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SEO - Recruiting Progress
 

drf741's picture
(Monkey, 53
 
Points)
 on 1/24/11 at 1:38am

Did anyone who applied for 2nd round (Dec 15 deadline) hear back yet?

Tags:
Eye Bank's picture

I had an initial phone screen

(Monkey, 53
 
Points)
 on 1/28/11 at 3:20pm

I had an initial phone screen yesterday

TheHungryOne's picture

Did they tell you prior to

IB
 
Points)
 on 1/28/11 at 6:11pm

Did they tell you prior to your phone screen that they will call you?

Eye Bank's picture

Yes. they email you a

(Monkey, 53
 
Points)
 on 1/31/11 at 11:18am

Yes. they email you a confirmation email. Then you choose your interview date on their database.

arellalu's picture

Eye Bank wrote: I had an

O
 
Points)
 on 2/2/11 at 11:12am
Eye Bank:

I had an initial phone screen yesterday

Can you give us some insight on what to expect? and how should we prepare ourselves? I submitted mi application Monday and got an email Tuesday to schedule my phone interview.

Eye Bank's picture

The interview went very

(Monkey, 53
 
Points)
 on 2/7/11 at 1:30pm

The interview went very quickly. Here are the questions i remembered being asked
1. Why banking?
2. Why SEO?
3. What experiences has helped you prepare for the career program
4. What do you expect to do during your time at SEO

Hope that helps good luck

Beef's picture

NOTE: I got all this

IB
(Gorilla, 718
 
Points)
 on 2/7/11 at 1:58pm

NOTE: I got all this information from a friend who is an SEO alum.

This is a list of questions SEO has been known to ask in both 1st and 2nd round interviews:

• Tell us something about yourself.
• What are your three biggest strengths? (Be able to back them up with certain examples and experiences.)
• Three biggest weaknesses? (Don’t say that you’re too much of a perfectionist or that you work too hard. And definitely don’t say that you’re not an analytical thinker. Also, explain how you’re working on improving these weaknesses.)
• Name ten weaknesses of yours.
• Give us five reasons we should hire you.
• What award means the most to you and why?
• What is your most significant extracurricular activity?
• Name a time you had to deal with a difficult situation.
• Why is the Northeast part of the United States the most prosperous?
• Pitch a stock to us. Why do you think that stock is so good? (You should know everything about the company, ranging from financial statements to current updates with the firm.)
• Brainteaser: You have two ropes, each of which takes exactly one hour to burn completely. Using just these two ropes and a lighter (no measurement device), how would you determine when 45 minutes is completed?
• How many notebooks are sold to college students each year?
• What is 14 x 16? 16 x 12? 32 x 17? 23 x 24?
• What is 2% of 30 million?
• Are you sure? (They may ask if you are sure whether you are right or wrong.)
• What is CAPM?
• What is beta?
• Explain all the ways to value a company.
• Why are you majoring in ____?
• What was your favorite course?
• What was your least favorite course?
• Who is the Chairman of the SEC?
• What does S&P stand for?
• What does LIBOR stand for?
• What is the 10-year-rate?
• Why don’t you have any community service?
• What makes you good for the program to which you’re applying?
• State one or two things that distinguish you from other people applying.
• What is investment banking?
• What differentiates IB, S&T, and Research, and why do you want to go into the particular field you applied to?
• What exactly in investment banking do you want to do? Do you know of any big deals in that area over the past year?
• Where else did you apply?
• What would you do if you don’t get into SEO?
• Why did you have your MGMT 100 professor write you a recommendation when you got a B in the course?
• What did the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ close at yesterday (or 2 days ago)?
• F7 is spell-check on Excel.
• What’s your favorite book?
• What’s your favorite movie?
• What do you do for fun?
• What questions do you have for us? (Give question.) Ask us some real questions.
• Run us through this accounting statement.
• What is the relationship among the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement? Know how depreciation and taxes fit in as well.
• How do you make your margins exactly the same in PowerPoint?
• Role play: Pretend you had to go to an SEO event, but your boss wants you to finish something right now…what do you do?
• If, in your resume, you said that you are proficient, conversational, fluent, etc. in a language other than English, the SEO interviewer may very well test you by suddenly speaking in that language, and the interviewers would expect you to respond in that language just as well as you would in English.

