Preparing for Interviews with Absolutely No Finance Experience
Hi! I'm a student in college in the US studying CS, and beginning to explore career options in IB and PE. But look, I have no finance background, haven't gotten into any finance clubs on campus, and know very little about finance. I've tried looking at the BIWS 400 Guide, the AskIVY IB guide, but the problem is that these are designed to help finance majors (or at least people with basic financial and accounting proficiency) apply their pre-existing knowledge for interviews.
What's the best book or guide to for baseline beginners like me? Like, is there a For Dummies equivalent that can fully teach me at least all the concepts I need to begin grinding the aforementioned guides? Is it a course? WSO? BIWS?
I know that learning from doing and experience are good ... but save that type of advice. I'm looking for the exact resource ... the guide, the book, the video series, whatever it is, that is designed for an absolute beginner like me to gain knowledge for IB interviews.
Yes I'm aware this is a networking game, and yes I know that I sound a little crazy ... but I could really use your help here guys. As of now, I speak compilers and programming languages, but I'm trying to learn how to speak money and finance too. I've been lost for a while and I hope this community can help me find the resources I need. Thank you.
Was in a similar position as you before. Would personally say the BIWS guides are the best way to prep; the first time you go through a section, it will not make a lot of sense. Just search up individual terms/concepts that you don't know and that the guides don't break down well enough; I ended up reading a lot of investopedia articles that did a decent job of this. Repeat each section until it starts to make sense and second or third time thru the content it will click
I agree with this. I think OP should also consider taking entry level financial accounting and corporate finance course if there aren’t any pre reqs needed at your school. I’d say train chat gpt to be a finance machine, explain that you don’t have any knowledge, then look at the questions and answers on guides to research any concepts you don’t know. Additionally, consider WSP accounting fundamentals course or a financial accounting course off of YouTube
Is that the BIWS 400? Or the Interview Guide (modules, etc.) (linked)
the interview guide, mainly module 4 (technicals). the 400 questions is good practice but does not teach you well nor go into depth enough for many interview questions
Question for you: as a CS major why did you personally decide to 180 and give IB/PE a shot? I'm curious but hope you have a good answer prepped because this will come up in a lot of interviews
I'm working on that answer ... to keep it 100, I've always liked finance + technology, but I recently realized I think I'm more interested in pursuing a technology-oriented career in finance than I am a finance-oriented career in technology. I like what I study, but I'm not as passionate about software engineering per se as I am about business and finance.
Where were you able to find/get the askivy book? I think they took their site down
I had this exact issue with the 400 question guide coming from a completely unrelated premed background. What worked for me is buying a cheap course on Udemy that had a guy (he has a popular IB/Finance Youtube channel too) explain the basic finance concepts like 3 statements, EV, Equity Value. Once you know the basics, the 400 questions become so much easier. Unfortunately the guy stopped selling the course for some reason so your best bet now is using Youtube videos to learn the basics of finance. Was able to go from 0 finance background to a MM FT offer in around a year
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