Investment Banking Summer Analyst

I applied to Citi online in October 2011, completed first round in mid-December and was called to a second round in early January 2012.

First round was held in their London office with 4-5 other applicants. We were asked to complete a numerical verification test (6 questions of the same style as the test you complete at home, only starting at the higher difficulty) in addition to 2 face-to-face interviews with bankers who were seemingly drawn at random from all IBD teams. Interviews were part competency but my interviewers were keen to talk about other topics too. Nothing too technical, just general market/economic related questions to gauge how much of a clue I had.

Second round held in the London office again, consisting of 4 interviews. Two interviews were straightforward, with a mixture of competency, technical and brainteaser questions.

One interview was based around a case study and individual presentation. We were give about an hour, perhaps more, to prepare for this. We were given extensive information from which to draw our conclusions, think company profiles, expansion projects, pricing models, product types.

The last interview was based on a Financial Times reading exercise. We were given half an hour or so to choose three articles to talk about from that day's FT.

Both task-based interviews then proceeded onto regular questions.

All my interviewers were really friendly, interested in me and happy to shoot the breeze at the end of the interview, discussing their own stories etc. I was given feedback after each task which was helpful for me to gauge how I was doing.

The importance of the two tasks should not be underestimated. I put my success partially down to the extremely positive feedback I received from my presentation. The interviewer seemed to like me from that point on and it made the rest flow much more smoothly.