The 400 investment banking questions & answers

You get a Quick Start Guide with 4-hour, 2-day, and 1-week-long study plans, as well as checklists of everything you need to do before and after the interview. We feature companies and deals from all 6 inhabited continents and a variety of industries, including airlines, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and more. IB Resources See all. Get Case Study Practice with our 17 Excel-based case studies. I’ve seen it being referenced around a lot. How to Navigate the Questions Guide.

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Walk me through the highlights of your resume. What is your story, walk through the decisions you have made, and how that relates to your current interest in Investment Banking.. Why investment banking? Why our bank? How do you value a company? To what extent have you created and used financial models before?

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Most other guides suffer from several problems: 1. The information is not investment banking-specific. The information is out-of-date, wrong or incomplete see: The Vault Guide. These days, interviewers assume you know the basics — like how to value a company — and go beyond that with advanced questions that require thinking more than memorization. The questions do not apply to interviewees from diverse backgrounds.

The guides were not written by bankers. The proof is in the pudding. Your time is limited — so we get you the answers you need, when you need them right. A lot. Pick and choose which sections are most relevant to you. I recommend reviewing the table of contents first and then skipping to the questions you are most in need of understanding. Rather than reading everything passively, try to answer each question — and then check whether or not you got it right.

However, there are good ways to answer and poor ways to answer. In this section, we detail the best techniques along with what you should say — and avoid saying.

They fail to use specific anecdotes to support their points. They do not structure their answers properly. You should go through this list and your resume and make sure you have stories prepared for the most common questions — you can then use those and then adapt them as necessary for any new questions you. Regardless of the question, you also need to structure it properly. Be succinct and conversational in your tone, and you should do fine. Can you discuss your quantitative skills?

In your last internship, you analyzed portfolios and recommended investments to clients. Can you walk me through your thought process for analyzing the returns of a client portfolio? The key is to break everything down into steps and be very specific about what you did.

Can you tell me about the process you used to analyze space requirements for the building designs you worked on this past summer? Similar to the reasoning above, break it into steps and start by discussing how you made the initial estimates, then how you refined them and made them more exact over time while staying within budget and collaborating with your team. You were an English major — how do you know you can handle the quantitative rigor required in investment banking? Can you tell me about a time when you submitted a report or project with misspellings or grammatical mistakes?

Instead, briefly mention a time when you made a careless mistake and then spend the majority of time in your answer discussing what you learned and how you improved, citing another specific example of how you improved the second time. How well can you multi-task? In keeping with our theme of specificity, give a concrete example of a time when you were working on multiple projects at the same time — work, school, or activities work equally well for this one.

Also emphasize that despite the considerable demands, you pulled off everything successfully. Anything involving teamwork or collaboration is also good to use in this response. Have you ever worked on a project or report that was shown to a large number of people?

A journal, student publication or anything similar could be good to mention here, as could anything shown to a client or multiple clients in your work experience or in an internship. The key points: come across as an interesting person which you should have no trouble doing and also talk about how your experience better prepared you for investment banking. Walk me through your resume.

For anyone in business school or beyond, it might be where you went to undergraduate, your first job, or even where you went to business school. Aim for minutes — if you go on longer than this, the interviewer may get bored or impatient. Be chronological. Show how each experience the 400 investment banking questions & answers the way led you in the direction of finance. Aim for minutes.

Going out of order chronologically. Being too short under 1 minute or too long over 5 minutes. Listing your experiences rather than giving a logical transition between each one.

If you were interested in something specific it offered e. Try to sound like you made a thoughtful decision rather than deciding randomly. If you transferred elsewhere, a similar strategy applies but make sure to emphasize it was for academic reasons.

I noticed you studied abroad in [Location]. Can you tell me about that experience and why you went there? You can mention something about the fun you had, trips you went on, and anything interesting you did climbing Mt. Why did you major in [Your Major]? Where else did you apply for school? Did you get in anywhere else? You applied to a number of top schools and got in at other places, but you went through a careful decision-making process and settled on your school for a very good reason.

Can you tell me about your most recent internship in [Language]? Be prepared for this if you list any common languages on your resume Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese. What do you do for fun? If you have anything interesting or not very common hang gliding, directing movies, bungee jumping you the 400 investment banking questions & answers bring that up. They want to see who you are as a person, not whether or not you know all the Excel shortcuts in the book.

There are 2 common mistakes: 1. That just sounds weird. Why do you want to be an investment banker now? You want to do finance because you like the business aspect of technology more than the technology aspect of technology and because you want to make an impact with your work and become an investor or advisor one day. Because your accounting work was boring and mundane, and because there were limited advancement opportunities.

Why would you want to leave a lucrative career in law and go back to being an entry-level Associate in banking?

Of course, you do a lot of this in banking anyway but this angle still works because bankers really do look down on lawyers. I see you worked at McKinsey one summer and then went to Citi investment banking the next year.

Are you sure you want to do investment banking? You enjoyed your Citi internship much more and realized you wanted to be in banking rather than consulting. I must be honest, I rarely see people who have accomplished as much as you have at your age. They get paid pretty well and work market hours — so they have it a lot better than us. Why would you want to switch to investment banking? Banking excites you more because of the broader range of opportunities and experiences it gives you.

MBAs will need to show more commitment and assure the interviewer they are serious about making a career out of it. Where else are you interviewing? Is it just banking? Other companies? Just banking. Are you mostly interviewing at larger banks like us?

What kinds of options within banking are you considering? If you can mention specific names, that makes your answer even better. Before you entered business school, I see you switched jobs about once a year. If the opportunity comes up, why would you stay here instead? Tell me about a time when you failed to honor a commitment. If I gave you an offer right now on the spot would you take it?

Other variants of this question include why you want to move to a larger or smaller firm.

Close Save changes. Related Content See. You get a Quick Start Guide with 4-hour, 2-day, and 1-week-long study plans, as well as checklists of everything you need to do before and after the interview. Module 4: Technical Questions and Answers. Don’t Allow Allow. It is never too early to start preparing for the most important interview of your career. WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know. My 4 part Private Equity Recruiting Process. No WSO Credits?