How bad was your first IB interview?
How bad did you manage to mess up on your first few interviews? Anything silly you uttered without intending, or did you choke completely? Share your experience fellow bankers and aspiring bankers.
Applied to MM firm (think Baird/WB) early before I even really knew what IB was, but somehow knew these firms move earlier. Got on the phone thinking it was an informational interview and immediately started off “just want to hear about your and your story spiel” and the guy immediately just said he would ask me a few questions and we’d go from there.
First question, what are the three financial statements and how do they connect?
My answer: Uh um...I don’t know exactly the answer to that but I have heard of a comprable companies analysis and DCF...
Guy: okay what are comps?
Me: Me sputtering shit i halfway read out of rosenbaum and pearl...after that he just said “Thank you for you time-we’ll get back to you” and hung up.
Fuck yeah, I can contribute to this. My first real banking interview was for a SA position at Lazard Middle Market (why does everyone here have an aversion to calling out specific banks?). I made it past the first behavioiral interview on campus because my interviewers no-showed. They just auto-invited me to the super day in Chicago.
I made it pretty clear in my introduction/networking calls that I was very interested in banking, but that I literally just started taking accounting and finance. I was like one fucking week into these classes. Did not matter. I was absolutely annhilated at the super day. Grilled on technicals that I had no fucking clue about. I was so nervous and rattled I think I probably looked like I jumped in a pool of sweat during this painful 4-hour day. I remember two douchebag interviewers realizing I was not going to be hired and they just started firing off stupid questions to kill the time. "What kind of car do you want to drive?" stuck out. They fucking grilled me on my answer.
Got intro'd by someone who thought I knew what I was doing. I had literally 0 clue. I'm serious, I never pursued IB until last minute senior year. I didn't know this website existed. Someone told me to say something about a DCF, it's an excel model. Ok, sick.
I get on a call with MD of 2nd tier M&A group (BAML, Citi, CS), super friendly and obviously going to be an easy interview. Awesome! I come out guns blazing. They're blanks.
Him: how do the 3 statements connect.
Me: they're all connected, and there are a lot of other things in the annual report so frankly I think 3 statements aren't enough. I believe it's the income statement, the balance sheet and....not sure what the third one is, maybe the breakdown of operating segments. Also, you can do a DCF with them.