Analyst Lateral Interview Questions

This was my experience. My final round at a BB consisted of the following questions.

1. Tell me a bit about yourself

2. Why this bank?

3. Why do you want to leave your current bank?

4. Tell me about a deal you’ve worked on

5. Do you know anything about this space? Niche space, I said no, but super excited to learn more (will caveat that throughout process everyone stressed they didn’t know anything about the space before joining)

6. What do you like to do for fun?

I also went through the process at an EB. Only difference was there was a case study in the final round. The first round had a couple of technicals but with a year of experience (or an intro finance class) you could get them all. They included: can you have a negative market cap? Do you add or subtract cash when calculated EV and why? What is IRR?

I wouldn’t worry too much about technicals. I would figure out a compelling reason why you want to leave your current firm/join that specific new one (just say you want more exposure to debt/equity, a different city, the opportunity to be the bank leading because of xyz, etc), be able to talk at a high level about 1 or 2 deals, and your story. 
 

It’s super easy to lateral right now at the junior level if you have experience in the industry. Banks are so desperate. You might not get GS/CVP but if you’re a normal person with a decent gpa (3.5+) who went to a good school (doesn’t need to be target/semi-target. Honors college at Penn State is good enough), with normal hobbies, and can pass the airport test, I guarantee you’ll have an offer at a BB/EB/MM or bank everyone on this site has heard of (piper, Nomura, rbc, etc) by March 15th if you’re pretty sector agnostic. Obviously if you’re only interested in something niche like chemicals or something it will be harder.