Hi Everyone,
I am prepping for full-time EB interviews in the fall. Looking at previous Techs, how does one even go about learning these types of technicals? I look at these questions, and you have to be a quant to solve these. I have interviewed with BB and MM, but there are genuine levels to this.
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A lot of the advanced EB technicals are less about being a quant and more about pattern recognition + knowing how to stay calm under pressure. The biggest jump from MM/BB processes is usually that EBs expect you to go beyond memorized guides and actually reason through edge cases or messy assumptions in real time.
What helped me most was:
Once you get strong fundamentals, even weird technicals become manageable because interviewers mostly want to see structured thinking.
I also came across this article on conversational AI trends recently, and one thing it highlighted was how high-performing systems rely less on memorized outputs and more on adaptive reasoning — honestly not that different from how tougher IB interviews are evolving now.
One thing I’d say is don’t overestimate how useful the standard guides are once you start interviewing with stronger groups. A lot of interviews now are basically follow-up questions stacked on top of each other until they find where your understanding breaks. I thought I was well prepared until I started getting hit with things like “okay walk me through how that impacts the 3 statements,” then layering on debt, deferred taxes, merger impacts, etc.
For prep I ended up using Capital Interview Experts during FT recruiting because it was one of the few resources that actually felt similar to the technical depth I saw in EB interviews. Most other prep materials felt too basic compared to real interviews.
Biggest recommendation honestly is to stop memorizing answers word-for-word and get comfortable explaining concepts conversationally.
capital interview experts is a scam and has inaccurate questions. please don't trust this guy and his fake upvotes. Likewise with whatever the shit ibtechprep is either. Stupid astroturfing
Honestly if you don’t have nepo connections sending around interview questions, any extra prep helps. I used the BIWS 400 too and thought both helped for getting used to harder follow-up style technicals
Thought this was the most helpful response in this thread. Cap Interview experts definitely helped me as well. I would never pay for it, but if you can get it passed down or split the cost with some friends I would do it. There's no need to do extensive modeling or read investor presentations or any of that BS unless you're interested of course. The real way to do well in EB interviews is to understand the fundamental concepts REALLY well (using the guides is fine, 400Q is nowhere near enough and often leads to people just memorizing shit), and then to practice and get familiar with those type of questions. If you have an EB interview coming up, and you have a question bank of 30-40 past questions from recent years, you will be much better at playing the game and then be a lot more likely to convert.
Yes, there is a thread with the CIE guide copy pasted. Go find that and just use that lol
Find a friend who also wants to break in to keep you honest about your prep and have a time or two every week you dedicate to this.
Repeat the basics, not until you get them right, but until you don't get any wrong.
I would buy whichever guide you think is the best as a starting point. Then use a tool like ChatGPT/Claude and ask it to make new questions that go one level deeper (and so forth until they seem hard enough). Don't waste time typing, have it ask the question, say it out loud/record it, then see if you got it right.
We learn better when we try to recollect things than we do through reading, so practice answering the questions, not reading the answers is the most important thing. Good luck out there.
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