5 Steps to Answer Technical Interview Questions FAST

I was helping out a buddy of mine doing some mock interviews last week and noticed something I wanted to share with the WSO community as you prepare for your own interviews.

So, how quickly do you respond to certain interview questions and how do I get good an answering the technical questions FAST? Read on for one perspective…

Based on my experience, you generally want to answer ‘negative personal’ interview questions after a longer pause. (Think questions like: “What is your greatest weakness?” or “How would your biggest enemy describe you?”) This is because you want to give the impression you have to think hard to find something negative about yourself. Don’t be an idiot and hem and haw about it, but take your sweet time and really ‘ponder’ on that question for a moment before coming back with your weaknesses.

For ‘positive personal’ questions, you can answer these straight out or with a small pause to collect your thoughts. This shows a high level of confidence and self-awareness. (Think questions like: “What do you enjoy most about finance?” or “Describe your biggest personal accomplishment to date.”) While all interviewers expect you to have prepared for questions like this, you don’t want to appear too slick. Let the question linger for a second, then launch into your well-rehearsed story about the first time your Grandpa showed you Forbes Magazine…

And now, here was where my friend I was interviewing stumbled a bit – the technical questions. These have to be answered at blistering speed. No questions asked. You need to show the interviewer that you absolutely own these concepts and they are part of your DNA. When asking my friend to explain to me how to measure ROA (Return on Assets), for example, he exhaled deeply, his eyes flitted upwards as he thought of his response, and then he re-focused and gave me the method of calculating ROA I was looking for.

But it was too late. My confidence in his ability to calculate ROA was now diminished, maybe even shattered. What if a client asked him to explain that to him? Do I want my associate to be remembering definitions or calculations by racking his brain and perhaps awkwardly squirming in his seats while everyone else in the room bores holes in his skull with disapproving eyes? Heck. No. I want it to appear like he knows his stuff inside out, backwards, and upside down. I want to it appear like technicals are what my team snacks on in between innings of our annual ‘Always 5% IRR Above The Benchmark’ Softball Game.

So, monkeys, lend me your ears, and I’ll share a tasty tidbit with you – how to get lightning fast at Technical Interview questions. And it doesn’t have to take too long.

The 5 Steps Go Like This:

1. Read it
2. Understand it
3. Write it
4. Explain it
5. Flash Cards

I really hope the first four are self-explanatory. So it you consider yourself in the 75th percentile or above in life, skip to the next section. If not, continue.

Read it – find the definition, concept, or calculation you need to be familiar with and expose yourself to that material.

Understand it – turn it over in your mind until you actually get what the heck it is you are trying to learn. If it ‘s a definition-heavy interview, you may need to break out some searches on Investopedia or use an interview guide.

Write it – yes, actually write down your answer. And refine it until it sounds natural. The focus SHOULD NOT be on memorizing all these responses 100% word for word, but you SHOULD have an idea of what a perfect response looks like. Then you have something to work towards.

Explain it – find someone else (preferably who has a moderate interest in finance. Or a patient girlfriend. Animals do not count.) and teach it to them. Take this concept and view it from every angle until the other person can explain it back to you. If you can do this – teach someone else the concept – then you actually understand it.

NEXT SECTION. Welcome back Top 25th percentilers. I missed ya. So, now on to the ‘big secret’ – flash cards.

While I have no pedagogical research papers to back me up on this one, I’m going to postulate that flashcards are the single best way to improve your ‘speed of recall,’ which is what we’re going for here.

Note: if you don’t actually understand the concept being asked about, flashcards are just going to speed up your errors. Flash cards shouldn’t be the way to learn the material, but a way of speeding up your output when asked a certain question.

Drill these flash cards in small sets (4-8 at a time. I personally like sets of 5.) until you barely have to think in order to respond quickly. When I say ‘drill,’ I mean speak OUT LOUD the answer to the question. If you ‘mentally compose’ your response, you’re just wasting time, because in the interview you’re not using telepathy to answer these questions, are you?

Once you have mastered two small packs (so now say you have 10 cards total) shuffle them together and repeat. Master one more set and add those cards in too, but make sure to swap around the order. By not knowing which card is coming up next, you are simulating an interview-like condition. Rinse and repeat until all technical questions you believe might be asked are included.

Now set those cards aside for a day. Come back to them 24 hours later. Go through them. If you know the answers cold, put them in one pile. If you don’t, put them in another. Then review the second pile until you’re back to mastering each card. Repeat the following day.

If you have all flashcards written and mastered for the first time one week before your interview, all it will take is one quick session of review each day and I guarantee you come the big day, you won’t even break a sweat on the technicals.

My bet is the ‘set-up’ operation takes 15-20 hours total for IBD and PE technicals… Rough guess, but there you have it. Then add in 7 review sessions, one per day for a week leading up to the interview/superday and we’re looking at a total of 20-25 hours to nail these suckers. Do it.

Big ups to everyone out there who is posting great content on the boards with technical help. Awesome stuff. Keep it coming. But also check out the material that WSO has itself. Can’t beat it.

So now, I need YOUR help. Was chatting recently with a different friend and we were talking about the best way to answer a question you have no idea how to answer. We’re talking one that comes out of left field and you are simply up the creek without a paddle. For example, “What are the effects of BASEL III?” (assuming you have no clue)

What is your tactic for responding to this? Sound off below. Help a brother out!

