Technical question prep for FT recruiting

Full-time investment banking technical interviews are generally more difficult than summer analyst interviews. For SA recruiting, firms usually focus on whether you understand the core concepts across accounting, valuation, DCFs, M&A, and LBOs. For full-time recruiting, interviewers are more likely to expect you to already have a strong technical foundation, especially if you completed an investment banking summer internship. The biggest difference is usually the depth of the questions. Instead of simply asking you to walk through a DCF or explain enterprise value, a full-time interviewer may give you a more complicated scenario and ask you to work through how different assumptions affect the answer. You should also be prepared for more difficult accounting questions, merger math, LBO returns questions, and questions based on situations you may have encountered during your internship.

Some firms may also include a modeling test, although this varies significantly by firm and group. It could be anything from a relatively simple three-statement or DCF exercise to a more involved M&A or LBO model. You do not necessarily need to be an expert modeler, but if you are recruiting full-time after an IB internship, firms may expect you to be comfortable navigating Excel, building a basic model from scratch, and explaining the assumptions behind your work.

For preparation, I would focus on making sure you can answer the standard technical questions confidently and then spend time practicing harder variations and follow-ups. The key is to understand why each concept works rather than memorizing an exact answer, because interviewers can easily change one assumption and see whether you can adjust. Practicing your answers out loud and getting comfortable working through unfamiliar questions under pressure is probably the best preparation for full-time recruiting. At a certain point, it really just comes down to shilling technicals for a few hours a day until the concepts become second nature. You want to get to the point where someone can change a number, add an unusual wrinkle, or ask three follow-ups in a row and you can still reason through the answer without getting thrown off.

I would also spend some time shilling modeling alongside the verbal technical prep, especially if you are targeting firms that are known to give modeling tests. You do not need to build massive models every day, but consistently shilling through short DCFs, merger models, and LBO exercises will make the actual test feel much more routine if you end up getting one.