IBD motivational/competency written essays in online application
I am curious, asides HR, do any actual bankers ever get to read the essays that some companies require you to write (eg, BOFA, GS, MOCO, Rothschild, Citi, CITIC CLSA🙄 – iykyk, UBS, etc)
I don't think so. When I interned at one of those banks, my team only ever mentioned seeing my CV, not those motivational questions.
Interesting, so an essay describing the function of the business division is actually assessed by HR who understands the division even less than you do😂
Well I wouldn't be that dismissive of HR... A lot of them are quite nice and knowledgeable. In one interview I had we clicked quite well and she told me how everyone got financial training so even HR know what's relevant and what isn't. Plus each division has their own recruiter, so I would assume they have a level of understanding to assess what a good and what a bad answer is. But tbh most of these motivational questions are just things like "why are you a good fit/what have you done to prepare" and "what's interesting in the market to you"; doesn't require a super genius to review
Knowing this makes me all but wonder about the possibility that HR might misundertand certain highly technical jargon & interpret them as typos or grammatical errors (therefore rejecting an application based on that); adds another layer of anxiety in editing the essays.
I don't see why you would go into so much technical jargon anyway in these questions? They are not designed for you to do that, so if you find yourself doing so then you're doing something wrong and should re-read the question.
The specific question I have in mind is: "describe the function of the unit you are applying to"
Yes, again, if you go into it too low level, then you're doing something wrong.
Let's take an example for securitized products, because that's what I know.
Good answer: "The function of this division is to help companies raise capital through warehouse lending and ABS bonds. These are special kinds of bonds which involve grouping together many of the same class of loans into a tradable security which is then issued onto the market. I find this interesting because I read in X article that investors are turning away from debt-backed securities. I enjoy credit and complex modelling, which is why I would enjoy to work within the division".
Bad answer: "The function of this division is to help companies raise capital through direct lending and issuance of ABS. ABS are structured by taking cashflow receivables and putting them through cashflow modelling tests which are built upon S&P and other credit rating methodology to see whether each of the tranches pass based on those stresses. Additional considerations in such a model might be prepayment rates, amortization, default rates. I read that the bank acts as the senior lender meaning it does not take on additional risk which other mezzanine lenders might have as they are closer to the other end of the capital structure, so indicatively I know that the credit enhancement is probably bigger" and so on...
Clearly one answer is much more to the point and explains in simple terms what a business function does whilst the other is very "hand-wavey" and tries to intimidate by being very technical. They're looking to see if you are able to describe what they do in a basic way... No need to talk about complex stuff like WACC, DCF, or whatever else: just say "financial modelling".
Completely wrong, HR is absolutely useless and quite delusional on what the job implies.
They have no idea what candidate is good or not and their primary focus is diversity and gender equality. The only thing they could assess is how well drafted your essay is.
If you want to assess the quality of candidates, you give them a case study and ask technical questions. If they nail it, you switch focus to fit but if they don’t, that should be the threshold to kick them out. HR has no clue about that (nor should they).
That said, if there are initial quick HR calls, they could filter out the weirdos
Educating thread
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