 

Answering questions you have no idea about has been discussed quite a few times on this board already. The concept is: "To be honest, I do not exactly know BUT I assume that....". E.g. in case you really do not know a lot about Basel III "To be honest I am not particularly familiar with the concept of Basel III, but since I know that it is a regulatory requirement for banks which was introduced as a reaction to the financial crisis, I will assume that it aims to reduce the risk banks are exposed to. So since there is a clear link between risk and return, I think that Basel III affects both in blabla ways." In case you do not even know what Basel III is, simply ask for it and then try to think of effects based on the explanation the interviewer gives you. Questions you do not know how to answer actually tell the interviewer a lot more about you than the other ones.

 

One of the best posts on here.

As for your Q:

If you genuinely don't know anything about the question, honesty is the best approach In that case, let the guy/girl know.

If you know a bit explain you're not totally sure but kind of 'think out loud' and talk them through your thought process.

One of the problems with potentially over preparing for interviews all the time is that you focus so hard on nailing technicals etc that you lose that ability to just improvise on the spot when you get a unexpected question, if you can improvise in a split second and sound confident you can be very convincing in those situations. Chances are if it's an abstract question the interviewer knows that and is looking to see how you respond/trying to make you sweat.

(Saying that, Basel III isn't that odd of a question, I would make sure I know about it before interviewing.)

 

Great post, +1.

As for your question, I don't like talking outta my ass so either I'll glean what I can from the question and answer accordingly, or I'll profess ignorance. Personally, I've found that the latter is usually the case when there's a snowball's chance in hell of actually being able to answer the question. For instance, a friend of mine was asked, "What is the GDP of China?". For an accounting job.

That said, I'm looking forward to getting to know how other people deal with this situation.

Move along, nothing to see here.
 
NiuShi:

So, monkeys, lend me your ears

I see you have come to bury dimwits not to praise them... Good stuff. Extends to other contexts as well like CFA where time is of the essence. Theres a difference between just passively knowing something and knowing something instinctively and consciously...the difference is manifested through confidence.
 

Awesome post. Eat, Sleep, Tech Interview.... repeat.

I hope this is better than the last batch of shit you gave me. Produced more wood than Ron Jeremy. I don't want you to yell, "Reco!" anymore. Know what you should yell? "Timber!" Yeah, Mr. Fuckin' wood.
 
Best Response

I'm a seller of some of this advice.

When I ask you about a regression and give you the residual and ask you to give me a rough bound on the bias, I neither want not expect you to answer the question immediately.

Accounting and vanilla finance questions are supposed to be reasonably easy, but quant questions aren't. If you have to think about things before you answer them, you are generally going to be more enjoyable to work with than if you have aspergers.

It's ok to take your time to get the question right, and to pause for a second to review things when you're done. For a simple ROA question, you should be able to start without much of a pause; if an asshole quant asks you to come up with a maximum likelihood estimator for a poisson distribution and asks you to put a symmetric confidence interval on it, you are allowed to take your time.

If someone hands you a copy of dijkstra's algorithm and asks you what the heap is for, and you are not an algorithms or data structures TA, you can take 30 seconds to look it over.

I think most college students are intimidated by these interviews and think that answering the questions better and faster than all of the other candidates will get them the job. There is some truth to that, but it only explains about 40% of the variance in the results. We want to be surrounded by smart hard-working people with significant ambition, but we don't want to be surrounded by psychopaths, and some humility is acceptable. I think 80% of the variance is driven by how much the interviewers would enjoy working with you, and the other 40% is driven by how much they like you in the interview.

 

yeah, important to not discount the importance of being well liked and not sounding overly rehearsed for the behavioral questions.

On a side note, unless you are interviewing specifically for a quant position, if you start getting questions like "what is maximum likelihood estimator for a poisson distribution and put a symmetric confidence interval on it", it is probably better to admit you have no idea what he/she is talking about than to try and sound smart...this is especially true for summer analyst / more junior positions.

 
WallStreetOasis.com:

yeah, important to not discount the importance of being well liked and not sounding overly rehearsed for the behavioral questions.

Well also as important, we can't have these kids going in looking OCD or like some anal perfectionist which is kinda how I imagined some of the audience reading NiuShiu's post. I see all of this passion in the article wrapped up in quickly getting questions right, and I think that passion is a little misplaced:
And now, here was where my friend I was interviewing stumbled a bit – the technical questions. These have to be answered at blistering speed. No questions asked. You need to show the interviewer that you absolutely own these concepts and they are part of your DNA.
While I have no pedagogical research papers to back me up on this one, I’m going to postulate that flashcards are the single best way to improve your ‘speed of recall,’ which is what we’re going for here.

You have to go in being reasonably on the ball and knowing your stuff. You have to go in polished and professional. You have to go in somewhat relaxed and not obsessive.

You cannot go in with this obsessive focus on "answering questions at Blistering Speed (TM)" and "Absolutely Own(ing) (TM) these concepts."

Fine. Be utterly utterly obsessed. Use flashcards. But don't let it show even a hint on interview day- you need to be just as obsessed with not being obsessed on interview day as you were obsessed with answering every question perfectly and instantly. And I think that's a lot to ask of a simple 20 year old, even a sophisticated 20 year old at NYU, Dartmouth, or what have you.

Frankly, I think NiuShiu is being inadvertently mean to a lot of the OCD kids out there (and there are a lot of them.) Yes, they need to know that practicing for these interviews is very important. No, they can't go in believing they need to give a perfect interview. They need to go in and give an excellent interview. That means a few mistakes are allowed so long as you don't look like an OCD perfectionist (which you may already be, but let's not turn you into more of one.)

Or just relax, go over some interview questions with friends, do mock interviews, and get ready like most normal people who get the job.

 

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