"The Best We've Ever Seen"

Hey all - I'm back. The two months have been crazy for sure, but it's been fun. I've been mostly focused on helping students at my own school, doing homework for my classes, and practicing building LBO models, but I figure that a two-month sabbatical is enough.

This time last year I was just getting into final rounds with most of the banks I was interviewing with. I thought it was a rough year last year, and now I think it's even harder to get a job. With that in mind, I wanted to write a few thoughts on interviewing - specifically final rounds.

As a disclaimer, I'm not by any means an expert on interviewing. All I have is my own experience and the experiences of my friends. I can say, though, that I feel confident in my own abilities to interview, and I hope to share some of the things that work for me. Over the last year I've interviewed with many firms, and every single place that I've interviewed at has given me an offer (except for the firms that I cut off the process with after accepting my internship or full-time offer, but even with those firms I had made it to final rounds and am confident that I could have received an offer if I would have kept interviewing). I don't share that to be boastful, but just to point out that there are some tangible things you can do to be ready for interviews, many of which will come off as impressive.

A lot of my success in interviewing is due to good old preparation. My end goal was to go in, totally destroy every answer, and leave having the interviewer thinking, "That was the best candidate I've ever interviewed. We have to get this guy to come back." You don't want to leave any doubt in their mind that you are the right person for the job.

Analyzing the Competition
When I am preparing for an interview, I'll do a few things to get ready. First of all, I think about who else will be interviewing that day. Often for final rounds, the firm will fly you out the day before interviews, and many times you'll get to meet other people you're interviewing for. If you don't meet them the day before, you'll meet them in some sort of pre-interview meeting for all the people attending the Super Day.

I come from a non-target school, so I needed to know how to tell my story to come across in the best way. If the other people interviewing were from target schools (usually the case), I would really focus in my interviews on how hard I worked to get the interview and the fact that absolutely no one they could hire would out-work me over the summer. I would usually not dwell on my school too much - I let my GPA and test scores speak for my academic background. Instead I would focus on my work experiences and show that I already was a great analyst.

If the people I was interviewing with were either from my school or from other non-target schools, then I would focus a bit more on my school work and what I had accomplished. Because I would assume that everyone had worked hard to get there from a non-target school, I would focus on my experiences that made me unique, whether it was talking about interning at Treasury during TARP, living in Eastern Europe, or working with regional private equity firms to manage their portfolio companies.

Technical Powerhouse
In addition to tailoring your interview based on who you are interviewing against, it goes without saying that you need to know your finance. I really believe that the technical stuff is nothing more than a hurdle you have to get over (fit is way more important than if you really know accretion/dilution because they expect you don't know anything anyway). If you can absolutely crush the technical stuff, they'll not only check the box, but they'll remember that you knew more than the average interviewee. There are plenty of places around the internet that will prepare you for technical questions (I've covered a few, and www.ibankingfaq.com is my favorite site for quick refreshers on corp fin). Just be ready for anything and show them that you can think on your feet.

Make 'em Laugh
One of the best things I did in interviews was to incorporate my personality in the interview. I would often try to make funny (but appropriate - not childish or vulgar) comments during the interview, and the feedback I got was usually that the interviewers thought I was a funny, nice guy.

One example comes from my final round interviews with Lehman Brothers (Barclays) last year. When I got off the elevator on the 24th floor, I noticed a big sign saying that they were having fire drills throughout the day, and they listed the various times that each floor would need to be evacuated. In many of my interviews, when the interviewer would ask me how things were going, I would usually say something like, "Oh fine. You probably noticed this morning when I pulled the fire alarm though..." It was a little thing, but the interviewer usually laughed a little and then we carried on. Using humor to endear yourself to the interviewer is one of the best ways I can think of to come across as "somebody they'd want to spend 8 hours in the airport with."

Final Thoughts
Before you go into the interview, you should quickly check the stock price of the company (assuming they're a public company), read the WSJ one time quickly, and go to the company website to see a few reasons why they are great. I usually knew of 4-5 awards the company had recently won for being a good employer, being kind to working mothers, or whatever it was they wanted to brag about on their website.

When they ask, "Why do you want to work here?" You tell them personal reasons you like their bank, then you say, "And plus you guys were named one of the 50 best places to launch a career, Forbe's said you were the M&A house of the year last year, you are one of Working Mother's top 25 firms, and your CEO was just named CEO of the month in Investment Banking Weekly." They're not expecting you to know all that, but listing off random facts shows that you took a little more time than the average candidate to prepare for the interivew.

I could go on for a long time about all the ways I prepared for interviews, but it basically came down to preparation. Knowing the company and what they stand for, knowing the qualities they were looking for and telling stories specifically to show I had those qualities, and using some humor or good manners to impress them enough to remember me.

Good luck to all of you who are out there interviewing. I'll be back in a more normal schedule of writing, so you'll hear more from me about interviewing in the coming days/weeks.