If you really !@#$ up on technicals could you still get an SA offer?
Let's say you do really shitty on the technical portion, but you have a great personality. Think you still have a chance?
Yes, but if there's a guy with an equally likeable personality who actually nails his technicals, they'll pick him over you.
Point is, don't fuck up your technicals.
depends. If you got all the basics right but the interviewer just wanna challenge you then it's a different story
I think you're out. If you mess up a few, sure, but if you really and truly fuck up your technicals I think you'll automatically get dinged- it seems like technicals are a check the box kind of thing: getting the ordinary technicals right won't get you the job, but really messing them up could lead you to lose it.
As others have said, odds are there is an equally likable person who nailed the technicals. So you're probably screwed. Sometimes it might just be that interviewer asks a super tough question that nobody gets right; but it's just one question that you can get wrong. If you messed up on multiple technical questions then it's probably over.
Remember that in many occasions, interviewer will only grill you on technicals if your story was weak and you made a bad first impression. Those first 30-90 seconds when you tell your story are when his opinion is formed and typically the rest of the interview he's just out to confirm it. Tell a weak story and perhaps interviewer will spend more energy on technicals trying to shake you. Tell a super strong story and nail the first impression, then probably interviewer will just do the technicals as a check the box item and won't come after you with a vengeance on them.
I personally believe (and have experienced) that if you impress them enough in the first few minutes with a strong story, you can mess up on one technical question and they won't ding you. That being said...you mentioned messing up on "the technical portion," as opposed to a single technical question. In which case, yes you're screwed. Too many candidates apply for too few jobs. Take it as a learning experience and go study up on technicals with a vengeance so that it doesn't happen in your other interviews.
I think that it makes a big difference what your background is. I'm a sophomore math major with no finance experience and I only got one semi-technical question ("What's the market cap of JPM?"). When he asked me, I said I don't know what the market cap is because I've spent my time trying to learn about things I think are more important to know about JPM - and gave examples.
My interviewer agreed with me that he thought the things I cited were much more important than the market cap. The way I handled not knowing the answer, combined with the fact that I haven't had any classes or experiences that would make it seem like I should know what the market cap is are probably why I still got an offer.
If you have had a previous finance internship, or you are a finance major, I think it would look really bad if you didn't know basic technicals and that could be a deal-breaker. However, always know what you're going to say if you're asked something you literally have no clue as to the answer.
Also be aware that if you don't have a finance background, they may ask you other questions instead. I personally got asked a lot of mental math questions and some brain teasers too. Messing these sort of questions up would be just as bad in my opinion.
If you told me you didn't know what the market cap of JPM was without explaining market cap, I'd ding you.
I thought I did horribly on some of my technical questions at a SA S&T interview and I still got the internship. I got asked about the economy of the Philippines, got asked some technical questions about QE and got asked about pricing some kinds of futures. I don't know why I still got the internship: maybe he was just seeing how much I knew without any finance background whatsoever, maybe it was a stress test, maybe the other interviewers liked me enough to override it.
Most likely a stress test- during my S&T interviews I got a couple of out there questions that seemed like they were aimed at seeing how I did under pressure- how you handle pressure is big for S&T.
yeah I know some people that missed a bunch of technicals (including super basic stuff) and still got an offer at top BBs for SA. However, as a warning lots of people that do this have very good connections. You'll hear stories about the 3.0 women's studies major that got into GS but they don't tell you that his/her dad's best friend was MD. I'm sure it can happen without connections but its rarer.
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