It's recruiting season, I get it. You're trying to network and all that jazz. But please, for the love of god, don't ask "what the culture is like" at the bank. Because honestly, I have no idea what that means, what you expect me to say, nor how to answer it. I honestly see it as a disguise of asking "do you work a lot and are people you work with assholes?". I suppose that is something that's important to know, but I like to think you can sort of tell by simply talking to a person in an interview or informally in conversation--so there's no need to blatantly ask. Asking this question is sort of a waste of both my time, and yours. Maybe I'm alone in this line of thinking, but just wanted to put it out there and see what others thought.
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shut up
you're alone in that thinking
Disagree.
The reason it's a terrible question is because it just screams "I haven't done my homework". If you'd actually bothered to talk to or meet with anyone at the bank before you showed up at X event you would already know the answer to that question and you'd also know that there's a lot of different personalities at any given bank.
There's nothing wrong with asking this question, perspective monkey's. Don't listen to this guy, he's salty about something I gather.
If you're interviewing at a large BB, modify the question to ask about the culture of the specific group you're interviewing with. A HY sales desk is going to have a drastically different culture vs. the same banks tech IBD coverage group.
If you don't want me asking that question, then stop asking me "So why do you want to work at (Bank XYZ)?" during interviews.
This.
Don't want dumb questions from college students? Then don't ask dumb interview questions.
Surprised at some of these responses. I personally find "What is the culture like at XYZ" to be one of the most meaningless questions. It's overplayed and I'm not sure how much one could possibly actually learn from asking it.
But I guess the reason that I'm surprised at the above responses isn't just that I personally disagree with them, but that almost everyone I know agrees very clearly on this topic.
I used to think this is a bullshit question, I almost never ask it. When I do, its usually rephrased some other way as the way people say "culture" in this sentence really makes me cringe.
Typically you get the bullshit "Yeah we have a great atmosphere here, people work hard but understand that you have a life and everybody gets along really well, etc."
I was in an interview a few weeks ago and asked some form of this and the guy responded with "I would describe the culture here as serious, not a lot of joking around goes on here. The office is very corporate and you better be ready to work when you get here. The president of the company likes to work very hard and doesn't tolerate laziness. If you want to go somewhere entertaining, go work for Google."
Ended up denying the final round invitation based on this info alone. Just the way he said it made me miserable before even starting. For some reason they really wanted me to come in even though I had nothing in common with that guy.
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