Research Analyst

$10bil AUM Hedge Fund Interview (1) Applied on LinkedIn, (2) Initial 30-minute screening. I was asked various questions about how I would value a company. I was asked questions about financial statements. Ex. what financial statement would you find share repurchases on. Asked salary expectations. Walk me through your resume. All of that stuff. I was then told I would have to do a research writeup on a firm for them to gauge my abilities. (3) After the interview, the senior analyst sent me one of the companies his firm had an investment in. He gave me 4 days to return a one page valuation and recommendation on the company w/ any supporting graphs/files attached. (4) The senior analyst and I discussed my recommendation about a week after I returned it. I had to be persistent with him getting to it. He did not really like my valuation. Piece of advice, when an asset manager owns something, they believe in it, so if you go against that, you better have support for your thesis. I did have support and I think he actually agreed with me after I explained what I meant by many of the points in my recommendation and valuation. Also, if they ask you do something like this, do a DCF and a relative valuation analysis. (5) I actually followed up with more information via email on my recommendation. I assume they liked it because they asked me to come visit their HQ. (6) Had lunch at a restaurant near the HQ. I was interview during the lunch. Make sure you are nice to the restaurant staff and everyone else of course. Also, I was questioned in their offices and met with multiple people. The questions were typical interview questions. What did you learn at your last role? Are you prepared to do such and such. Salary expectations. What other companies are you interviewing with? (7) Lastly, I met with the CEO in the HQ to do a final interview. Pretty typical questions, again. But, kind of grilled me. Wasn't all that pleasant. I think this is where I went wrong in that we just didn't seem to have rapport. I had rapport with everyone else in the firm who I spoke with. I guess the CEO didn't like me. I believe this is why I didn't get an offer, because everything else went perfectly, imo. The worst part was all the time I devoted to preparing for this and the research report I wrote on one of their companies.