Good signs after IB interview

I know this is highly speculative as it depends on an interviewer per interviewer basis -What are some things an interviewer may say or do that reflects you did well in an interviewer? Any elements that precedented an offer for people out there?

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One of my super day interviewers was a VP that worked directly under an MD I had networked with extensively.

The interview was supposed to be 30 minutes, but he said he had to take another call right when it started. He eventually joined back with 5 minutes left, so it wasn't much of an interview.

At the end when I was thanking him for his time, he apologized for leaving and mentioned that he had heard really good things about me from X MD and "to not sweat the rest of your interviews, you'll be more than fine. I already heard everything I need to know from X."

...don't know if it gets more crystal clear than that (this was for SA 2021)

 

Second this. In the beginning of an interview, the interviewer was dry and didn't seem interested. Then when I proved I was a great fit for the firm and for IB, he was a lot more expressive with his answers. Ended up getting offer at top BB/EB

 

I think during the interview, the biggest tells are body language (seem engaged/interested in my answer), or one-off comments they would make about my answers. I.e., if they are nodding while I was speaking, or if these said "Perfect, spot-on, etc... or "yes, I share similar thoughts" if it is more of an opinion question. If they ask you about where you are on other processes/ if you have any other supdays coming up, I think that is also a positive sign. After the interview, if your interviewers take the time to reply to your thank you emails (you should definitely write thank you emails), I've never had an instance where someone replied, and I didn't get an offer/move on to the next round.

 
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I've actually had only two people ever respond to my thank you notes, and neither time did I get the offer/next round. I believed that both interviews went well. Both responding emails were super nice and one even said, "Hope to see you soon." Maybe it's just bad luck for me, but it wasn't worth it for me to get my hopes up as I was quite disappointed. So I wouldn't count someone responding to your thank you note as a tell tale sign. Just my advice

 

Definitely not a tell tale sign. I sent thank you emails and didn't get a response from any of them but ended up getting an offer a couple of days after. I think that if you're the interviewer you might not want to send a false sign of hope for the kid if you respond, which is why no one should take getting/not getting a response seriously

 

Obviously not the best sample size, but I've found that the higher the response rate on my thank you emails, the better chance I have of landing the job. Bankers are busy and I think a lot of people just sort of ignore a thank you email regardless of performance, but often times when I've gotten an offer the MD will respond something like 'really enjoyed meeting you' or something along those lines, whereas they will definitely not take the time to respond if you definitely didn't get the job.

 

I would echo the sentiment that you can't tell. It's just all too speculative and will just mess up with your mental fortitude (e.g if you think you didn't pick up any positive cues in the first 2 rounds of your superday, you sweat and mess up the remaining ones). For the firm where I did get my SA offer (top BB/EB), I got no signs and genuinely thought I didn't make a good connection. Some interviewers are just naturally more serious/less chill in interviews, they do this to everyone and if they don't open up to you by the end of the interview, it does not mean you messed it up. For what is worth, the superday where I thought I did phenomenally (where the MDs were praising me nonstop and acted really impressed), were the firms where I found out they decided there was no cultural fit.

 

is it a bad sign if my interviewer didn’t reply to my thank you email? She did mention that she was super busy in the beginning of the interview (but I think all bankers are busy)

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