Are the breaking into wallstreet guides too detailed?

I'm preparing for some first round interviews I have in about 2 weeks, and I'm going through the BIWS tutorial videos and guides to prep. Looking at the merger model and LBO guides specifically, some of the questions seem fairly detailed and complicated for summer analyst interviews. Do topics like calculating accretion/dilution based on a few financial metrics the interviewer gives you actually come up? Or are interviews usually more conceptual regarding the more "advanced" valuation topics like M&A modeling and LBOs?

Right I have the guides, but looking through some of the questions - there are a lot of technical questions that seem more challenging than what I expected to get out of interviews. Has anyone ever actually been asked to approximate IRR in an interview? Or to calculate whether a deal would be accretive or dilutive given cost of debt/cash/stock etc?

 
jack.daniels:
Right I have the guides, but looking through some of the questions - there are a lot of technical questions that seem more challenging than what I expected to get out of interviews. Has anyone ever actually been asked to approximate IRR in an interview? Or to calculate whether a deal would be accretive or dilutive given cost of debt/cash/stock etc?

I've been asked about accretion / dilution and the mechanics behind it.

 
Best Response
jack.daniels:
I'm preparing for some first round interviews I have in about 2 weeks, and I'm going through the BIWS tutorial videos and guides to prep. Looking at the merger model and LBO guides specifically, some of the questions seem fairly detailed and complicated for summer analyst interviews. Do topics like calculating accretion/dilution based on a few financial metrics the interviewer gives you actually come up? Or are interviews usually more conceptual regarding the more "advanced" valuation topics like M&A modeling and LBOs?

Have you considered the WSO Technical and Behavioral guide? They are less money than BIWS guides and they cover 99% of what you might be asked. The law of diminishing returns definitely applies here and we made a conscious decision not to list every single variation and esoteric technical question in our guides (although it is still extremely extensive with diagrams, etc to help you understand) -- although I'd argue knowing accretion / dilution and LBOs is not too advanced...

The WSO Tech guide makes it easy to focus on the basics first in each section since that is exactly how we break it down. Basic, Intermediate and Advanced...The Technical Interview Guide, Behavioral interview guide and now the Netowkring guide are all new releases in the last few months (so they are all really current).

Either way, best of luck! Patrick

 

I already have the WSO guide. I have all the guides basically and all the BIWS videos. And I've gone through almost everything already, I'm just wondering if I should spend my last 1 week refreshing concepts or learning more detailed stuff like how to calculate IRR returns in my head. Maybe I'm wrong to think that is considered advanced, but I always figured LBO/merger models questions would be very conceptual (which I know) and not as numbers based as this guide is making it seem they are. I guess by the sounds of it though, I'm wrong about that.

 

You aren't going to be able to calculate IRR in your head. IRR is a nth degree polynomial, most of which there are no known methods of solving, let alone trying to do this in your head. Excel/computers solve it by iteration and backing into the number. What you need to understand is the concept of IRR and it's implications not how to calculate it in your head.

This to all my hatin' folks seeing me getting guac right now..
 
Cruncharoo:
You aren't going to be able to calculate IRR in your head. IRR is a nth degree polynomial, most of which there are no known methods of solving, let alone trying to do this in your head. Excel/computers solve it by iteration and backing into the number. What you need to understand is the concept of IRR and it's implications not how to calculate it in your head.

you can and should, however, be able to give a rough estimate if someone says something like...you double your money in 5 years...Would you invest with me? What is the IRR? I was asked a variation of that in one of my PE interviews...

 
WallStreetOasis.com:
Cruncharoo:
You aren't going to be able to calculate IRR in your head. IRR is a nth degree polynomial, most of which there are no known methods of solving, let alone trying to do this in your head. Excel/computers solve it by iteration and backing into the number. What you need to understand is the concept of IRR and it's implications not how to calculate it in your head.

you can and should, however, be able to give a rough estimate if someone says something like...you double your money in 5 years...Would you invest with me? What is the IRR? I was asked a variation of that in one of my PE interviews...

Yeah that's exactly what I was wondering. I wasn't sure if that was too much for SA interviews or not either.

 
WallStreetOasis.com:
Cruncharoo:

you can and should, however, be able to give a rough estimate if someone says something like...you double your money in 5 years...Would you invest with me? What is the IRR? I was asked a variation of that in one of my PE interviews...

Agreed. I would feel no shame in using the rule of 72 on any doubling question to give my estimate of IRR.

This to all my hatin' folks seeing me getting guac right now..
 

I thought they were great resources for my summer internship, but for my SA interviews, they were a little bit too detailed. For your SA interviews - which I think you are preparing for - I would definitely recommend either getting WSO's technical interview guide, or M&I technical guide. Those two I feel in most cases should be suffice.

Having said that, if you studied finance in school, you can expect your interview to be more technical compared to your counterpart who is studying say physics/math/philosophy type courses.

 

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