Clarify incorrect answer in the interview?
Hi guys.. need some advice please..
I had an phone interview with an MD for a BB last Friday and thought it went pretty well. However, as I was going through my concepts in anticipation of a follow up interview, I found out I had answered a simple technical question inaccurately!
Would it be advisable to send an email to explain the concept and that I do understand it, but was confused by the technical vs practical use of it? (I have not used the technicals for almost 4 years). Need your inputs!
No, done is done. If you get the chance face to face, but doing it from home, any dickhead can google it and its just insulting.
No, do not. I recently made a mistake during a phone interview and sent the interviewer an email shortly after addressing it briefly in the form of a thank you email. I never heard back about the next round so I don't think it went over well. Do not bring attention to any negatives.
Concur with the above replies. May sound like you're second guessing yourself...
Don't do anything. I once made a similar mistake in a phone interview (something to the effect of, they asked me to estimate how much sugar is consumed in the US annually and I didn't factor in the sugar in soda). The interviewer even mentioned it in his feedback, and moved me on to the next round anyway.
I messed up a basic, simple, do it without thinking technical... Just move on... or do something about it? (Originally Posted: 01/21/2015)
What are your professional, opinions on using a follow up e-mail to acknowledge a mistake you made in an interview. It was a simple mistake I added subtracted Cash from EV to get Equity. I used the two numbers given to me, messed up the calculation and failed to ask about Minority interests, or Debt.
I think e-mailing may come of as either insecure, and "desperate." That would not be the main purpose of my thank you, but I will also write a short simple thank you. Not sure how I did on everything else either...
Should I leave it or e-mail?
Leave it. No way of them knowing you didn't just look it up... nothing you can do now without seeming desperate.
Nothing you can do now. To them, you knew it or you didn't. With so many qualified interviewees, you can't possibly expect that email to change anything.
I was actually told by an MD that you should always try to send the correct answer after the interview. Even looking up the answer and sending it shows some initiative I guess. I'd say it varies from person to person.
I mean, look it up and make sure it doesn't happen again, but idt there's anything you can do in that particular circumstance.
Technical mess up (Originally Posted: 11/16/2011)
guys so i had this interview with a boutique today and the guy grilled me on technical stuff. the thing is that i have never had problem with technical qns but due to incoherence/lack of sleep today i made 2 mess up in the m&a interview...i defined enterprise value right but couldn't link it correctly to market cap and for some weird reason started off thinking of revenue as ebit....and considering i have done intensive modelling and have concentrations in finance, accounting and economics...this was really embarrassing for me....i answered the rest of all his qns right but got this basics wrong...i apologized for such basic mistakes as the guy corrected me when i made those errors.... but i'm just bummed how i got such qns wrong but answered all the rest of technical qns just fine......do you think they may consider "bad days"? this is the first time i had such a problem and just don't know what to expect.....wasted opportunity?
I'm sorry, but if I was interviewing you and you didn't know enterprise value down pat, you would get dinged immediately. There's a difference between having a "bad day" and not being to recall something basic (especially if you're a finance major).
Don't sweat it though, send your "thank you" emails and hope for the best. Keep on truckin'
I would not worry about it. If they want you it should not sway the opinion of an otherwise solid interview.
Shit happens dude. Keep your head up and make no excuses.
not sure how you confuse revenue and ebit...that's an extremely elementary mistake. if you didn't get enough sleep, or whatever your reason may be, that would only signal the interviewer that you may not have the mental acuity to handle the hours of M&A...
I don't think a few mistakes in the technicals break an interviewee - but your mistakes, unfortunately, raise some red flags. Nothing you can do at this point tho, so just learn from your mistakes, prepare for other interviews, and hope for the best vis a vis this one.
i completely agree with all of u guys...the unfortunate thing is that i always prided myself for my solid technical foundation...i gave him a perfect dcf, capm, wacc, discussion on m&a etc....he pointed out my mistakes to me so i was able to correct them but i just felt so embarrassed....
due to these basic mistakes, he look surprised when i handed him a recommendation from my director at my internship since i had crashed his expectations earlier....this is a very humbling experience for me...and the worse thing is that excuses especially in this market are not accepted...i never told him that i didn't sleep etc but just apologized....it was more like i didn't absorb his question well enough before i began answering. also since they're only hiring like 1/2 kids in total this is goin to be a far cry for me.....hope this never happens again!
