First round consisted of a few behavioral along with some DCF specific questions. You should understand valuation methods and how to appropriately apply them long with accounting

The interview was fast. You need to talk with two PM first and then the second round is about interviewing with all the members of the team in around 4 hours.

I first contacted the company by cold emailing an executive of the firm. I was then put in contact with the associate who ran the intern program. I was extremely impressed after all my conversations with members of the firm. The culture is one that seems to be open to hiring any motivated and proven individuals, regardless of what university is on the resume.

Applied online and received an email from an analyst several months later, who set up a time to talk on the phone with me. Seems like a very solid program that gives interns a lot of hands-on exposure to the M&A process.

Was first contacted for a phone screen and initial interview. After passing this first step, several candidates were invited into the office for further interviews with the team. This consisted of 7 or 8 interviews with individuals, each lasting about half an hour.

In January I contacted one of the analysts asking for an informational interview. He asked for my resume and when we had the phone call it turned out to be a phone interview. This phone interview was fairly straightforward with basic technical questions such as valuation methods and also questions about my resume.

After 2 weeks I heard back and was asked to come into the office for an interview. The interview at the office consisted of about 6 or more one on one interviews with individual members of the firm. The total process took about 2 hours. Once again the technical questions were pretty basic and to me it felt like they just wanted to get to know me better. Most of the technical questions were repeated throughout the interview such as valuation methods.

This is bit complicated, so here goes. I am a (as of school starting this fall) sophomore at Georgia Tech majoring in Mechanical Engineering and getting a certificate in Finance.

(I promise this leads to the interview part, but I have to give background for it to make sense.

I have extensively researched investment banking and have read many books including Rosenbaum and Pearl's, Vault Guides, M&I, Wall Street Oasis, etc. I have taken an intro finance class in which I had to create a LBO model from scratch. I networked and got help from an analyst at a local shop (VRA Partners).

After that, I networked some more and managed to get to know the guy who writes Duff and Phelps's annual Case Competition. I worked on one of the previous years models, making it from scratch and asking him questions as I went.

A friend and I will be starting an Investment Banking Club here at Tech this fall. In order to do this, I have talked to many GaTech Alum, in all places and in all sizes of firms. I managed to find a guy who previously worked at Suntrust Robinson Humphrey. I have been creating Word Documents and Power Points that define what the industry is like and how to break in, no glitz, no glamour, just the facts.

Although I am no expert and can probably get schooled by a 1st year analyst, I would bet that I probably know more about banking now than some "target" kids who get interviews at BBs.

During this past summer (2013) I decided I was going to try to get a fall internship at a local boutique. I researched just about every boutique investment bank in the area and send their MDs a cold email explaining my situation (very similar as above, but less words).

One MD forwarded the email down his staff and it wound up in front of another Tech grad. He gave me a call which functioned as a very loose interview. He was very relaxed.

Questions he asked me (remember that he learns how much I know as the interview goes along):
Q1 "You're in engineering, why do you want to do investment banking?"
A1 "As a senior in high school, I applied to all the elite engineering schools thinking I wanted to do engineering. I got into Tech, and this being the most prestigious one, I decided to enroll here. During the summer between high school and college, I stumbled upon [literally on Stumbleupon.com] Mergers & Inquistions. I kept reading Brian's articles and it just seems to fit me. But being at a top engineering school, I'm deciding to stay with engineering. My end goal is to wind up at a Clean Tech/Renewables investment banking divison."

Q2 "That's quite a story. So how much do you know about the industry?"
A2 [I proceeded to explain to him paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 from above]

Q3 "Wow, that's impressive."
A4 "I can send you my models and a few document's if you like?"

Q4 "Sure. So how much do you know about accounting? We get some kids who interview here that don't know the basic three financial statements."
A4 "I haven't taken any actual accounting classes yet, but I intend to in the future. However, I can definitely hold my own and know what's going on when it comes to them. I know which parts of the Income Statement can be manipulated the easiest, how things flow from one statement to another. I'm no expert, but I can get by easy enough. If needed, I would not be opposed to a crash course in accounting in the next couple of weeks"

After that, we got talking about if there was an actual job available (remember that I cold emailed for a spot that doesn't even exist). The conclusion of this was that there might be and he would have to talk to the more senior people in the firm (which has about 10-15 people).

That concluded our phone interview.

I probably would have had an in-person interview if I would have been in Atlanta at the time, but I was back home in Arizona, so only a phone interview made sense.

After the phone call, I immediately emailed the documents as promised. I decided to track it with Yesware (they don't know this).

I then decided to look through the accounting book Tech uses. I was pretty familiar with just about everything in it. I followed up with my interviewer about a week later politely letting him know this.

Another week went by and he responded with:

"Thanks for the message but, unfortunately, we’ve decided that we are not going to be bringing on any interns this Fall.

Please know that you’ve impressed us very much with your tenacity and knowledge of our industry. Please stay in touch and feel free to reach out if we can be helpful with any advice."

I politely thanked him for the opportunity as well as the compliment and said I would stay in touch and might ask him to drop by Tech for our IB Club sometime.




If you want the files I sent, feel free to ask.

Interview process consists of phone interview screening, in firm interview and then superday. In person interview was typical fit interview combined with some general technical questions. Firm staff is very good group and has a great culture. Seems very open environment and collaborative. Be sure to review WSO interview guide for preparation.

Submit resume, then they review it, inform you if they want to interview. More technical and industry knowledge than fit questions after interview one. Ask current events questions and non-IB math questions to gauge thought process.