Discussing Boutique Internship Experience

Hey guys, I wanted to ask this as I know many of us prospects will be recruiting for BB Summer 2024 positions and have boutique IB experience on our CV.

From those of you who have gone through the process and spun your experience to get that BB/EB offer, what types of interview questions were you asked about your previous experience? Were you asked to walk through a deal that you worked, your rationale for that specific boutique ?? Etc..

Would love to hear any advice you guys have on crushing that part of the interview or any questions you were asked when interviewing.

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Questions I've been asked:

  • What did you enjoy most
  • What were your main responsibilities
  • What did you enjoy least
  • What do you think will be the biggest step-ups from there to here
  • Did you do much modelling/Excel
  • What did a day-to-day look like
  • How did you source the internship
  • Did they extend a return offer
  • What is an Excel function you learned there

No need to prepare answers for all of these, just make sure you're familiar with what your main responsibilities and achievements were.

 

I was at a boutique for SA and landed EB for FT. I think the questions from the above are good ones to prepare. I was also asked:

- Why do you want to leave the firm you interned at since you got a return offer? 

- Why do you want to be at [insert BB/EB firm] instead of the boutique firm?  

In answering these questions, try to come up with an authentic answer that is not "prestige"  or "comp" related - could talk about wanting to be on more complex deals (can even use an example of a complex transaction that you find on their website and say you want to work on deals like that), larger transactions, etc. Additionally, avoid putting down or bad-mouthing the boutique firm you were at, instead, focus on why you'd like to be at [insert firm]. 

 

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