AM Internship Phone Interview
Hi everyone,
I have a phone interview for a summer internship with an Asset Management firm in Boston and I'm curious as to what they'll be asking during the interview.
Thank you,
Nate
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You'll probably start with some standard behavioral questions, e.g. "Tell me about yourself" or "Walk me through your resume." They might also ask about your experiences "facing a challenge" or "working in a team" or something along those lines, so prepare a few well fleshed-out anecdotes beforehand. Then they'll get into technical questions-- ideally you would've prepared for these at least a few weeks beforehand, but either way, here's a recent post I made on the subject:
"As you might expect, investment management and Asset Management technical questions are much more focused on actual investing. Therefore, the most important technical question you'll get is probably a stock pitch. While you can usually get away with a half-assed one for investment banking interviews, your stock pitch is expected to be stronger for IMD and AM interviews. I recommend putting together something that's 2-5 minutes long, maybe distilled down to 3 key points. Make sure you're able to intelligently explain how the company makes money and answer detailed followup questions. Try to differentiate yourself from market consensus. Read sell-side equity research reports on the company if you can get your hands on them, and actually read the company's 10-k as well (yes seriously, read the whole 150 pages - you can skim a lot of it).
In the past, I've also gotten investing questions along the lines of "What do you think about so and so industry?," What's your investment philosophy?," and once "What investing books have you read?" These aren't "technical" questions per-say, but they follow in the same vein.
Surprisingly, I haven't found it especially important to know valuation for IM and AM interviews. Unlike when I was interviewing for IB, literally nobody in the space has ever asked me to walk through a DCF, or explain the difference between levered or unlevered cash flows, or whatever. As long as you understand the intuition behind P/E and EV/EBITDA ratios and DCFs, you should be fine. I'd be shocked if anybody asked you a question about an M&A model or lbo model or anything like that- after all, asset managers don't do actually any of those things.
In general, I suspect that IM and AM interviews have less of an emphasis on what I call "financial trivia" than ib interviews. They just want to know that you can invest."
I'm a freshman, so I don't even know what a stock pitch is or what I'll be doing st the internship, really. I know the basics of what AM firms do and the types of things they work on. I know a little history on this particular company, but I'm largely inexperienced in all other aspects. I read a bunch of market publications and have The Intelligent Investor on order to get a better understanding of the industry. I just want to make a good impression and get my foot in the door
TLDR: I'm a freshman with no finance experience, I read and stay up to date on current events with the markets. This internship is for a Client Reporting role.
Since you're only a freshman and the job is focused on client reporting, the technical aspects of the interview will be far less important. Instead, spend some time putting together a good 1-3 minute spiel for the question "Tell me about yourself." Over half of interviews start with some variation of this question. Basically, you want to explain to your interviewer why your interests/experiences up to this point have specifically led you to wanting this job. Another tip: the question "walk me through your resume" means the same thing-- they don't actually want you to talk through every single point of your resume, they just want you to tell them a story about yourself.
Thank you, I'll prepare something. :)
Fantastic has solved this issue for the OP clearly, but I do want to confirm that AM's, in any year of recruiting, will be waiting to hear a stock pitch. As soon I mentioned our university's investment club for a past internship I was asked to pitch a stock that I had luckily covered for a final paper. I focused more on behavioral for prep and was caught off guard, so be prepared. I also want to underline Fantastic's idea for 10-ks. If you can get any insight from a footnote then bring that up. It shows some deep research that AM teams do daily. However, don't be uptight. That is always key for positions and an insight that I learned the hard way. I busted a few IB chances by being unnerved by a few accounting questions, so always try to sound like you'd at least be okay to deal with.
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