Case Study - On site
Hi everyone,
I’ll be taking a case study soon, and it will cover an asset class I’m not familiar with, at the company’s office.
This has only happened to me once before, where I was alone in a meeting room with a laptop and a WiFi connection, which made it easy to check a few data points or formulas if I got stuck.
Do you think it's common practice or acceptable to check information online in such a setting? I work with financial models daily, but I can’t imagine building something like a 3-tier waterfall from scratch or spending 30 minutes on a formula for, say, tenant improvements linked to two different costs, renewal probability, and market growth.
I understand the concepts, but in practice, I wouldn’t spend 30 minutes trying to build the formula manually when I could quickly verify it online.
Do you think it’s normal to allow the use of notes or internet access in these situations? If this approach seems like cheating or not the right thing to do, I’ll dedicate a few hours to memorizing certain formulas, but that seems a bit inefficient.
In all the modeling tests I’ve done from home, they’ve always mentioned: “Use all resources at your disposal.”
Thanks,
Do whatever gets you the job if you want it bad enough
I think you're definitely right.
It's more about understanding the expectations and the way you'd set this up in your firm / what you've faced before.
1. Is the candidate alone in a room and "see you in 3 hours"
2. Is the candidate sitting next to the interviewer on an empty desk and basically partly scanned (no notes, no internet etc...)
3. Do you let the candidate alone and assume he can do whatever he wants because at the end of the day it's the reality of working on a model (trying to find a more efficient formula, comparing to existing spreadsheets, checking data online...)
I imagine the company policy = in office because they must be fed up with people having the test done by someone else. I think they may just not want someone to paste an already completed template but apart from that...
I think that if a company doesn’t hire you because you didn’t know something and found yourself the answer and/or you double checked something about your work before turning it in, that is not a serious company. Both traits are admirable in an employee.
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