Investment Banking Analyst - Blackstone M&A

Status
1st Year Analyst at
Group/Division/Type
Mergers and Acquisitions
City
New York
Interviewed
September 2009
Overall experience
Negative
Difficulty
Easy

General Interview Information

Outcome
No Offer
Interview Source
College / University / On Campus Recruiting
Length of Process
Less than 1 month

Interview Details

What did the interview consist of?
1 on 1 Interview
Please describe the interview / hiring process.
Interview for full-time analyst position set up via my college's on-campus recruiting board. I was assigned slot for first round interview at my school's Career Center. The interview lasted 30 minutes, and was 1-on-1 with a mid-level guy on the M&A team (believe he was a VP). He was not an alumnus of my school, which was unusual among the on-campus interviews I had.

The interviewer had an unfriendly demeanor; I don't think he smiled once throughout. I got the impression that he either hadn't slept in several days or had a grudge against kids from my school. After the standard exchange of backgrounds, he prodded me a bit about my coursework and what classed I had taken that prepared me for finance (not much; I majored in dead languages). He asked whether I had taken an accounting or business class. Nope. Did my school offer accounting or business classes? Nope. He was not impressed by my answers.

Then he threw a bunch of (in retrospect, easy) technical questions at me:

1) What's the difference between enterprise value and market cap?
2) Walk me through the steps to get from EBITDA to net income.
3) What are some valuation methods?

I stumbled through 1 and 2 like an idiot, had 3 memorized, walked out with no expectation of second round (correct!).
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