How heavily do you grill people on past IB experience?

If, for example, someone had an SA position at another bank, and said they "Built a DCF for company AA" and "Compiled public comps for company BB", what sort of questions would you ask? How extensively would you delve into the intricacies of the models they built? Would you ask more qualitative questions such as about the industry the company was in or the operations of the companies themselves?

I'm assuming you would go far deeper than just "Walk me through a DCF"

I did both of these things (DCF and public comps), and I just want to know how much time and energy I should spend on preparing to talk about them in interviews, and what sorts of questions I should be prepared for.

All advice is appreciated.

2 Comments
 
Best Response

Not very in depth in most cases. It'll be mostly conceptual, things like:

DCF: What happens to your valuation when I increase X variable in a DCF? Just make sure you know how changing a given variable affects value, and through what mechanism.

Comps: How would I find trading comps for [Google/Apple/Walmart/any company]? The most in depth you see people getting here is handing over a short list of comps with like revenue, EBIT, and EBITDA multiples and asking you if you see anything off (usually it's multiples increasing over time, EBIT multiples being lower than EBITDA multiples, etc.)

Of course, each interview is different and some people will drill down further on everything. Personally I found technical interviews to be boring so I never asked a whole lot of these questions other than just to check the box.

 

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