In an academic interview at my first choice university for Physics, I was asked is mass a component of force (F = ma).
Answered - no.
Mechanics was my strong point (didnt drop a mark in it in any mechanics or physics exam), but got 11 year old stuff wrong, because i was nervous as fuck. To those above that think there's a difference between a bad day and basics wrong, I can assure you, there isn't.
In hindsight, I should have stopped the interviewer then and there and explained that it was my strong point, but was a bit jittery.
lesson learned, chin up and move on.
I agree with trazer - no difference between a bad day and getting basics wrong. Shit happens, if you did well in everything else then you may be (probably are) fine. If you really didn't know what EV was, then you would have screwed everything else up as well, so they would probably recognize that it was just a silly mistake.
Screw up easy technical questions (Originally Posted: 01/25/2007)
so yeah i haven't taken accounting for a long time and was asked a pretty easy technical question for which i was able to give a broad overview without going into detail for each line. i explained that i hadn't taken accounting for some time. the rest of the interview went fine. am i toast?
What is your major? I was interviewing with a very high up and couldn't tell him what an accrued expense was (it had been a long time for me as well). It sucks knowing the answer but not able to think during an interview. I still got the job offer. Of course, my degree isn't accounting related.
Depends on the question too. How important and/or fundamental it was. Some questions are easy but unimportant. Not worth stressing over now that it is done.
How to recover from the bad answer to technical / brainteaser / fit questions? (Originally Posted: 01/18/2012)
Ok, so getting an answer wrong is not deadly according 'Getting a technical wrong = auto ding?" thread, but how do you recover and how do you compose yourself after all?
When I got technical answers wrong, I would just ask the interviewer to explain the concept to me. Is this OK?
Change the subject. Figure them out and get them talking about themselves, sports, anything where you can turn it around to get them to like you. Unless you're doing really haevy quant work, you'll learn on the job.
In my case, I just nodded and proceeded onto another topic. Then in the end when I was shaking hands+saying thank you, I returned back to the question and asked him to go over (as if it was constantly going in my head and I was too intellectually aroused to let it pass). Got my offer on that day via phone. Of course, this will only work assuming the question asked wasn't too basic.
My failure to adapt to a situation like this cost me an offer from a boutique in NYC, smh, +1
I know the feels in this,..
What should I do if I screwed up technical interview? (Originally Posted: 02/07/2014)
I'm from a target school with many internship experiences in finance. I reached out to this VP and he seemed like me a lot and put me on the list. He and another alum interviewed me 1st round, but it was disappointed. I did pretty well on behavioral. Then the next 20 minutes was all technical, which was something I didn't expected on 1st round, and obviously wasn't fully prepared for. I got some right but sounded uncertain. It sounded like I just guessed the answers. And some part I didn't even fully understand what they were asking. I stumbled and really stressed out. Anyways, I thought it was terrible.
I sent the thank-you letter right after. Do you guys think I should ask to speak to him again before they make the decision? Or should I just give up and wait for the result?
NO! Let the dice roll where it may. You'll sound desperate and point out insecurities.
no. separately, do people seriously still send letters?
Interview Tech. Question Incorrect (Originally Posted: 03/01/2011)
I'm a recent graduate from a non-target. I got an interview @ BAML as an entry level market risk analyst.
Anyways, I aced the FIT part of the interview. Did not stutter once and I answered each question clearly and concisely. I could tell they were impressed.
Then the VP got on the line from NYC and asked me a technical question about bonds and their yields. Needless to say, I froze up because I totally forgot (maybe in the moment) that yield was just return. I was extremely nervous that I did not know the answer to such a simple problem so I said, "Honestly Jennifer, for the life of me I can't give you a definition right now. I know it's a very basic question, but for some reason I can't put it into words."
She said fine and she moved on to a logic question. This was the typical 'if you have 3 doors and someone reveals one door to you, do you switch your first door to the 3rd?'
