I certainly understand that many first round interviews in person or over the phone don't go anywhere, so I'm not surprised when you get no response from a company or a hiring manager. However, a recent situation has got me peeved.
I made the final round interviews at a large mutual fund company 5 weeks ago after several successful earlier rounds. For the final round, I was given a month to work on a stock writeup. I put a 100% effort into this and worked for more than 150 hours on the name, and produced a 50-page investment idea and a 30 tab Excel model. Its hard to ever know really step outside yourself and know how you did, but I know I spoke with the whole team for 2 hours on the name, and there were no questions too granular that I didn't know the answers to or had tried to research. Finally, my investment thesis played out almost immediately and the stock is up 50% over the last month for the predicted, non-Trump reason. So far so good.
They had indicated to me that they would be making decisions on next steps before Thanksgiving. However, its been 5 weeks since the interview and 2 weeks since Thanksgiving, and I've heard nothing at all. I did write the obligatory thank you note and then a checkup on the process note. My question is this. Once you get far enough in a process that you are putting in significant work for a company (150 hours!) isn't there some obligation of fairness to at least inform a candidate vs. radio silence entirely?
No, it may not be decent but it is the way that it is.
send it to other firms
Do you think some mutual funds just keep interviewing people and commissioning case studies to get free analysis and ideas, with no intention of hiring anyone?
surely not
A few small hedge funds do this, doubtful any mutual funds do.....
There is no obligation, but the more professional firms will give candidates a yes/no decision in a timely manner. Some firms will simply ignore you until you go away. It sucks, but it is what it is. I always let candidates know where they stand and provide feedback if we decline them.
A few pieces of advice though:
a 50 page pitch, whether written or powerpoint, is way too long. At most the body should be 10 pages for written and 20-25 for powerpoint, with appendicies with charts and data (but minimal text) if necessary.
a 30 tab excel model is also crazy. I don't know how you even manage something that big, much less try to explain it to an interviewer who is definitely not going to take hours to learn and digest it.
in pitches, always strive for simplicity, but have the backup data available. Your pitch needs to come down to 3-5 main points. If the recipient doesn't "get it" within 2-3 minutes you're already finished. Acknowledge the downsides where they exist. Your valuation should be clear and defensible. Do some sanity checks here. It's amazing how many pitches I see where the target price is just crazy in terms of implied EV/EBIT, WACC, terminal growth rate, whatever.
have somebody else look over your pitch. In a perfect world, if you have a contact at the firm where you interviewed, they can provide you feedback. Either way, you need a second set of eyes looking at your idea.
Most of all, remember that you're applying for a highly desirable position with, most likely, an extremely competitive candidate set. Take whatever feedback you can, improve, and perform even better at the next interview. There will be more.
Thank God a 50 page write-up w/ a 30 tab excel model is not what AM firms expect on stock pitches, I was worried for a second there.
As soon as I read that part, I immediately thought this post was a troll...but it appears this is something that actually happened.
I genuinely wonder if anyone even read half of your report. Any chance you could send it to me in the future?
Sure thing...send me your email via PM. BTW, to models_and_bottles earlier note, I did present it like an Executive Summary with supporting data.
cough cough........cough cough cough cough........loud cough
Would you mind sending me the report as well? I don't know how much advice I'd be able to offer you but as selfish as it may be I think I could use it as a template to learn from.
I think you deserved at least a phone call back but I cant speak for the company that you interview with.
BTW - quick update. I did get a call back, it just took a long time.
And what did they say??
Hopefully the response was positive in the end. Longer pitches / overly complex models are generally a no go - got dinged a few years ago from a fund I really liked because I went mental with the pitch whereas in retrospect the secondary points are just noise and should be supporting arguments in your back pocket more than anything else.
Could you give any advice on how a good pitch should look? I've gotten dinged in the past because of a bad pitch too.
They probably had two or three people commit suicide trying to get through the 50 page report which necessitated the delay.
That's really grim lol, but since I've had a really long day, I'll take any kind of humour.
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