Bombed my IB interview and feel like complete shit. Where do I go from here?
I am a senior at a target school, with good experience, decent grades, and made it to near the end of the process at an investment bank. Needless to say, I bombed my interview. It was the worst interview I have ever done in my life. I looked at my interviewer's face and I could just tell that she knew I was fucked. I am not looking for sympathy here but I feel like complete shit -- considering my friend really helped me with the process by pushing me through it. I don't know what happened I just sort of froze, the vibe wasn't there and I went downhill from there. I don't know what to do at this point - I feel like a loser, embarrassed, and my self-esteem is at a low. I feel like I don't deserve to be there.
Has anyone else been through this and any advice you can give me? I am just really down right now.
A bit about me, I have worked at numerous private equity firms throughout my undergrad, as well as two major global banks in asset management. I just don't know what to do from here.
I remember during my FT recruiting process years ago. I did a summer internship in consulting, but decided to pivot for IB. I prepared for my interviews, networked hard, went the full nine yards, and before I knew it, I had a SD for Moelis LA. I remember being super hyped about Moelis LA, telling myself that it's the office I wanted to end up at, the culture's great, the people are great, and I was a perfect fit. Yet, during my interview, I completely froze up and messed up my technicals. They weren't even big mistakes, just an addition error here, a multiplication error there, simple stupid mistakes, which when added up cost me my opportunity at Moelis. I remember beating myself up the night after getting the official HR rejection call, berating myself over how I could cost myself such an opportunity with such juvenile errors. Thankfully, I had a friend who shook me out of my self-pity, mock interviewed me hard until I could get my technicals perfect in my sleep, and after networking hard, I had another SD at Evercore. The people at Evercore tried so hard to find a reason to give me an offer, one of the MDs I networked with and clicked with even gave me an entire interview off during the SD, where he just told me to take a 30 minute break. I nailed the technicals, and waited for that offer call after the SD, which never came. I had a post-mortem with the MD, who told me that the unanimous feedback from my other three interviews is that I was technically perfect, but I had absolutely zero personality and came off as a rock. After that, I felt like a loser, a failure. How can you mess up an interview where you were literally given a free pass for 1/4 of the process? Thankfully, once again, I had a friend who reminded me that feeling bad would not do anything to help me, and pulled my head out of my one-man pity party.
Keep your head up. You are going to fail, and not just in recruiting, but at many things throughout your life, and that's not just completely fine, but is expected. What's important is to learn from your failures so you don't do it again. You may feel like a failure right now, and I guarantee you today won't be the last day you feel like a failure or a loser. It sounds cliche, but what's important is that you learn from your failures, because everyone fails, but the differentiator between a failure someone who succeeds is that one who succeeds learns from his failures to improve himself. It's OK to take a day to bathe yourself in self-pity, but tell yourself that tomorrow, you're going to get your head out of your ass, and improve yourself. Tomorrow, you're going to do a post-mortem, diagnose what went wrong, and find ways to ensure that won't happen again.
I really appreciate the feedback, as well as your story. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to go from the interview at Moelis to Evercore and feel like a failure again. It really sucks and I can only imagine how you must have felt afterward. I am curious, how soon did you land something after the experience at Evercore. I am curious to see how your story ended?
My process didn't end the way I had hoped, but it still taught me an important lesson.
I made the pivot to IB relatively late, and while FT recruiting was more common back in my day, it still wasn't huge. Ultimately, I wasn't able to land an IB offer, and instead took the best offer I had: BB ER. I was absolutely crushed that I couldn't land my dream job back then, but I was still determined to achieve the goal. I spent 2 years in ER, internally lateraled into IB at my BB as part of the third-year analyst rotational program, went A2A, and then ultimately lateraled to an EB.
