Am I screwed for technical questions
Aspiring IB SA here. Not looking for consolation here, looking for an honest assessment. Plain and simple, I was not expecting so many banking apps to open this early and I severely procrastinated my review of the important technical components that come up in interviews. I've been cramming in the past couple of days, but I still am only barely understanding the basic technical concepts. What I'm especially worried about is the more advanced questions, which according to people on this forum, come up more often than I was expecting. Is there any point in trying to understand the more advanced concepts at this point, or should I just give up on that and make sure I have the basics down?
For the record, I have no idea if/when my interviews will be, but having just sent in many apps this week, it may be very soon.
Nothing you can do now but buckle down and grind as much as you can. Stick with the BIWS400 questions, make flashcards, make sure you have the basics down cold before you try to move upwards. No point in being able to kinda sorta explain deferred tax assets if you can't walk the interviewer from EBITDA to unlevered FCF. Practice every night, have friends quiz you, do mock interviews with kids in the grade above who have offers.
Nobody is going to ask you about a deferred tax asset in an M&A IBD interview.
You must have interviewed at bad banks
Just for this, all my technicals questions will be about deferred taxes, consider this fair warning
My super for EB included a write down question where the interviewer was expecting a DTA, so it can come up depending on the interviewer
It might be crazy what I’m about to say…
Why would you allow yourself to think others can do it and not you? This stuff is really not hard and you should look at this as preparation for your actual job, not only interviews.
Definitely stick with the M&I 400, and look on here for the most asked questions. You will get asked about DCFs, 3 valuation methods, $10 depreciation every time. The more advanced questions come up occasionally. If you're an econ/non finance major, they will go a little easier on you - if you are a finance major, know your accounting,
Also, having just sent in apps you have plenty of time. At least 2 weeks before interviews. Buckle down now, stop going out for 2 weeks, and learn this stuff. It really only takes a week or two to learn the important concepts.
This is also totally normal timing for apps to open. Have you been networking? If you just sent in applications and haven't spoken with anyone, you will more than likely never hear back from 90% of places.
Thanks for the response. You're right that this is not an extraordinarily weird time for apps to be opening, but I wrote down when the specific days the apps opened last year and it seems that many of the banks that previously opened in April/May now opened in March, which is what caught me by surprise. I have been doing what I think is a *decent* job networking the past couple of months. I aimed to talk to like 4-5 people per bank, but it's quite mixed with the responses I actually got which turned out to be more like 5-6 people at certain places and 0-1 at others (which I know is not great at all, but it's a mix). For context, I'm an econ (non-finance) major at a target with a good (but not exceptional) GPA.
All good things. Keep networking, focus on the technicals for the next two weeks and you should be fine. Make flash cards, have people give you mock technicals, just really grind the techs out for a bit.
Depends on the bank but a lot of them have technicals figure prominently as the first round of interviews, and then after that they'll focus more on fit. If you don't have the technicals down, you'll probably do poorly in the first round and may be filtered out. It's just an easy way to benchmark a large pool of candidates, especially considering that the other things they'll try to evaluate interviewees on (work ethic, attitude, general cultural fit) are a lot harder to benchmark and evaluate in a standard interview process. Technicals are great because after the first round it's easy to circle back to review candidates to say who got what right and wrong. It's black and white.
With that being said, you should have plenty of time to get the basics down solidly. If you have a solid understanding of the three statements and the different valuation methods you should be in a decent spot. The more advanced technical questions get down to how well you actually understand the basics. So while I echo others' responses in this thread, I would suggest going beyond just memorizing answers via flashcards, and going deeper to understand why certain answers are the answers. Accounting and finance are systems, so if you can understand the systems more generally you will have more confident answers and be able to better infer why more advanced technicals have the answers they do. So go beyond, for example, just being able to repeat the WACC formula and understand why the formula is what it is, which would give you the ability to understand how more advanced concepts would fit into that formula or how the formula may be adjusted in more advanced scenarios.
USA does not look fun for recruiting. Having to learn technicals before getting an offer damn...
Aswath Damodaran is an NYU Professor at Stern. Go watch his videos on youtube for Corporate Finance, Valuation, and Accounting. You will easily understand all of the concepts and technicals.
Also, find this PDF on CFA Investment Foundation preparation material it has all the fundamental concepts
"https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLUkh9m2BorqlJsEfix7R9jt…
Thanks so much for passing this along! Will check it out.
This is severely underrated but if you read the first 5-7 chapters of the Knopman Series 79 book you'll be more than prepared.
Like the textbook and workbook? If I’m a rising sophomore and I start now it’ll cover all bases?
in the same spot, so busy with schools and extra-curriculars, i've been procrastinating. completely bombed technical part of an interview, LBO was stressed way more than I imagined. just need to put our heads down and grind.
Lock the basics and stop panicking. Advanced questions don’t matter if you can’t nail the core stuff cleanly. Most people bomb because they’re shaky on fundamentals, not because they missed some niche LBO edge case.
If you’ve got a few days, get to the point where you can explain 3 statements, DCF, comps, enterprise vs equity value, and basic accretion/dilution without hesitation. If you get hit with something harder, just reason it out calmly. Interviewers care more about how you think than whether you’ve memorized every corner case. Grind some tool like ibtechnicalprep.com which is what most of my friends did
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