Ok, again I should not be on WSO, but looking for some legit feedback here.
I finally got to second round interview after nailing 80-90 percent of technicals during an hour and a half 1st interview (did not expect this of myself, but then the interviewer said I did pretty well, so I guess did).
Then came the second round interview with 2 senior people. The last person did ask me some technicals, which were easy. Mostly the difficulty came from calculating percentages (mental math). I did make a 1 percentage mistake on one question, not sure if that would be a big deal or not.
Emailed all two senior people, not a single reply. So I guess I am dinged. And I am just sitting here and I really do not get it. Why do I keep failing these interviews? I did everything by the book, thought I connected with the interviewers, but then I do not get a response. Is there something wrong with me?
Lack of replies don't necessarily mean bad things. But just reading this post I can feel your desperation to get an offer, and people don't like desperate candidates. Be confident about what you bring to the table.
Be honest with yourself about your energy level (should be enthusiastic and high energy) , body language (proper posture, eye contact, smile) , and comfort level (speak slowly and clearly) in an interview. In my extensive interview experience, these are the factors which will make or break an interview.
Interviews by definition are very stressful, so a lot of the times you may think you did well, but may have come across entirely differently to the person on the other end of the table. Unfortunately, we cannot watch a live recording of ourselves when we are speaking, to instantly correct unnoticed mistakes, so it is very, very important that we are conscious of these factors and have rehearsed them in our mind's eye.
Every interview is a learning process. You should be doing some critical thinking after every failed interview to play back where you thought you did poorly. On your next one, actively incorporate your changes and you should hopefully see different results. Interviewing is a building process, so if you go on enough of them and incorporate enough changes from your experiences, you should be getting more offers than not. You won't ever get every offer, but all it takes is one.
This.
You could know all the technicals in the world, but if you come across as a nervous mess, you're done for.
Thanks. That really helps, especially, the speaking slowly part! I do tend to speak very fast when I am enthusiastic. Thanks for pointing this out!
No problem.
Yes, I agree here, I do a lot of interviews and sometimes over the phone and in person, few things that I noticed with people interviewing me is that some of them have not done their home work on my resume, so they are trying to get that information from me as they ask me questions, I also noticed that some people are really looking for some sort of bond with you which makes them feel comfortable, I would suggest looking at the youtube videos on this subject as well because as you said it is difficult to self assess our own body language.
See the problem with this is that I really try to bond with interviewers. I throw in a few jokes here and there and 90 percent of time they laugh and it generally becomes a good conversation. I just don't understand where I am making a mistake...
The answer is most likely that you're spending all of your time preparing for technicals and none for behaviorals. Behavioral questions are much more important on superdays. At that stage, every candidate is about equal in terms of technical knowledge, and the interviewers are now looking at whether or not they can work with you.
This happened to me recently. Looking to make the move from IB to buy-side ER and spent the night before focusing on the stock pitch. Stock pitch was gang busters and they all thought I did well on the pitch, however, I left no time for me to prepare for behavioral questions, which I bombed.
I did not get an offer to go to the final interview. I was not mad or anything, mainly because I knew it was my fault. When I do not get an offer, I generally know what my weakness was and try to improve on that going forward.
I believe preparing for an interview is important, however, I think you must be agile enough to alter your plan based upon the energy and vibes you get from the interviewer. As SSits said, there are a lot of unknowns you do not know about coming into the interview.
-XSX
The following is a response on this part of your comment and is not directly on point on your general concern. And my comments below are more a general comment to the yoof of today rather than directed at you, Alibabes56.
That said...
Through school and through college, there is a system with a pre-defined curriculum. Students know that, if they study and master the material, it's possible to get up to 100%, subject to some re-scaling on the curve. If you do everything "by the book", theoretically you should score full marks.
Consider that students exist in that system for 12 - 15 years before they enter the full time workforce. Technically good students - ie the set of students containing a subset likely to get into finance-related degrees and go for finance jobs - thrive in that system, and so embrace it.
This leaves most book smart university students with a strongly embedded sense of systemic "fairness" which revolves around the concept that "knowing the answers + doing things by the book = get full marks".
This sense of "fairness" is also self-reinforcing, because everyone likes to believe that, if a system favours them, then it is a system of universal fairness.
When you enter the job market, you're entering a different system.
An interview is not an exam where a candidate can "do everything by the book" for a guaranteed win.
