How Tough Are Investment Banking Interviews Really?

I’ve heard stories about how grueling IB interviews can be, even for summer analyst roles. But how hard are they really?

Are the technicals as daunting as they sound, or can you master them "relatively" easily? How much do the behavioral questions and storytelling matter? And is a month of prep overkill, or is two weeks enough to ace it?

Bonus: What’s your funniest or most surprising interview moment?

10 Comments
 

In the UK, motivational and behavioural matter more, there’s not a lot of technical knowledge needed in interviews especially for bulge brackets. You’ll be fine with just memorising the 400q and understanding the concepts which honestly shouldn’t take you more than 2 weeks to do if you just nail it down.

The most difficult thing is getting the interview in the first place, which is very random in the UK. So cross your fingers

 

Would disagree based on the interviews I did this year. 

I had very technical interviews from BBs and MMs. Behaviourals were at the start of the interview but it got very technical very quickly. 

Mind you, they did start the interview by saying "what specific area of (markets / IBD) are you interested in?" and then take it from there so it does depend on the direction you choose to take it. 

 

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