S&T interview tips:

• Come prepared with knowledge regarding the DOW, the NASDAQ, general market news, and an opinion of future market performance. Your knowledge of the markets would be pretty important in sales & trading. Definitely read/browse the Wall Street Journal the morning of and/or day before your interview.
• Have a strong answer as to why you want to pursue sales & trading. Make sure you understand the type of work that people in S&T do as well as the type of people who enter that particular industry (e.g. quick on your feet, quantitatively oriented, good attention to detail). Also, it might be a good idea to look focused by being even more specific and explaining how you want to go into either sales or into trading. It is essential that you, above all, understand why you want to enter sales & trading and/or any other relevant industries.
• How good’s your German? What’s “my car’s about to get towed” in German?
• And you speak Chinese? Ni zai na li chu sheng de? (Where are you born ?)
• Rate your quantitative skills.
• Ever used Access? Excel, PP? Macros?
• How has the Yen been doing against the Dollar?
• What is sales and trading, and why do you want to pursue it?
• This folder is worth $10. I want to buy it for $5, you want to sell it to me for $15. (shiny, sturdy, you use it for storing calculators, so if you save $10 now could lose $120 equipment later. Tip from interviewer: Should start asking price at $20)
• What’s a bond? What would affect a price of a bond? (yield, coupon payments, stock market prices..
• How would a corporate bond and a government bond be priced differently?
• What would affect exchange rates (interest rates, inflation rates, economic health, etc.)
• Tell me about your monetary economics course.
• Have you applied to any of our partner firms?
• If you got an offer for Goldman tomorrow, who would you pick? (say SEO!)
• SEO is your first choice? (Definitely!)
• What’s 19 *14, and say it out loud.
• What’s 9% of 7 billion? Are you sure?
• What do you want to ask a trader, like me (interviewer), about my job?
• Why did you work at a small accounting firm when you want to do sales and trading? (I didn’t like the environment; I want something fast-paced. That’s why I’m applying for S&T.)
• Trading is very aggressive. When have you encountered a situation where you had to deal with a lot of aggressive people?
• Tell us about your community service activity.
• Run us through your regular day
• So you sleep in? In trading you have to get up at 5 AM…
• You may have seminars during the week and on weekends; can you deal with that?
• What do you do for fun? (After hearing I do Tae-kwon Do) What belt are you?
• What are you bad at? And don’t give us a B.S. answer.
• How do you de-stress?
• Is there anything else on your resume we haven’t touch on?
• Do you have any questions for us? (asked about possibilities of SEO recruiting abroad)
• What is a tombstone? (An advertisement in a business newspaper or magazine, placed by an investment bank, announcing an offering and listing the syndicate members.)
• What does NASDAQ stand for?
• Explain meaning of essay, what you learned, etc.
• Explain interesting activity/activities you’re involved in.
• What is your most significant community service activity?
• Why do you want to do investment banking (or program to which you’re applying)? (“Steep learning curve, lot to learn; opportunity to work with people from all over the world and from different universities; acquire an additional skill set, like to be challenged and in a demanding/stimulating environment.” If you can customize this answer and tailor it to your own prior work experience, then that could look even better.)
• What do you want to do as a career (both immediately after graduation and long-term)?
• Do you have good attention to detail? Then why is there this mistake on your application?
• Do you know how to use Excel and Access?
• How would you rate your quantitative skills?
• How would you rate your verbal skills?
• How would you rate your Excel skills?
• Do you know how to use macros?
• Why should we accept you as opposed to the other qualified candidates?
• Why should we take you as a sophomore when there are so many other juniors who are applying for an internship?
• Are you applying for any other internships? (Say that you are or that you will be…don’t look like you’re only applying to SEO. If they ask whether or not you think you’ll get those other internships, say yes. However, make sure they understand that SEO is your first choice.)
• Do you have any questions for us?
• Is there anything you wished we had asked you?
• Is there anything else you’d like to tell us or anything you’d want us to know?

IB interview tips:

• Know the different groups within IBanking
• Know the markets well and how they relate to current events
• Be able to describe an M&A deal thoroughly
• Know how to run through a DCF and a P/E ratio
• Know what has gotten the economy to what it is today
• :90 second pitch (of course)
• Describe what you do for community service
• Be prepared to discuss ANYTHING on your resume
• How does the U.S. economy affect other economies around the world
• Why would a firm's stock be over/under valued

