P. Schoenfeld Asset Management Interview Questions

The phone interview was pretty standard for a HF hiring summer interns. They asked for my story, and asked me to pitch a stock. For the rest of the interview, I told him about the stock I wanted to short, and he grilled me on my thesis and my valuation approach. Since it was a short, he also asked a lot about catalysts, and the specific timeline for them. This lasted about 20 minutes and the interview was essentially complete.

After this, I was contacted about a super day in NYC, which I went for. The super day consisted of 2 interviews, though according to people who also got the super day, the number of interviews you had was based on availability of Analysts/PMs and not really standardized.

My first interviewer was the same person as the phone interviewer, but this time he didn't ask me at all about the pitch or my story. Instead, he asked me a few fit questions, but nothing to prep for since these were just him asking about the interests I put on my resume. After this, he grilled me a bit on technicals, but nothing in M&I, and the technicals were not that complicated, but were definitely moire complicated than M&I stuff. Specifically, he asked me how PIK interest flows through the 3 statements, asked me to calculate the yield of a bond that matures in 2 years, and he also asked me this question:
An OpCo is levered at 6x EBITDA, the HoldCo is levered at 2x EBITDA, EBITDA is 100mm, and the whole company is worth 7x EBITDA. What does HoldCo debt trade at?
After this, he asked me if I have any questions for him and then we talked a bit more about my interests.

In between my two interviews, I waited for an hour in the conference room since the second interviewer had a phone call that ran over time.

My second interviewer asked me for my story, and asked me to pitch to him. He grilled me super hard on what I thought the stock could rise to (since I pitched a short) and grilled me on risk-reward payoff and how shorts should have asymmetric risk-reward profiles. This lasted about 20 minutes, after which we talked a little bit about my college (he happened to be an alum), then he asked me if I have any questions, and then walked me out of the office.

Nothing unexpected. We talked about the ideas i pitched, and talked about the firm strategies and market trends, and some technical skills. The most important thing, apart from a solid skill-set, is the passion to investing and the willingness to learn in my opinion.

Why do you need more than a minute to pitch an investment idea?
I initially thought this was rhetorical but he expected an answer. Very weird question.