hardest technical Q&As in PE interviews?

Tell me about your time at (my firm)?

No technicals whatsoever.

anyone else?

Bump. Interested in this as well.

why PE?

• what else does PE stand for other than Private Equity?

• How many different words can you form from the word "Blackstone"?

Lol, dude I hope you know those were not actual questions...but....if I did answer these --->

(a) Physical Education

(b) *assuming 4 letter minimum

(I don't have time to do more!)

I think with 10 or more words, you'd definitely be hired, with that level of verbosity / loquacity

You have Penis Envy.

"Now that my friend is a clear cut case of him or me. And you best believe it ain't gonna be me."

the best way to describe some of the questions that i got during interviews is simply that they weren't overly technical; rather, i think the best way to describe them is that there are a lot of case questions or hypothetical situations where you have to demonstrate your knowledge of finance as well as just business intuition and acumen. for example, questions about balance sheet and cash flow came up a fair amount, and PE professionals want to see that you can think intuitively about the impact of working capital and capex commitment on a potential investment. this doesn't mean just doing the number-crunching and tracing your way through the three financial statements (which you have to know how to do already); rather, it means also be able to understand the magnitude and effect of these numbers and talk about how it'd impact the company, and think about how you might do things differently once you own the company and you have the opportunity to control expenses and grow margins.

i think the skill set of PE professionals is very versatile, especially as i see it at the higher levels, and a couple of principals and partners have said that the thing they like most about PE is that they have to apply pretty much every business skill they've learned to the investment process. as a potential PE candidate, you have to remember that PE is not all just about the numbers, nor is it all just about business gut feeling -- it's putting it all together and trying come up with a vision to drive growth or margin expansion aggressively, and the interview is designed to see whether or not you can help develop that vision. and of course, now that i work in PE, i see how this stuff is relevant to the things i do every day.

hope this helps