Sunday, September 7, 2008
Resume post to come...
Hey everybody. Turns out that this whole kidney stone thing is more painful than I originally thought. I've written most of the resume post but near the end felt like taking a knife and cutting out my kidney to stop the pain. Needless to say, I didn't finish the post. It'll be coming...
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Ouch
Well as if things couldn't get any weirder, check this out.
And, by the way, I'll be posting later on today about resumes. Sorry for the long breaks between posts.
So on Thursday night I took a bus from DC to New York because I had final rounds at a bank. I stayed with a good friend who just started at a bulge bracket bank and has been working like crazy. He didn't even get home till after 3am and that has been par for the course for him since he's started. I guess that's what you have to expect. The amazing thing is that in addition to all the work he's doing, he's made time to build some sweet models in preparation for private equity interviews coming in a few months. Props to him!
So I had the final rounds on Friday. It was pretty standard - there were six interviews of about a half an hour each. Three of them were with managing directors, one with a principal, and two with associates. Like other places, the associates and the principal gave me pretty technical interviews, and the managing directors just wanted to hear about my life, talk about their past experiences, and answer questions about the firm.
The technical stuff was actually pretty challenging - probably the toughest I've ever had. They based a lot of the questions off of what's on my resume, so one of the first things an associate asked me about was accretion/dilution. This girl was sharp - she worked at Miller Buckfire doing restructuring, then went to Goldman's sponsers group for two years, then went to McKinsey for two years advising on corporate finance, then finally went to Harvard Business School and on to her current job. Nice background. She had me walk her through different scenarios such as 100% cash, 50/50, and 100% stock, and asked me to talk about what would make the deal accretive or dilutive in each scenario. The only thing I needed her help on was remembering how assets are written up or down in a purchase and how that can affect accretion or dilution.
She then asked me about a DCF model I built over the summer. Usually I've just been asked how to walk through a DCF, which I did for her. But along the way she would ask me things like, "So on this deal, what were the COGS? What were the revenue drivers? What kind of operating expenses were there? When talking about discounting, she wanted to know what discount rate I used and why/how I got to that rate. She asked if we discounted at beginning/end of year or if we used the mid-year convention. I said mid-year because cash flows don't all come at the beginning or end of the year, so mid-year tends to smooth it out. She said that was right and said, "What about the terminal value?" I answered, "Well that one you discount from the end of year because you want to discount the full last year before you sell." She responded, "Exactly right - that's a very common mistake so good job." Whew!
The other associate I interviewed with gave me a case study. He said something like, "Assume you have a company that owns 15 coal refineries in North America, the rights to build more refineries in 10 other places, and then you own an electrical power plant in South Africa where the price of electricity swings 1000% percent a day. How would you value this company?"
I said I would do a sum-of-the-parts, which was correct, but then he wanted to know how I would value each piece. The coal refineries are pretty solid so I said I would use a traditional DCF with steady-state assumptions. The rights to build were dependent on how rare they are, so I said I would have to use some comps and decide what the real estate was worth, as well as finding out how feasible it would be to build. Lastly, the South African asset could be valued using a DCF, but you would have to use a really high discount rate to account for the swings in value. I also said you could use comps to see what other people are discounting similar assets at.
He seemed to be ok with my answers, and I took another deep breath. Thank goodness!
Overall the rest of the time I was just asked to walk through my resume. One guy asked me what my two greatest strengths are as an analyst. I said my initiative and ability to learn quickly. I wasn't really asked anything else other than things specific to my resume. Luckily I have enough varied financial experience that it usually provides plenty to talk about over a half an hour and the interviewers don't have the time to get crazy with thier questions.
This firm is pretty selective so they were only interviewing one other guy with me. They sent the two of us along with four analysts out to lunch after our interviews. That was a cool experience because we just got to shoot the breeze with the analysts and ask them what it was "really" like working there. From what I can tell it sounds like an awesome place.
So sorry if you aren't all interested in what a final round interview is like, but I thought I would share some of the questions that were covered. I was hoping for some brain teasers but I didn't get any.