Ultimately, my path didn't end up the way I thought it would senior year, but that's a part of life. Life is unpredictable, and you will face obstacles that set you back or make you modify your plans. You have to realize, like I did, that life is a marathon filled with twists and turns, not a one-lane sprint, and what may seem like the end of the world today is nothing in the ultimate scheme of things. If you end up having to take a different path to achieve your goals, you embrace that path in the short term and find a way to navigate back onto the track towards your ultimate goal. Once I adopted the perspective of looking at achieving my plans long-term, short-term setbacks meant much less than me. If you learn to embrace the unpredictability and take a long-term view towards life, no setback can discourage you.
Found the guy who said he didn’t have time for girls or partying during the ‘rigorous’ recruiting process….
Can’t cram life experiences that make you more relatable/interesting the night before.
OK Intern
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Where did u end up
If you feel bad, someone in an ER interview once asked me how do I make sure my balance balances. I went completely blank on the spot
I bombed 5 interviews before landing an EB and BB. Just keep applying.
Everyone fails. My first interview was OCR w/ Stifel, and it went absolutely terrible. I thought the industry wasn’t right for me after that and gave up completely (don’t do that). Did consulting for 2 years and came back to interview and found the perfect fit at a diff MM. Don’t give up…it’s just a lesson in disguise
Hey, I've been in IB for a bit and I completely bombed a lateral interview. I'm a decent BB and was trying to move to a top EB.
They started asking some technicals, and for whatever reason my mind went blank I sort of panicked and just couldn't answer it.
It was a pretty basic one too. I knew the answer my mind just went blank for some reason.
Happens to lots of people. I'm a fairly succesful associate in a technical group as well. I just forgot about it and moved on.
Honestly, you get back on the horse.
Failure is a big part of the job (and life in general), learn your lesson and get better for the next one.
If you're interested, look into the "growth mindset" - it helped me think about how to "frame" failure better.
Mindset by Carol S. Dweck
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As a general advice, if you walked out the door feeling you messed up that one specific interview; reach out to the interviewer and be honest about it, thank them for their time but also tell them you felt the interview went badly from your end. From an interviewer perspective, this honesty and the fact you communicate it can sometimes still help you. In my group, we sometimes have strong candidates that we hope they do well. If they then do well in several interviews and mess one up, but would reach out like that, they might sometimes get a second chance...
How are you ft recruiting already?
Target school, good experience, and good grades? Take a deep breath my friend, you will be just fine. I bombed many IBD internship interviews and even had a few go perfectly and still didnt receive an offer. Just be persistent and learn from your mistakes, and eventually youll land an IBD offer. By casting a wide net I was able to get a bunch of interviews and therefore land that coveted internship offer, and I didn't know anyone that worked in finance initially. You have the perfect background for the industry and if you keep at it, will undoubtedly make get an internship / FT offer. Persistence is key, good luck!
Take a deep breath 🙂
This happens to everyone - literally everyone I know has bombed an interview before, and they’re senior investment bankers / consultants / lawyers now. Sometimes the nerves just get you! Next time you’ll feel much more relaxed and prepared - trust me
I completely shit the bed in my first ever IB interview. Then completely shit the bed in my first ever PE interview. Now it feels like a walk in the park, questions like (“how do you do a DCF” or “walk me through depreciation impact on FS”) would be a dream - although granted I have 2yrs of IB exp.
You just need to have a couple of interviews, after each interview add the questions you had to you pre prepared Q&A answer list. Then try to vibe with the interviewers (I talked about skydiving and jiu-jitsu and Salsa and holidays in Rio and it got me an offer every time). Key is preparation and relatability
Head up and keep moving. Sucks, but it's part of the journey. I've been through probably 100+ interviews in my life. The hit rate and landing a job is a lot lower than I think most people care to admit.
Yeah same, a lot less interview but to get my first full time job I easily applied to 150+ firms.
Now with experience and skills I am a lot more focused, actually I only take calls from <5% of opportunities presented to me.
We all fail, we all get dumped and we all get in trouble with our bosses. You’re young, so this might be the first time your facing rejection and that’s why it stings so bad.
During on campus recruiting, like a decade ago, I must have interviewed with 25 companies and only got one offer. Literally a 95% rejection rate.
