Hey just wondering what your experiences are when interviewing. Are your interviews harder with the higher up people aka more technical or with lower people like analysts? What should I expect if most of the people that are interviewing me VP level or higher?
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higher up = much more behavioral
Yup. MDs dont ask technicals.
I've always found that interviews with VPs and higher tend to be a lot more intense - they're the ones who make the decesions and they're the ones you are trying to impress. Analyst interviews are formulaic and usually not too formal. In terms of difficulty (technicals in your case), higher ups don't ask those types of questions from my experience.
In almost all of my experiences, the higher up the food chain you go, the less technical the interviews get. I only ever had one VP grill me on technicals, and have had MD's bring me into their office, sit on the couch with me, have a coffee, and just shoot the shit about golf and school (almost all final rounds though).
I have had analysts that think they are hot shit, or just feel like torturing you because they went through the same process, and make you feel like you are worthless by continuously asking technical questions nobody out of UGrad should be expected to be able to answer.
Long story short, know everything. Prepare for technical interviews and know all the standard questions, buy some guides to help you out with that. Also prep your behavioral questions because that is what REALLY gets you the job. Finally, if you are meeting with an MD, be relaxed, be ready to answer some technical questions just in case, but more importantly try to have an opinion on the markets, overall economy, etc. Macro-level stuff. They are much more likely to ask you about that.
I agree with the above about behavioral questions. Maybe not behavioral in particular, but general FIT questions are crucial, and making a connection with the interviewer and having chemistry trumps all technical slips.
interviewed with 7 banks for 9 positions. was very fortunate to get offers from all those (except one, withdrew from final round as soon as I got the sa position I wanted). In total, I went through (like many of us on this board) about 30-40 interviews between 1st (and some banks had 2nd) rounds, superdays, and desk specific interviews... with interviewers ranging from analyst level to Exec. Dir & MD's. Hands down, MD's did not ask me a single technical q. Furthermore, the technicals I did get were not even "technical" by definition. The two that I got the most were: tell me how the fin stmts are connected... and how would you value company. Everything else was pure fit.
One caveat... a gentleman from MS (a quant PhD) was a bit more technical (still not bad though), but it was fun since I prepared for his style questions: cube root of 343, do this accretion/dilution based on given numbers, which company would you pick based on deg of oper-lev, in the short term which is more important ebit/i or d/e, how many glasses of coke sold in the lower east side today...
He was certainly the exception rather than the rule. I liked it though! Oh... one ED did ask me a q right out of vault... zero coupon bond into perpetuity question. If you get that.... don't answer to fast! try not to smile too big and pretend like they didn't just underhand you one right down the middle of the plate.
good luck!
the higher the rank, the less the technicals. although i once got tested on my technicals by an MS VP
I've had some pretty technical interviews with VP's.
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