Anyway, the crazy stuff happened after I left the interview. I got back on the bus to go down to DC, and immediately my lower abdomen on the right side started to hurt. My back was also sore, but I figured that it was the horrible seats on the bus more than anything else. The girl I was sitting next to could tell that I was in a lot of pain and kept asking me if I was alright.
A few times I went in the bathroom stall at the back of the bus and just sat there because it was more comfortable than my reclined seat. I was in the worst pain I've ever felt - it was excruciating. And there was nothing I could do to alleviate it - no matter how I stood or sat the pain was still almost unbearable. I didn't know what to do - I couldn't go anywhere and I was on a bus going down a highway. Finally after three hours we stopped to drop some people off in Baltimore. I grabbed my stuff and just got off the bus. I ran to a taxi near the bus stop and said, "Take me to the hospital!" I think it kind of startled the taxi driver because he drove like a maniac on the way over - I guess he didn't want me to die in the back of his cab.
I got to the hospital and there were probably 80 people waiting in front of me. Some of them had already been there for eight hours. I signed in and told the nurse that I was in terrible pain. She put me at the top of the priority list, but I knew that even at the top of that list I would still be waiting for a while. I got some blood drawn and gave a urine sample, then just sat and waited to be called. About four hours later they called me back. After sitting there waiting for another hour in the hospital bed, they finally came in and gave me some medicine to ease the pain. Wow - that was the worst 5-6 hours of my life by far. Nothing I've ever felt compares with that pain.
I got a CT scan and it turns out that I have a kidney stone! I thought those only appeared in older people, but apparently somehow I got a kidney stone. I've heard it said that the pain is comparable to giving birth, so to all of you women out there, I bow down and thank you for that wonderful service you provide to humanity. You are amazing to handle that multiple times!
I finally was released at about 3:30 am and was wondering how I was going to get back to DC. When I ran off the bus I wasn't really thinking ahead about the fact that after I left the hospital I would still be an hour away from DC. Luckily, my dad had made a few calls in the meantime and some guys from my church, whom I had never met before, just showed up and took me all the way home. People in the Church are just like that - willing to help a total stranger. It's amazing.
So now I'm at home with some narcotics and things are better than yesterday. The stone is still inside of me somewhere but the doctor said that the worst pain comes when the stone moves from your kidney to your bladder, so hopefully the worst part is over for me.
This isn't really what I expected to do during over the weekend, but I've also learned to expect crazy stuff to come up all the time.
Let me know if you like hearing about interviews and I'll post some more questions from various interviews I've had over the past few months.
And, by the way, I'll be posting later on today about resumes. Sorry for the long breaks between posts.
So on Thursday night I took a bus from DC to New York because I had final rounds at a bank. I stayed with a good friend who just started at a bulge bracket bank and has been working like crazy. He didn't even get home till after 3am and that has been par for the course for him since he's started. I guess that's what you have to expect. The amazing thing is that in addition to all the work he's doing, he's made time to build some sweet models in preparation for private equity interviews coming in a few months. Props to him!
So I had the final rounds on Friday. It was pretty standard - there were six interviews of about a half an hour each. Three of them were with managing directors, one with a principal, and two with associates. Like other places, the associates and the principal gave me pretty technical interviews, and the managing directors just wanted to hear about my life, talk about their past experiences, and answer questions about the firm.
The technical stuff was actually pretty challenging - probably the toughest I've ever had. They based a lot of the questions off of what's on my resume, so one of the first things an associate asked me about was accretion/dilution. This girl was sharp - she worked at Miller Buckfire doing restructuring, then went to Goldman's sponsers group for two years, then went to McKinsey for two years advising on corporate finance, then finally went to Harvard Business School and on to her current job. Nice background. She had me walk her through different scenarios such as 100% cash, 50/50, and 100% stock, and asked me to talk about what would make the deal accretive or dilutive in each scenario. The only thing I needed her help on was remembering how assets are written up or down in a purchase and how that can affect accretion or dilution.