Candidates can certainly prepare for some parts of the interview eg technicals.
However, candidates have no idea what the correct answers are to a large part of the "exam" material ie what the interviewers needs are.
The interviewers needs are not just someone who does things by the book. They often have specific needs eg maybe the team is technicals heavy and needs some charismatic hires, maybe the team needs more diversity, maybe the team is charisma-heavy and needs a modelling geek, maybe the team needs a young blonde female to take to client meetings as eye candy.
Further, interviewers inevitably have a mixed bag of prejudices. For example, I have a skeptical bias against kids who went to high school in mainland China, as I always suspect they are likely products of the "stuffed duck" education system focused on regurgitation without critical thinking*. Maybe another interviewer had a bad experience with hires from your university. Another interviewer may see you and another candidate as equal in ability, except the other candidate was in the same sorority as the interviewer.
(* although this is a displaceable assumption and one of my intern hires this summer went to school in mainland China)
As a candidate, you won't know what these needs or prejudices or any of the other factors are in advance nor any time later. So playing an interview "by the book" is no guarantee for success.
It's likely that a lot of book smart university students feel a twinge of "that's not fair" in response to that. If so, re-read my earlier comments in this post - that twinge is a product of the programming that the education system has immersed students in throughout their schooling.
(EDIT)It's also likely that a lot of university students will say "OK, so what do I need to do?". If you respond that way, that again indicates that you're deeply embedded in the education system where there is a comprehensive curriculum. The honest truth is that no one can give some secret manual that guarantees success. Kids, you're entering a world where there is no curriculum. That's a paradigm shift you're going to have to get used to and you'd better reshape your thinking pretty quickly.
Many people will throw out tips like networking etc - these factors certainly help, but none are a guarantee key to success.(/EDIT)
When you hit the job market, it's time to grow up.
The sentence about "young blonde female" makes me want to dye my hair blonde. Maybe then I will get the offer..
Thanks for the reply!
May want to read this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-hr-chief-says-this-is-what…
This may help too.
http://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-ceo-jamie-dimon-on-how-he-hires…
Question for OP - did you do mocks with bankers? What feedback did they provide you?
Again, they just told me to be more confident. I have been working on it, so I don't think it was the lack of confidence that was the main issue.
Jack Welch and Ray Dalio, stated that companies should look at three things in a candidate: Their Values, their behaviours and their skills, all in that order. Some companies have this in the other way around; skill, behaviour and values. I would bear this in mind next time you do your research on the targeted companies you want to work for. In the last two months I have had at least six interviews and most of them are more interested in my skills. Only two companies asked me more about my values, than my behaviour and skills, I am hoping that they call me back and make me an offer.
What ever your situation is, please keep trying there are many threads on this forum of stories of people getting rejected but not giving up and some of them did not even have the official qualifications the company was asking for, yes its tough but that is why you should keep going persistance is the key!
To echo what has been said earlier, why do you feel like you're failing? Well in school you can get an 80 on a test and recognize that even though your performance was mediocre you didn't fail. But in recruiting since people won't typically give you feedback if you're rejected because of HR policies it seems like not getting the job is a failure. However it may not have been a true failure at all. The truth is that they had to hire one person and reject everyone else. So if your interview was a 90 out of 100 and someone had a 95 out of 100 interview they hired the 95. And those 5 points may have been for completely arbitrary reasons (such as ones stated earlier in this thread) that have little to do with interview performance. So yes you 'failed' to get the job but it may not have been because you performed poorly. So the solution is to think of ways it could've gone better and try to improve for the next interview.
If you take this 90% performance, improve, and perform at the 99% level next time you can't consider that 90% performance a failure. It was just a stepping stone.
Omnis qui maiores velit esse. Aut voluptatum sed maiores cupiditate et. Laudantium et nulla distinctio ut. Quas soluta sapiente ut libero maxime.
Atque ex delectus est qui placeat. Velit modi odio reprehenderit aut voluptas. In sit possimus nobis quia consequatur ipsam eum.
Et est autem rerum doloribus. Eaque molestiae magnam illum temporibus. Accusamus voluptas consequatur ex aut aut repellendus qui. Adipisci saepe placeat debitis. Ad dignissimos minus voluptas velit rerum et. Libero adipisci magnam reiciendis dignissimos error perspiciatis dolore. Eum numquam quos quod eius laborum itaque.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...