I remember in one interviewer i stumbled so bad on an easy question the two interviewers subtly glanced at each other with a look of disgust and shock at how stupid my answer was lol. All these years later ive never forgotten the shame i felt when i noticed their look at each other.
if youre smart you will take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
there are a ton of banks in the world and one is bound to give you a shot if you keep trying. and if your goal is to end up at a top bank, youre going ti learn that so many people who work at top placed went to crappy colleges and / or started their careers at crappy banks. its how you finish, not how you start.
i have frat brothers who were much smarter than me, now making peanuts. and i have juniors from years ago who i hired and trained and are now making more than me.
just keep applying and never make the same mistake twice.
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/off-topic/a-must-read-for-current…
One of the top posts of all time seems to have a screw up way worse—dude got the runs during his dream job.
From my end, I remember interviewing for evercore and centerview and completely bombing—it all worked out. Also, let me save you the suspense, you will bomb more interviews after this one, part of interviewing is the randomness and sometimes things just don’t align. Don’t sweat it—it’s very early in recruiting and there are tons of roles out there. I learned from my bombs and ended up getting a great offer and later ended up doing exactly what and where I was supposed to do/be.
go to Big4. you can make $300k at a Senior Manager position (which is ~8 years after undergrad) and work like 30-40 h/week (delegate all work down the pipe, do whatever you want even during the work day and answer calls while driving/etc.). plus, in IB people get pushed out quickly if they don't bring business at senior level - in Big4 you can stay at Senior Manager level as much as you want, they might even promote you to Director and pay you even more, and you don't have to bring business or worry about anything.
Are you in big4? Are you currently at this level or are you observing your bosses doing this?
You definitely don't make $300k in Big 4 non-strategy lol
It also usually takes >8 years to make it up there, especially if there's a ton of mediocre performers clogging up the SM seats...
Not sure how you define strategy but I was talking about TAS. And it takes exactly 8 years on normal track. If you're an over-performer, you could do it faster, but usually 8 years. And there is no quota on SM seats - if you're due for promotion, you're getting promoted, if you have good reviews. A lot of projects are even stuffed with multiple senior managers if budget allows. Sometimes, you have 3 partners, 2 senior managers, and 2 seniors on a project, for example.
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Maybe my story can make you feel better. In one of my first interviews, I didn't know what a basis point was, and when they asked me to list 5 ways to value a company I literally just said "DCF..." and blanked.
After that disaster, I went on to have my pick of offers in prop trading, buyside research, and IB.
If you got this interview, you'll get more. Most people go through something similar with college applications, eg. applying to all the ivies and only getting into one. Rejection is part of the game.
You have great experience and will definitely land on your feet. "Worse case" you just go back into AM. It might be a blessing in disguise unless you are convinced you want to do PE/Corp Dev. Besides, you will always be able to lateral or get an MBA if you truly are desperate for IB, so don't sweat the present.
One bad date doesn’t mean you’re not datable. Numbers game. Keep hustling and you’re good to go!
I bombed my interview with FT Partners a couple months ago and I couldn’t be more happy after reading about the paradise I was about to enter.
It's def not the end of the world, off the top of my head these options seem the most feasible for your situation:
1. Keep grinding the IB train, liquidity posted that PE season is starting, so alot of analysts are goning to jump ship so there will be seats to fill.
2. Valuations, take a year or 2 and become a modeling god and lateral into IB later.
3. Take a year for a masters of science in finance or some sort of 1 year program and give yourself basically a redo.
Try again
During my first ever IB interview I literally forgot what unlevered beta was. I was nearly in tears afterwards, because I was from a non-target and didn't have many other IB opportunities available that I had a shot to get. Was able to break into B4 consulting afterwards, which ultimately is more aligned with my long-term career goals. Based on your post, it sounds like you're in a way better position academically and in terms of work experience than I was. You'll be fine.
Get fking rekt m8…
🎵Can we play you every week…🎵
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