She then asked me about a DCF model I built over the summer. Usually I've just been asked how to walk through a DCF, which I did for her. But along the way she would ask me things like, "So on this deal, what were the COGS? What were the revenue drivers? What kind of operating expenses were there? When talking about discounting, she wanted to know what discount rate I used and why/how I got to that rate. She asked if we discounted at beginning/end of year or if we used the mid-year convention. I said mid-year because cash flows don't all come at the beginning or end of the year, so mid-year tends to smooth it out. She said that was right and said, "What about the terminal value?" I answered, "Well that one you discount from the end of year because you want to discount the full last year before you sell." She responded, "Exactly right - that's a very common mistake so good job." Whew!
The other associate I interviewed with gave me a case study. He said something like, "Assume you have a company that owns 15 coal refineries in North America, the rights to build more refineries in 10 other places, and then you own an electrical power plant in South Africa where the price of electricity swings 1000% percent a day. How would you value this company?"
I said I would do a sum-of-the-parts, which was correct, but then he wanted to know how I would value each piece. The coal refineries are pretty solid so I said I would use a traditional DCF with steady-state assumptions. The rights to build were dependent on how rare they are, so I said I would have to use some comps and decide what the real estate was worth, as well as finding out how feasible it would be to build. Lastly, the South African asset could be valued using a DCF, but you would have to use a really high discount rate to account for the swings in value. I also said you could use comps to see what other people are discounting similar assets at.
He seemed to be ok with my answers, and I took another deep breath. Thank goodness!
Overall the rest of the time I was just asked to walk through my resume. One guy asked me what my two greatest strengths are as an analyst. I said my initiative and ability to learn quickly. I wasn't really asked anything else other than things specific to my resume. Luckily I have enough varied financial experience that it usually provides plenty to talk about over a half an hour and the interviewers don't have the time to get crazy with thier questions.
This firm is pretty selective so they were only interviewing one other guy with me. They sent the two of us along with four analysts out to lunch after our interviews. That was a cool experience because we just got to shoot the breeze with the analysts and ask them what it was "really" like working there. From what I can tell it sounds like an awesome place.
So sorry if you aren't all interested in what a final round interview is like, but I thought I would share some of the questions that were covered. I was hoping for some brain teasers but I didn't get any.
Anyway, the crazy stuff happened after I left the interview. I got back on the bus to go down to DC, and immediately my lower abdomen on the right side started to hurt. My back was also sore, but I figured that it was the horrible seats on the bus more than anything else. The girl I was sitting next to could tell that I was in a lot of pain and kept asking me if I was alright.
A few times I went in the bathroom stall at the back of the bus and just sat there because it was more comfortable than my reclined seat. I was in the worst pain I've ever felt - it was excruciating. And there was nothing I could do to alleviate it - no matter how I stood or sat the pain was still almost unbearable. I didn't know what to do - I couldn't go anywhere and I was on a bus going down a highway. Finally after three hours we stopped to drop some people off in Baltimore. I grabbed my stuff and just got off the bus. I ran to a taxi near the bus stop and said, "Take me to the hospital!" I think it kind of startled the taxi driver because he drove like a maniac on the way over - I guess he didn't want me to die in the back of his cab.
I got to the hospital and there were probably 80 people waiting in front of me. Some of them had already been there for eight hours. I signed in and told the nurse that I was in terrible pain. She put me at the top of the priority list, but I knew that even at the top of that list I would still be waiting for a while. I got some blood drawn and gave a urine sample, then just sat and waited to be called. About four hours later they called me back. After sitting there waiting for another hour in the hospital bed, they finally came in and gave me some medicine to ease the pain. Wow - that was the worst 5-6 hours of my life by far. Nothing I've ever felt compares with that pain.
I got a CT scan and it turns out that I have a kidney stone! I thought those only appeared in older people, but apparently somehow I got a kidney stone. I've heard it said that the pain is comparable to giving birth, so to all of you women out there, I bow down and thank you for that wonderful service you provide to humanity. You are amazing to handle that multiple times!
I finally was released at about 3:30 am and was wondering how I was going to get back to DC. When I ran off the bus I wasn't really thinking ahead about the fact that after I left the hospital I would still be an hour away from DC. Luckily, my dad had made a few calls in the meantime and some guys from my church, whom I had never met before, just showed up and took me all the way home. People in the Church are just like that - willing to help a total stranger. It's amazing.
