Summer Analyst

I got my foot in the door from a connection of mine who used to work closely with the firm. He submitted my resume and they began the interview process quickly.


1st - Phone Interview with HR. No technical questions, just questions that follow the basic "walk me through your resume" theme and a few specific fit questions revolving around why you would like to work with a boutique size firm as opposed to a BB. No smoke in mirrors here, hold a conversation and be friendly. As long as you don't say something that sounds like you won't fit in at a small firm you're good to go to the next round.

2nd - Technical Interview with Associate: (I believe they would typically bring you into the office for this, but I don't go to school nearby, so this was via phone for me) The associate here is top-notch. The majority of his questions were as expected for an IB interview. "Walk me through a DCF," "How do you calculate free cash flow?", "what are some of the valuation methods you have used?", Etc.

3rd - Fit Interview: (Again, this likely happens in person, but I did it on the phone) Once you've made it past the all-knowing associate you'll sit down with a VP and mostly talk to you about "why IB?". My general feeling at this stage was that the position was mine to lose, so don't blow yourself up, all of the senior guys here are pretty laid back and conversational, so if you can talk to them, you can spend 30-45 minutes chatting instead of getting grilled on questions.

I was thrown a random technical question at the end. The VP noticed I mentioned statistics on my resume and asked, "What use does statistics have in banking/valuing a company"? (Answer: We run comps to measure mean, median, and quartile valuation metrics, and we can use specific metrics such as profitability and total valuation to conduct a linear regression analysis to determine a valuation metric.)