Was that interview experience normal?

good evening monkeys,

I had an interview a few days ago for an IB internship position, and the first step was a case study. I've been on the hunt to land IB for a while now (like a lot of you guys) and worked on the modeling/valuation aspects a bunch of times over the past few months.

The case study they gave was to be completed in 2 hours, and it had so much meat on it I was shocked. The case wouldn't be hard if given a day to complete or an afternoon, but that much work in just 2 hours seems a bit much for an internship.

The case compiled of industry research for prep, formatting IS and BS, making the cash flow statement, a TON of market research summaries and strategy analysis type stuff (SWOT etc.), customer analysis, comparable transaction, DCF, risk and benefits analysis, comparable company analysis, a summary of the valuation metrics, and a PowerPoint summarizing everything, as well as a bunch of smaller tasks like reading the industry report they sent and company summaries.

I guess my question is this: is doing a valuation and making a pitch book for an acquisition possible for an intern candidate in under 2 hours? I'm just getting nervous cause I didn't full complete the summary, and I was really looking forward to this.

Really appreciate anyone's input on this, thanks guys

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Best Response

I scraped together what I could in the 90 minutes and was swiftly rejected soon thereafter. Ended up working in the computer science division of a F500 company. Once again failed at landing IB in my junior year. Worked a couple more internships ranging from mgmt consulting to PE (whatever I could get my hands on) and now I will be working for a top MM full time. Never quit and never give up hope. No two journeys are alike. Keep plugging on and you will eventually land an IB gig.

 

With consulting, I had the feeling that our corporate clients didn't really want us there, we were just budgeted expenses. PE was pretty awesome, just a little slow with a lot of deals shutting down for random reasons. I plan on getting back into PE in a couple of years when I'm more ready for a 9-6 type career. Right now, I'm ready to bust my ass and add value to large transactions.

 

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