SEEKING ADVICE for internships interviews: I just blew mine right out of the water!
Hi guys,
I'm making this post in hopes to get professionals such as yourselves to help students like myself to better prepare for technical tests in interviews for entry-level jobs and internships - because I just screwed mine up.
I'm a third-year undergraduate student with no experience in banking but wished to God that I get an internship working with the capital markets. I finally get this interview with one of the big banks here in Canada to be an equity research associate intern and I'm filled with excitement until the HR tells me there is a 1-hour technical test. Fine, I look up what I need to prepare for and can see that ER = research + financial modeling + writing reports, so I tell myself I need to refreshen up on accounting and learn financial modeling. I worked my butt off all weekend and now I'm sitting here feeling like crap because I doubt that I will even make it to the second round.
The internet failed me - the technical test consisted of ZERO financial modeling. All my preparations of building cash flows, building the DCFs, calculating costs of capital, etc. went down the drain. Not that I don't know how to do the tasks at hand, but it had been awhile and I didn't have enough time to figure it out. It was either you know it or you don't. I was asked to summarize and group datasets with Excel formulas, generate pivot tables, and do some growth analysis. One of the tasks, I had to compare TSE300's growth with WTI Oil's returns from 1988 to 2018. The prices of those two were already given from 1988 to 2014, but I needed further data up to 2018. The TSE 300 in there really threw me off since the index closed in 2002 and the S&P/TSX prices didn't match with the given data which were in the $300-$350 range.
Now, my question is, what do you, as a professional who has supervised interns before, expect an intern to know/do in the position of an equity researcher? Like what are the most used Excel functions? It would also be great if you guys can post links to free or cheap tutorial courses with samples that teach Excel functions specifically used when handling market data for whatever purpose.
Thanks in advance and hope this helps other students as well!
Hi ch.j.sh., any of these discussions helpful:
No promises, but maybe one of our professional members will share their wisdom: mppm123 gwhalen92 jsanders
You're welcome.
That sucks about the technical part. Each firm is different but sometimes I think larger banks go about the intern process all wrong with technical tests. Some companies will do tests that cover what you prepared for - DCF models, relative value and stock pitch based on that - others will ask a stupid question...
My firm hires at several co-op or interns per semester. I interview almost all candidates with one usually ending up on my team.
We don’t perform technical tests but ask basic questions about excel. A work term isn’t long enough for detailed model building and not worth my time as PM to teach it. So don’t expect to be doing that. Know how to create a simple multi year DCF but don’t expect that to be a core role. Analysts can do that, you’re more of a supporting actor as an intern.
Bloomberg can handle basic correlation analysis and so can excel. Sometimes we have interns simulate back testing to verify parts of our investment process. Still largely outside of excel. If your interviewing with a firm that provides a Bloomberg terminal to interns be sure to know some of the basics.
I’ve had interns work with operations to find patterns with buys/sells or common features that we might have consciously missed. This involved pivot tables and lookup formulas. I didn’t care how it was done just that it was done in a manner that worked. Nested IF statements are good to know in addition to creating array formulas from Bloomberg data.
I have an operations department that I can get to do most of that if needed. So if your are going to interning on that side then know your excel cold.
Can’t recommend any free resources... perhaps past interns could answer that part of your question?
The best interns I’ve had are those that can perform research on a topic (or companies and fill in tear sheets) that is of interest but I’m lacking resources to handle the work. Out of a dozen interns of late, i’d say only one has been exceptional in that aspect. Schools seem to do a terrible job teachings students how to perform research.
I don’t believe in wasting my time or that of an intern. I’d rather them learn practical skills for the business. So I could be (and likely am) a very bad sample for your question.
You probably should have taken S&P/TSX and compared it to WTI and disregard TSE300.
I am not managing interns, but work in buy-side ER. We use a lot of index match formulas, if functions and thats it for the most part. I have never used pivot tables in my current position but used them frequently while I was working in audit. Getting data series from BBG terminal is also fairly simple, you have an add-on which has formula builder so its also nothing complicated.
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