I knew that you ARE supposed to switch your answer, but I couldn't explain why.
Anyways, afterwards I wrote an email to the 3 employees I interviewed with thanking them for their time and explaining that I really do know what yields are on bonds and that I'm very much interested in finance.. I can't stop reading the economist and my eyes are glued to cnbc everyday, etc. I explained that I simply got a bit nervous and couldn't get my thoughts straight.
Was this a good move?
from my exp, usually auto ding if you cant answer such a simple question. When i interview people, i don't care if they get questions wrong. I just want to see how they think.
Salvaging a bad interview (Originally Posted: 03/11/2013)
If one has a few interviews and one interview goes particularly badly, is there any way to salvage it after the interview?
what's done is done. learn from it and move on. you'll make it worse if you try to "salvage" it
Not really. If you email the guy afterwards going, "I know I sucked and couldn't tell you what WACC was, but please hire me anyway, I'll debase myself as much as you want me to for this job," or something to that effect, he's not going to think., "Wow, that kid really knows he was terrible, he'd be a great asset to my team!" Would you? Fuck no. You'd take the kid who nailed it.
Just take your lumps, learn from it, and look to the next one. I fucked up my first IB interview so badly I cried out in the waiting room afterwards. Got an offer somewhere else. It happens to everyone.
He means like any ideas how to fix it mid-way through the interview. You feel it going sour...any chance to spice it up, maybe turn it around?
I'm interested because I've had that feeling before
I'd just brush it off and don't get flustered. Sometimes the interviewer is just fucking with you to see how you'll handle it. Had what I thought were 'bad' interviews where I got offers a couple hours later.
The worst possible thing you could do is go, "I know this isn't going well, but..." That's not being perceptive or ballsy. It's cracking under pressure.
BS it. If you had a bad interview send the thank you email 2 days later thank you for your time, I believe the interview went well as I...hopefully demonstrating the qualities you are looking for in a candidate.
Something like that.
You might get lucky if he forgot or has been busy.
Agree with this. Although they usually check off the yes or no box as soon as you leave.
So an interviewer is gonna forget a bad interviewee? Thats your advice? Seriously?
Everyone has bad interviews. Move on but learn from it if you can i.e. more preparation, practice interviews, etc. Incredibly difficult to salvage a bad interview after and during. You know the interview is going badly, and so does the interviewer. He's likely made his mind up already and unless you have nerves of steel, it'll be very difficult to pass over the feeling of a bad interview mid-interview and get back on track.
Interview gone bad? (Originally Posted: 01/15/2008)
So I just had a phone interview with a BB in for a SA position HK. This was my first ibank interview and it was awful. From the beginning, he grilled me by forcing me to say everything in Mandarin. He asked for the reasons that I wanted to do banking: I mentioned that I enjoyed the teamwork aspect, the fact that I'd be working with many motivated individuals, working on major deals that span lots of industries, etc. Then he started saying things like "I'm not convinced that you really want to do investment banking", "You should consider other fields as well, I would hate to see you doing something that you don't like". I just had a very bad gut feeling the entire time, but I kept my cool and make sure not to sound nervous. I know interviewers can be mean, but did I totally screw up? Are my chances over? How should I improve for next time?
Thanks.
The guy was a dick, but also testing how you would react while under pressure. As long as you think you remained cool, calm and collected, I'm sure you did fine. Remember to follow up with him with a kind thank-you email and reiterate your strong interest in the position.
Are you a native Mandarin speaker or are you fluent? He probably asked you to answer it based on your stated level of fluency. Don't get rattled. Stay focused.
Thanks for your response Eric. I feel a bit better now -- it was just frustrating, because it seemed like he wasn't listening to a lot of my responses. I feel like I'm a pretty articulate guy, so I can explain myself well, but he just didn't seem interested and focused on why he felt I was not truly interested in the job. How can I sound more convincing next time.
wow. did he ask all those questions in chinese? i'm a native speaker but since i've been going to school in the U.S., i find it difficult to say some of the more technical terms in chinese. do you think it will look back if i mix in some english with the chinese?
