There’s a recent thread on crazy stuff ppl said during interviews. Figured it would be fun to hear from the other side of the table. What crazy stuff have YOU heard/seen while interviewing candidates.
Over the years I’ve interviewed a lot of ppl. A few funny stories of ppl (MBA level and beyond) I’ve interviewed for snr buyside roles over the past few years:
- Applicant gets put in a conference room to wait for me. I go in and he’s at the head of the table, chair leaned back all the way, hands behind his head and he’s stretched out w/ his shoes (Gucci loafers) up on the table. He didn’t progress, probably didn’t even want the job was just there for ‘kicks.’
- Applicant comes in 5 min late with an iced coffee. The coffee was almost gone and he kept slurping it through his straw during the entire (short) interview.
- Another applicant after 5 min asked for a bathroom break, fine. He comes back, 10 min later wanted coffee. 10 min later wanted water. Dude....
- I met an applicant, the interview went well and he’s waiting for my boss. My boss was a bit tied up and when he goes in to the meet the applicant, the applicant is pacing around the conference room shouting on his phone.
- Someone a bit older, but same level of seniority, progressed to a case study level & calls me to argues that they shouldn’t have to do the case study because they’re way too senior and smart. How they don’t need this job (they were running a small fund at the time). Fine! It’s a free country. A week later I get the case study….
- I’m interviewing a T10 b-school student for a summer internship. Applicant had a simple stock pitch in a very complex structure (think HoldCo w/ several layers, several OpCos w/ their own public equities, cross collateralized guaranteed debt & other fun stuff) that I happen to own debt in. Applicant didn’t understand the first thing about the corporate structure or why it was even important to understand to pitch the equity.
Takeaways
Even at a senior level, EQ is a must.
If you’re going to pitch something complex, understand it, or don’t pitch it.
Haven't interviewed anyone but my older cousin who's a PM at a HF told me a kid who he was interviewing literally shit their pants. The dude farted, grabbed his ass,and ran out of the room.
One person who interviewed me (I now work with him) told me this funny story.
So in tech it’s common to get certain types of coding questions, there’s specific data structures that you just accept may be asked about and you may code it up.
So the interviewer asks the interviewee to do something specific with a binary search tree, the candidate forgot he was screen sharing and Google the question, copied some answer from the internet, then pasted it into the Question & Answer site shared (CoderByte).
Pretty hilarious because the interviewee’s defense was seriously, “I didn’t do that.” Guy must’ve listened to too much Shaggy that day
The defense was horrible. He got caught, he has to own it, but I don't think the actual behavior was that bad as long has he took time to understand it and didn't just Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V the answer. Look, if you're going to move much past the getting coffee and collating reports phase you need to learn stuff that they don't teach you in class. I'd rather someone who can teach themself instead of needing hand-holding every step of the way.
I do a lot of special projects work, where I basically get told "we don't have anybody to do this, and we don't think our biggest competitors do either." Googling, digging and researching are my friends. I've even quoted Reddit to several bosses to prove a point. (it was appropriate in the situation, and slightly funny)
If you are doing individual work, saying "here's a condensed report. Everybody else on the internet built it, I just aggregated it, so it takes you 10 minutes to understand, not a week" adds a lot of value. You can then go further if needed, but frequently don't have to. (going further frequently requires many hours of work from brand name securities law firms for me, and that's real $$$)
I was interviewing at a BB superday a few years back. Context is that the superday is held in a large open conference space at the bank that's been set up into cubes with temporary dividers - if you've ever done a superday, you know the drill. Candidates are analysts, so they're young and nervous. I do an interview with one kid - maybe slightly better than average candidate, does fine. We finish the 30 min interview, stand up to shake hands, and he steps backwards into the cubicle wall - which falls over into the cube behind, onto the applicant in that cube. And, because the temporary wall is attached to other walls, it causes a domino effect in that area of cubes, causing a number of them to wobble and loudly collapse. Pretty disruptive for anyone else trying to interview! The kid handled it okay - he didn't totally freak out. It wasn't really his fault. We moved him to the next round.
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