I'm starting to conduct interviews for interns/entry level position at my PE firm and currently try to reflect on what are good questions to probe the candidates' quality. Particularly to check technicals without being too much of a pain (e.g. "impact of deferred charges on financial statements, etc").
Generally there's a lot of info on here about tough questions in general but I'd love to get some insights from some of the more experienced users on why they like to use specific questions. I'm sure the eager monkeys on here would also be grateful to get a taste of interviewer mindset.
I'll start of with a two-pronged question I've already used and found quite useful:
Which of our recent investments did you find particularly interesting? (wait for reply)
What do you think are the value levers that will allow us to make money on this?
First, it checks whether the candidate could at least be bothered to check our portfolio companies. Second, it checks whether the candidate knows either the basic high-level value levers in an LBO (sales growth, margin improvement, multiple arbitrage/market timing, deleverage) and work through them in a structured manner (ideal scenario). In any case it shows whether the candidate can get a grasp about what the business does and where opportunities could be.
Looking forward to what you guys are using to make sure to get some good people on board.