General interview tips:
• You must understand the mission of SEO, and the Career Program as more than just an internship opportunity. Highlight your community service activities and your dedication to serving the community in which you live. SEO is very big on alumni contribution and giving back. You must be able to convey that you are activist-minded.
• Read Vault Guide to Finance Interviews (some schools have this service on campus).It pretty much covers everything, so this, coupled with a few mock interviews, will put you in an excellent position for the interview. Make sure you relax, and get a good night sleep the day before the interview. Additionally, watch CNBC all this week, and take a quick look at Businessweek (excellent information on the economy) and Wall Street Journal (pay attention to trends and investment banks information). Lastly, look professional and show up 15 minutes before your interview.
• The key to any interview is preparation. If you look over and prepare answers to as many questions as possible, you will be more confident in your interview.
• Be sure to dress in a suit…where the coat and pants match.
• Bring updated copies of your resume (at least 4) to give to the interviewers. If your grades went up, an updated transcript wouldn’t hurt.
• Make sure that you’re able to explain everything on your resume in detail. The entire resume is technically fair game, and your interviewer(s) may try to trap you in any details on your resume.
• Perhaps read or browse through the Vault Guide beforehand so that you have a more solid understand of what the industry is about.
• Once you get to the SEO headquarters, you might have to wait in a waiting room. They might make you wait for 20-45 minutes after your scheduled interview time to simply to make you nervous.
• SEO is known to spy on you in the waiting room to see if/how you interact with other people. Thus, if someone else is in the waiting room, try to talk to him/her and be friendly. Also, once you’re in the building, be sure to not do or say anything that you wouldn’t want SEO to see or hear.
• Also, while you’re in the waiting room, they may walk by the waiting room several times and look at you, knowing that you see them. This is just a tactic to make you nervous.
• When you first meet the interviewers, take the initiative to be assertive, say it’s nice to meet them (even ask for their name if necessary), and firmly shake their hand.
• The interviewers might play the good cop-bad cop routine. Or, they might all just be bad cops.
• If you interviewed with SEO before but did not get in, be able to explain what you have learned since you last applied and why you have improved as a candidate since then.
• If you are applying to SEO again as an alumnus, be prepared to explain why you feel that you should participate in SEO again and/or why you deserve a spot over someone who hasn’t had a chance to participate in SEO.
• Understand ahead of time that scores of candidates leave their SEO interview traumatized (seriously) or in tears. If you know in advance that they will try to mess with you, it will be much easier to handle their abuse.
• If they ask how you know about SEO, feel free to namedrop.
• Read the WSJ…know what’s happening on a macroeconomic level (e.g., Fed cutting rates).
• Know about SEO (including what the other programs are, such as the SEO Scholars Program) and about SEO’s mission.
• They want to make sure you’re committed to program. Stress how important SEO is and how important its mission is. They want to keep SEO strong and want to recruit people to market SEO and its value.
• Sound sincere in your answers; make it look like it comes from the heart.
• Make sure you display your strong interest/passion for the particular program to which you are applying, and show that you have done research on the position and that you think you are suitable for it. Be able to explain all of this.
• Always demonstrate confidence in yourself.
• Try to make the interviewers like you (without looking fake). Be personable. Don’t be discouraged if they don’t respond to you.
• Pretend to be comfortable even if you’re not.
• Keep your cool. Do NOT lose your composure…even though you will be in a high-pressure atmosphere.
• The interviewers may not pay attention to you; they may try to make you distracted (e.g., by flipping through pages, fidgeting, and not making eye contact with you while you’re talking or thinking). Just be confident and don’t worry about it or let it bother you.
• They may laugh very loudly (so as to drown you out) when you give an answer.
• They may say that you’re not good enough for SEO and that you shouldn’t have bothered applying to the program. That’s just a show; simply explain how and why you are fit for SEO, for the internship, and show confidence in yourself.
• Along those lines, they may tell you that you should consider Inroads, another minority career program that only gives you “back-office” jobs because SEO is probably not that interested in you.
• They’ll try to mess you up. They’ll work their hardest to make you nervous. Again, don’t let any of that get to you. They’re simply testing you to see how you react under pressure.
• Be confident, upbeat, positive, and professional in how you act and in what you say.
• Keep in mind that nothing they’re doing is personal. In fact, when you look back on it, it might be funny because some what they do is so contrived.
• Make eye contact…with all the interviewers.
• At the end, smile, shake their hand, thank them for taking the time to interview you, and ask them for a business card.
• Send a thank-you e-mail or a thank-you card to your interviewers as soon as possible.
• Sending flowers/chocolates/candies is probably a stupid idea.

Wall Street leaders now understand that they made a mistake, one born of their innocent and trusting nature. They trusted ordinary Americans to behave more responsibly than they themselves ever would, and these ordinary Americans betrayed their trust.

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