Summer Associate Interview Prep, MBA candidate

This fall I'll be in the first year of a top 10 MBA program, and my goal is to ace the summer internship interview for an investment banking role at a BB or EB. I have a non-finance undergrad major and non-finance work experience with minimal Excel experience. To prepare for the technical interviews, what particular books and courses are useful? I have read that BIWS is great, as are Rosenbaum and Pignataro's Financial Modeling.

Many thanks.

 
Best Response

Your investment banking club will give you everything you need. It's too early for you to really start preparing, IMO. You won't have interviews for another 12 months. That said, the one thing I might do prior to school is go through Rosenbaum and the questions that go with it. Then sometime during the fall you'll get your BIWS/etc guides from your school and you'll want to know those back to front, including all the extra online quizzes and what not, by the time interviews happen.

You won't get any technicals during the networking stage (only ever heard of this at lower ranked schools). You are better off making sure you have an air tight story about why banking, learning about the banks, and knowing more qualitative answers because those are what you'll get asked about early on (and anything on your resume).

Also, at least at my M7, BB interviews were pretty non technical. Very basic check the box type stuff like walking through a DCF. Only tough technicals were in EB interviews. Meaning, the networking and soft part of the process are much more important for MBA recruiting.

 

Kids from my target bschool got technicals during the informational process typically for the following reasons - 1. had a finance / accounting background, 2. the banker was not an alum, 3. student talked about finance subjects or 4. banker was having a bad day. More so since you're coming from a non-finance background, be prepared for the questions, "what are you doing to prepare yourself for the internship?" or "how do I know you will excel in this role?"

Some BB's had difficult technicals and this also varied over years and banker to banker, so don't go into a BB interview thinking you will be getting all softballs. All EBs were pretty tough when I went through it.

 

Networking/informational interviews are relaxed at the beginning, but you'll get questions as you get closer to interviews (Oct/Nov). From a non-finance background myself and a number of BB's liked to ask "What do investment bankers do?" and "What is the role of an associate?" pretty early on, which is a fair question at any time.

 

This needs to be managed carefully especially if you go to a target school. If you go to a target school do not flaunt these connections to your school's recruiting team. If you meet with a family connection maybe have them email someone on the recruiting team vouching for you. If you don't go to a target school, then it's a bit more useful to use these connections fully.

 

Follow whatever guides your school's Finance/IB Club provide and you should be prepared. Technicals aren't bad at all at most banks--walk me through a DCF, if you overstate depreciation, how does it impact the 3 financial statements, etc...

If you nail those, some firms will continue to ask you progressively harder questions to see how far they can push you, but for the most part if you confidently and sufficiently answer a few technicals, they'll move onto the fit/behavioral pretty quickly.

If your background is super non-finance (i.e. you didn't even work in an office before but were military, an actor or athlete), where there is a bit more skepticism on your technical abilities they may push you a bit more.

For nailing MBA interviews, being able to sell yourself on fit and convince firms that you'll accept if given an offer play the biggest role. Technicals are more of a yes/no check the box--they won't win you an offer but can lose you one.

 

I don't have anything to add but you'll probably get a better turn out response wise if you let everyone know what kind of prior experience you had before B-school. That way those who have gone through associate level interviews will have a good idea what you already know.

 

With no relevant work experience, you'd really need to nail the case interview if you get one (we put all our associate candidates through a case). Basically, if given an example company, you need to be able to identify the questions you would ask to extract key data. Basically a test of your knowledge of what makes a good business. Sorry if this seems abstract, but I've never administered or gone through our case interview.

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

Thanks Bumble.

I'm a finance / econ undergrad and the terminology doesn't scare me. DCF, CAPM, etc.

However, most sites have very generic information. I'll check out the site you posted.

 

That's going to depend on your school's OCR. For the MBA business schools">M7 MBA programs almost all of them have compressed first and second rounds in mid to late January (i.e. interview in a Monday/Tuesday and have your super day later that week if you get the invite).

But as far as I've heard from my friends at other schools most non OCR processes have had second round invites earlier this month with only a handful still outstanding. But even in those non-OCR processes many are still a school dependent.

 

I'm at an MBA business schools">M7 and am waiting to hear whether or not I've been invited to the interview process in January. I recruited well with multiple banks and was told that I would receive an invite from a few banks but I have yet to hear back.

 

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