Tell the truth. Unless you have had a previous banking internship or valuation-related classes or technical training (such as Training the Street), you need to truthfully indicate that you don't have any modeling experience. Of course also express your interest in modeling by saying that you look forward to learning financial modeling and that you are confident in quickly picking up the skill based on your technical strengths / passion for finance.

Don't try to be insecure and exaggerate your "modeling experience" if you don't have any. If you miscommunicate / misrepresent, you may get grilled further and look really bad.

 
Best Response

Do not lie. I once had the following conversation with a large fund over the PHONE (fortunately i was not too interested in the position):

Guy: So you're pretty good at excel, huh? (per some nonsense on my resume at the time im sure, or maybe a cover letter).

Me: Yeah....(pee dripping now)

Guy: So if I were to ask how you do an "if...is error"...why don't you give me the syntax for that...just tell me what you would type...you can make up the cell numbers.

That's the last thing I remember before waking up in an abandoned house with a needle in my arm and a baby bonnet on.

Suffice to say, I was not that good at excel, at all...did not even know what an IFISERROR was at the time, much less what you would type...and our conversation ended fairly soon after that.

Fortunately I really didn't want the position, but it sucks really bad to get caught in an embellishment/outright lie about your skill set.

 
Cartwright:
Do not lie. I once had the following conversation with a large fund over the PHONE (fortunately i was not too interested in the position):

Guy: So you're pretty good at excel, huh? (per some nonsense on my resume at the time im sure, or maybe a cover letter).

Me: Yeah....(pee dripping now)

Guy: So if I were to ask how you do an "if...is error"...why don't you give me the syntax for that...just tell me what you would type...you can make up the cell numbers.

That's the last thing I remember before waking up in an abandoned house with a needle in my arm and a baby bonnet on.

Suffice to say, I was not that good at excel, at all...did not even know what an IFISERROR was at the time, much less what you would type...and our conversation ended fairly soon after that.

Fortunately I really didn't want the position, but it sucks really bad to get caught in an embellishment/outright lie about your skill set.

I'm guilty of blowing up a kid who was interviewing for a summer analyst spot in our group because he put Excel in his skills section.

OP, just be honest. In one of my interviews with the group I'm with currently, a guy asked if I had done any modeling at my banking internship with a rinky-dink boutique. I got nervous at first because at the time, I thought it was expected that interns were supposed to have pretty in-depth modeling experience. All I had to my name was an operating model and an IPO valuation for a tiny company. I talked about that and I sold hard how much I know from BIWS and that I practice with it frequently.

 

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