Investment Banking Summer Analyst

Received the offer through my school's OCR, so the process may be slightly different for each school.

The company picks out around ~25 resumes from the pile of OCR resumes dropped through the school's on-line resume submission website (my year they had 300+ resume drops for the company). Those initial ~25 members are invited for 1st round interviews on campus. The 1st round is usually half fit and half technicals. In terms of difficulty, technical questions are not that bad compared to some of the harder ones given out by places like Moelis. Around 50% of the technical questions I got at places like Moelis and Lazard were comprised of accounting-related questions (which I found to be the hardest as lot of companies tended to drive deep into accounting questions and throw you a variety of questions that you wouldn't know the answer to by just memorizing an interview guide). However, it is still important to prep well in advance, since the questions won't be straight out of interview guides and some of the more difficult questions will require some level of understanding in fundamentals of accounting & finance. The fit portion is just them trying to figure out if you could mash with the culture at their firm. Jefferies actually values the fit portion of the interview very highly compared to most of its peers. While other firms ask fit questions to see if you aren't a complete idiot, Jefferies actually wants to see more than typical fit answers like "I have a great work ethic." The firm, especially among the junior bankers (analyst to VP), has a very 'fratty' culture (true for most groups) and the interviewer wants to see if you would be out of place in this kind of environment. College kids might laugh at this, but I've seen kids with perfect resumes and great technical understanding of finance get dinged because they looked like 'nerds.' Being in the industry now for 1+ year I totally understand why, only thing allowing you to keep your sanity during 100 hour weeks are the other analysts around you.

Out of the 1st round interviewees, around ~10-12 kids get chosen for 2nd rounds. For the summer recruiting at my school (again not sure if this is the case for all schools), we got a phone call about 2-3 hours after all the interviews at campus had ended for that day. They say they really liked you and would like to learn more about you through 2nd rounds. 2nd rounds is actually pre-scheduled by the firm at one of the nicest restaurants in the campus area and is held on the evening of the 1st round (yes 1st and 2nd rounds on same day for summer OCR). 2nd round is all fit and its not in an interview setting, but more of a casual conversation (10-12 kids ordering steaks and chatting with interviewers mostly about non-banking stuff). This lasts about 2 hours and the 'official' interview rounds end there. After the dinner, interviewers will offer to take interviewees out for drinks (everyone was over the age limit - which, believe it or not, Jefferies actually cares about). If this same thing happens when you are recruiting with them, make sure to go out drinking with them if you can. While the 'official' process is over, this is still a very important stage where the interviewers will get to know more about you in the ultimate casual setting and also gauge your interest on the firm.

Offers were actually handed out the next morning/afternoon. The senior most banker who interviewed you will call you with an offer congratulating you. If it is a rejection, I'm sure you get a call from HR (although I'm not sure).

I know I already stated it above, but I have to stress this one more time because I know how most college kids don't think that seriously about the fit portion of interviews. Jefferies post-2008 has become sort of a sweatshop and some of the groups have comparable hours to places like Lazard and the old UBS LA office. So camaraderie is regarded as incredibly important by junior bankers (analysts-VPs), who will mostly be the ones conducting interviews for summer analyst positions. To just give you an insight into why this is important, when you get yelled at by senior bankers (and trust me it will happen multiple times no matter where you end up), on top of the 100 hour week you are having, you will become very depressed very quickly. However, if your group has good culture among juniors you can just joke about it with them and once the senior banker leaves even make fun of the senior banker together (since all of them go through the same thing it is easy to connect on this issue). This might sound normal but certain places don't have this kind of culture (my friends group at Lazard for example....not saying all of Lazard just that one group my friend is in), which means you have no channel to release your stress. This is why Jefferies puts major emphasis on fit by checking to see if the kid will be sociable/personable enough to interact in the junior banker culture.