Mod Note (Andy): Don't miss his webinar coming up this Sunday! "Hedge Fund Investment Pitch"
You can ask me anything. I know there are probably a lot of questions you wish you could ask your boss, but can't. I was at bulge bracket IBs in IB, quant and sales roles. Retired after a few years of making MD. I'd like to help you know what its really like. Feel free to ask anything.
If you have made it to the superday, then I wouldn't worry about 1 or 2. They don't matter anymore. You have made the cut to be at the superday, so now they will just compare you to the other people there.
The objective is to come out top 10-20% of the people going to the superday. In my experience superday interviews are like final round interview questions. They are going to test your analytical knowledge, financial market knowledge and fit with the teams.
The bottom line you have to impress these people with the fact that not only are you smart enough to be there, but also interesting enough for them to want to work with you 12-13 hours a day.
My preparation for this would be: a) make sure you have adequate technical knowledge down - know what a DCF is, know what PE ratio means, know how bond price vs yield works. You know Finance 101. Read the FT and WSJ for a few days, make sure you know the terms. If you don't, ask your TA or Professor or roomates. b) know what's been happening at the firm you are going to speak to - people in finance live inside their firms. There is little they are more proud of. The firm is their identity, so make sure you know all the great things about the firm. c) figure out how you are going to sell yourself. The goal of the superday is to convince these people that you are worth hiring. So you have to sell yourself. I'd write down a few interesting stories about what you did in the past, problems you solved, people you helped. The more interpersonal the better. d) figure out to be positively memorable. Each person you meet at the superday will meet 15-20 other people that day. Sometime over the week then they will have to fill out a form or submit a review of you on the intranet. You want to be memorable, so when your name comes up they can clearly remember all your positives and put them down. Most likely the people that you meet will not be the final ones making the hiring decisions, that's likely HR. But you have to make sure the HR team reads a great review of you.
Thats it, good luck.
Good question. I would say its a few factors, and they change based on the specific role, but I'll focus on the broad ideas. a) desire to learn / curiosity - finance changes so quickly that the most important characteristic is the desire to learn, solve puzzles, keep at problems. As long as someone is curious, they will solve problems and tackle issues they encounter. If they aren't really curious or interested in what they do, they will likely lack energy to accomplish what's needed. As Einstein said: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer". This also means asking questions. I want someone who will do the work, but will ask questions. I don't expect you to know everything, so when I don't get 10 questions every day I start to wonder that either i) you don't like what you are doing or ii) you aren't actually bothering to learn or iii) you are too arrogant to learn
b) work ethic - you want someone who comes in early, works hard, helps others, doesn't complain at each step and is there till late happily. Look finance isn't rocket science. It really isn't that hard. Anyone who can apply themselves to the problems at hand will succeed. I just want someone willing to put in the hours. I want to see where you showed work ethic or dedication to a task in the past.
c) humble - being humble doesn't mean you think you less of yourself. By humble I mean someone who understands that in finance you are never finished, you never know everything. There is always something else to do, there is always something new to learn. Simple ways to check and show if you are humble: a) do you take a notepad to every meeting, are you taking notes or doodling b) when your assigned project is done, are you asking for more, reading up on the next thing or surfing the web c) Are you trying to help others learn, for example teaching interns, or are you self satisfied with who you are.
d) trust worthy - analysts are some of the most important people inside a bank. Why ? They do a lot of the work, sometimes most of the mission critical work. If the presentation or analysis is wrong, the whole thing falls apart. I need to be able to trust my analyst implicitly. This is critical to your career because the analyst that is trusted gets the most critical projects and is involved in more high value things. The analyst trusted the least, gets the easy, low value stuff, cause he can't be trusted with the rest. Trust needs to be built over time, but you can show yourself to be trust worthy by doing one simple thing: Always do what you said you were going to do.
Hope that helps
What kind of car? Is an old Ford good enough?