It's really just the typical things that you hear/see from other people. Let him know that you read the journal and watch cnbc, but without saying "i read the wsj" etc. If the group does M&A, mention a deal that you read about in the WSJ or saw it on Morning Call and how you think it would be cool to work on something like that.
If it is a smaller firm, talk about DealMaven or Wall Street Prep training that you are interested in doing just so you can learn the modeling on your own. That can show intitiative.
That sounds absolutely awful... I had an interview w/ JPM HK that was significantly easier. The only part that tripped me up was when she wanted me to speak in Chinese (and that was only about 5 mins out of the 30 for the interview).
I had a very similar experience, also on my first interview. completely unexpected question. needless to say i f'd it up. oh well, live and learn
seo has a similar interview tactic. in my first phone interview the person showed absolute no emotions on the phone. didn't even give me the opportunity to ask questions in the end. i thought i was gone for sure but i got invited to the in person interview still. i think as long as you kept ur cool and are confident about ur answers, u should be fine. this might just be a stress interview.
on this subject, how are the hours like in hk, china, taiwan?
i mean asians in asia work hard, asian bankers in asia work really really ridiculously harder? like 110+?
I'd say the guy was actually nice, you are young maybe banking is not what you really want. He is trying to make sure that you won't be miserable in the future and you have put a lot of thoughts in the interview.
On the subject of language fluency, one of the many languages I listed as fluent on my CV is what got me the job. They hired me to work with a certain country, if I had lied on my resume and they didn't test me on that language skill they would have had a pretty funny surprise come my first day on the job. That said, I am still worried about it because I haven't really used my writen skills for the past 7 years, so I am brushing up on them before I start in July. Also my speaking skills are null in technical terms so I am eating the financial news of that country every day to familiarize myself with the technical vocab. Fun isn't it?
Final note: Are your chances over? I hope you are just asking that question to re-assure yourself. If you said you answered all the question with confidence where is the problem? He asks those same questions I am sure to every candidate.
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Remember, you will always be a salesman, no matter how fancy your title is. - My ex girlfriend
Recover From Wrong Tech Answer (Originally Posted: 03/13/2014)
Had a phone interview where I honestly didn't know the answer and replied with an I don't know. In the follow up animal, is there any way to recover from it?
No. Interviewers throw these types of questions at you to check your ability to think on the spot. Responding with your thoughts later after you've had the opportunity to think without pressure, consult the internet, consult with your friends etc does nothing positive.
At worst, it sends a negative signal that you don't even understand why you were asked the question in the first place (ie to test your thinking under pressure).
I've had kids follow up an interview by sending me their later thoughts on how to answer some logic question I've thrown at them (eg "How many pairs of socks are sold in Bloomingdales on any given business day"). I've not read their thoughts and deleted the e-mail.
I was actually told the answer right after it I was wondering if I should go more into the idea that my current role doesn't use fina statements much but hit on how my role now hits other parts of the job I don't know
Next time, say "I'm not sure exactly, but I think you'd do this...." instead of a flat out "I don't know"
How basic was the question? Was it a more complicated one?
Something to the extent of
revenues grew some percentage net income was positive them inflation was 1% why did they go into bankruptcy
The answer was pretty obvious when i got the answer. And granted you guys are a lot smarter and do this every day but I haven't looked at a statement the past year in my currently role it's more dcm yield analysis
is it a bad idea to admit my lack of experience in financial statements on the follow up but highlight my strengths
Ill take that as a yes
Technical Failure Follow-up? (Originally Posted: 02/02/2012)
Hi Guys, So I didn't do so hot on the tech portion of my SA interview (little finance/accounting background) as week ago, but I've figured out the answer in the past week. Do you think it would be inappropriate and/or pointless to e-mail the analyst who asked me the questions with my answers?
Yes, IMO it would be pointless to discuss it further. They've probably made their decision about you, for better or for worse.
DO NOT FOLLOW UP WITH ANSWERS
What would be the point of that, especially after a week?
I wouldn't, especially after a week.
Maybe mention it if you get another round and it happens to be the same guy.....
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