the past. It's a very small office and most of the senior bankers are very busy so my interviews were really dependent on their day-to-day schedules. It was very unstructured on planning times to come in. For each interview I would get an email asking if I could come into the office the next day or day after for an interview. However, these guys are very accommodating and are not difficult about finding another time. Overall it was about a three-four week process.

For advice to anyone looking here in the future: show that you have some financial knowledge and that you're willing to whatever they want in the office and for however many hours per week. During my interviews with the MD's I told them I would adjust my schedule as much as possible to get into the office as much as I could and be there to get work done. I also made it clear to them that I was still learning a ton about finance and other things (e.g. Bloomberg) but I was extremely willing to come and bust my tail to keep learning and add value to them.