Technical Screen at Large PE
If you've been an interviewer at a PE firm before, how do you evaluate 1st round technical screens? Do interviewees need to get a perfect score, i.e. answer all correctly?
I ask b/c I stumbled on 1 of the total 10 technical questions. I eventually got it with help from the interviewer.
Also - are questions weighted differently? For e.g. paper LBO has more weight than say a depreciation accounting question?
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Anyone?
The short answer is that it totally depends on the individual doing the interview, the difficulty of the questions, and the candidate’s profile. If the interview or the firm itself thinks technicals are the most important part of the job, they are going to weight it heavily. If not, they may let it slip. Similarly, if the questions are very difficult and candidates usually get a few wrong, that is the baseline. But if all the candidates blow through them and you’re the only one who got one wrong, that will count against you. And finally, if your background is very technical (you came from banking, majored in math, scored really high on the math section of SATs, etc.), then they might be willing to overlook your getting some questions wrong.
As to the questions themselves, yes, a full paper LBO will definitely carry more weight than one depreciation question.
The reality is that the interview is behind you at this point. You’ll know if you did well if they invite you to interview again. But my guess is that even if you don’t get invited back, missing a single technical question won’t be the reason why. It just isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
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