Bombing HF interviews - advice needed

Current sophomore doing LO/HF interviews for UG programs. Usually, I get the R1 with HR/recruiter (D&C, CAP, Baly), but have trouble converting these. Issues seem to be the behaviorals such as when I took a risk and failed, biggest regret, etc. Do I talk about investing stories or other things here? 

Also, I feel like my stock pitches get too long, and I am curious if anyone has general guidance on how to approach the question. 

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None of my behaviourals have ever been finance-related (STEM major), and I've never had issues with any of the L/S programs in terms of interviewing. If you're getting cut by HR you're probably not conveying your "why this job" story well enough, so practise the structure and have good reasons.

Stock pitches can be very performative, especially for case comps etc, but when you're interviewing with someone who actually picks stocks at C/M/P etc you want to skip over the bullshit. You do not need to give all the inner workings of the business, industry exposures etc, if they're not immediately relevant to the opportunity. 

Having a really good understanding of the business and industry (growth vs peers, sub-segment/geo exposures vs peers, product differentiation, USP, moat, whatever) is priority number 1 for the research process, but is generally best kept to the Q&A imo. Keep your pitch targeted. 

I've never interviewed with an LO, so I can't help there. Frankly, I don't know what juniors do there.

 

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