Investment Banking Interview Guide

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Investment Banking Interview Guide – Quick Start Reference Guide

Let’s be honest: sometimes we all procrastinate or get busy and end up with no time left
to prepare for interviews. The problem, though, is that most interview guides ignore
this and don’t account for the fact that you might have 4 hour, 4 days, or 4 weeks to
prepare for your interview.

So we’re going to fix that here and present several options for preparing with this guide
depending on how much time you have available.

These options are extremely important with this guide because there are literally 1,000+
pages of material here altogether – and you cannot possibly go through all of it if your
interview is hours or even days away.

We’re going to cover 3 different possibilities here:

The 4-Hour Interview Prep System – For truly urgent needs.

The 2-Day Interview Prep System – Pressing, but not quite “urgent.”
The Week-Long+ Interview Prep System – Take your time and prepare in-depth.

Option 1: The 4-Hour Interview Prep System

If you only have a matter of hours to prepare, here's how to divide your time and
conquer your interviews:

Hour 1: Go through the "Telling Your Story" overview video and pick the single most
relevant of the 15 templates we provide, and fill in the details based on your resume.

Take 30 minutes and figure out what your Beginning, Spark, Growing Interest, Why
You're Here Today, and Future points will be.

Hour 2: Now go through your resume and pick 2-3 key experiences that you can use to
answer "fit" questions about your teamwork and leadership skills, strengths and
weaknesses, and so on.

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Here are 3 examples of experiences that you might use for these questions:

1) Your experience founding and fundraising for a student investment club

(leadership, success, teamwork);
2) Your internship last summer where you had to meet a strict deadline for an
impossible client (partial failure story, teamwork, burning the midnight oil, and
client work);
3) Your more recent internship at a local boutique where you helped an analyst
value a few companies (accounting, valuation, finance, and business knowledge).

Take a look at the questions in the Teamwork / Leadership, Strengths and Weaknesses,
and Resume / CV sections of the guide and make sure you can answer all of them using
these 2-3 experiences.

Hour 3: Technical review. Only read the Key Rules of Thumb sections and skip the
actual questions and answers and quizzes.

If you do not have much finance experience, focus on the Accounting, Valuation,
and DCF guides.
If you do have more finance experience, focus on the Merger Model and LBO
Model Guides.
And if you’re interviewing for private equity, focus 100% on the LBO Model
Guide and take the time to go through the quizzes and questions and answers
there.

Focus on your biggest “gaps” in Hour 3. Brush up on the technical areas where you’re
weakest, and go through the Key Rules of Thumb we provide to ensure that you’ve got
all your bases covered.

Hour 4: Practice. You've spent a few hours on your "story," the fit questions, and the
technical questions... so now it's time to practice everything you've learned.

Spend 20 minutes walking through your story a few times out-loud, and then another
20 minutes explaining your internship or full-time job experiences and answering the
most common "fit" questions; spend the last 20 minutes briefly skimming through the
technical Q&As for the section(s) you focused on.

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So there you have it: last-minute investment banking interview prep in a matter of
hours, even with a massive guide like this one.

Option 2: The 2-Day Interview Prep System

Now let's say you have 2 days to prepare rather than 4 hours.

Much of what we recommended above stays the same – it's just that you have more
time to go through the materials and you can think through the questions more deeply.

Day 1, Hours 1 – 4: Prepare your "story." Go through the overview video and pick the
template that's most applicable to you, and this time run it by a friend, post your story
on the site, or ask us for feedback via email.

Common problems with otherwise good stories:

A boring or non-specific "Spark."

A "Growing Interest" section that has too many “plot twists,” like a trashy
romance novel (keep it to 1-2 career changes at the most).
A wishy-washy "Future" section.

So make sure you avoid those pitfalls.

Day 1, Hours 5-8: Similar to what I recommended in Hour 2 above – pick your 2-3 key
work experiences. But since you have more time now, once you've picked them, go
through as many "fit" questions as you can and test yourself to make sure you can
answer all the questions using those experiences.

Expand the scope of the “fit” questions you cover and go beyond the Teamwork /
Leadership, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Resume / CV sections – pick the 3-5 other
sections that are most relevant for you. So if you’re applying to offices in another
country, for example, make sure you read up on the International Applicants and
Overseas Offices section.

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Day 2, Hours 1-4: Technical review, but this time read through all the Key Rules of
Thumb sections, even if you're new to finance. Yes, you could still get questions on
these even if you're a liberal arts major or your previous career was in PR or marketing
– so don't say I didn't warn you.

If you have extra time beyond this, review the Excel models and video tutorials and
interactive quizzes we provide.

Day 2, Hours 5-8: Practice everything just like you did on the 4-hour plan, but this time
you can go through more question categories. You can also take at least a few of the
interactive quizzes we provide in the guide as well.

Option 3: The Week-Long+ Interview Prep System

If you have a week or more to prepare for interviews, that no longer counts as “last-
minute prep” so you can afford to take a more in-depth approach.

The recommended order above stays roughly the same – start with your Story, then
move to your resume / CV and the “fit” questions, then go into the technical concepts
and questions, and conclude by practicing.

Here’s what’s different with this plan:

You can do a more thorough review of the “fit” questions and also read through
the Sample Interviews and critiques that we provide.
If you have Deal Experience, you should definitely review the Deal Discussion
Templates and Q&As midway through the week.
To ensure that you really dominate the technical questions, you can review the
Rules of Thumb sections and also complete all the interactive quizzes, spin
through the Excel models, and look at the Q&As included in each guide as well.
If you're interviewing with more specialized groups (FIG, Energy, Real Estate,
and so on) you should go through the industry-specific interview questions and
make sure you know those (at least the “High-Level” questions) as well.
Oh yeah, and if you're outside the US or you're in a region where case studies
and assessment centers are common, make sure you read the guide to those as
well (linked to within the site).

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So the idea is the same: Story, “Fit” Questions, Technical Questions, and Practice, but
you can spend a lot more time on each of those – particularly on the “Practice” segment.

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