So now I'm at home with some narcotics and things are better than yesterday. The stone is still inside of me somewhere but the doctor said that the worst pain comes when the stone moves from your kidney to your bladder, so hopefully the worst part is over for me.
This isn't really what I expected to do during over the weekend, but I've also learned to expect crazy stuff to come up all the time.
Let me know if you like hearing about interviews and I'll post some more questions from various interviews I've had over the past few months.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Ultimate Day
Saturday was pretty fun. I met one of my (seven?) roommates and he is pretty cool. He's doing a PhD at Georgetown in Economics so he will probably be giving me advice this semester on how to fix the economy :). We went to a park near to where we live and met up with about 10 other people and played ultimate Frisbee. I'm amazed how seriously people take this game on the east coast. I had never played until I went to college, but people out here are really good at it. They can throw a Frisbee in ways I didn't even know were possible. A few of the guys on my team were extremely good so I usually just threw them a pass and then ran for the endzone. They could pretty much always get it to me.
Washington DC is so different from New York. It's quiet and pretty. I think it would be a cool place to live if you're 30 and have a family.
So someone asked how I'm able to do this internship and still graduate from school. It just turned out that I only have one semester worth of classes left to graduate, so leaving school for a semester won't be a problem. I was planning on taking really fun classes like golf, skiing, cooking, Shakespeare, and stuff like that in my final semester, but now I'll just have to take the required business classes. I figured it would be worth it to spend a semester at Treasury at a time like this.
I am kind of sad when I think about what I'll miss this semester. We're supposed to have a really good football team, so I'll have to watch all the games on the TV instead of actually being there. All of the recruiting events where firms show up and bring free pizza and tell you why you should work for them - I love those things. I'll pretty much miss them all as well. Last year as a junior I went to pretty much every banking and consulting info session I could because it is a great way to network and meet people for when you want to interview for an internship. The same people come back to interview you, so if you can get them to remember you then you're in great shape.
Last year I met a guy from one of the bulge-bracket banks that came on campus who was out hiring for full-time in October. I talked with him a lot and gave him my resume. He called me back the next day and told me he wanted to interview me! It turned out that he thought I was graduating in 2008 (even though I told him I was a junior and my resume said "Graduation 2009"), but you can bet that when internship season rolled around, he actually called me and asked if I would be at the info session because he wanted to catch up and help me get ready for interviews with his bank.
Another guy I met in October took a look at my resume, liked it, and then told me that he would get me an interview with his bank. He then proceeded to threaten me that if I screwed up the interview he would basically kill me, but I promised him that I would destroy the interview. In the winter, he did in fact get me an interview, and I did in fact destroy it - I got an offer from that bank. I didn't end up taking the offer, but it's just another example of how important it is to meet people when they come on campus for the full-time hiring. Even if they say that only seniors are allowed in the info sessions (which is extremely rare, usually anyone can come), if you can just get some one-on-one time and hand them your resume, you will be in a great position.
This all assumes that your resume looks good. I'm going to write a post soon about resumes, but at this time last year was when I was making some major revisions to my resume. It went from having Chuck E. Cheese (my first high school job) on it to looking like a banker-worthy document. I've put over 100 hours into that resume, and I continue to update it constantly. It's one of those things that you need to get up to a certain quality level as soon as possible.
Resume post to come...
Washington DC is so different from New York. It's quiet and pretty. I think it would be a cool place to live if you're 30 and have a family.
So someone asked how I'm able to do this internship and still graduate from school. It just turned out that I only have one semester worth of classes left to graduate, so leaving school for a semester won't be a problem. I was planning on taking really fun classes like golf, skiing, cooking, Shakespeare, and stuff like that in my final semester, but now I'll just have to take the required business classes. I figured it would be worth it to spend a semester at Treasury at a time like this.
I am kind of sad when I think about what I'll miss this semester. We're supposed to have a really good football team, so I'll have to watch all the games on the TV instead of actually being there. All of the recruiting events where firms show up and bring free pizza and tell you why you should work for them - I love those things. I'll pretty much miss them all as well. Last year as a junior I went to pretty much every banking and consulting info session I could because it is a great way to network and meet people for when you want to interview for an internship. The same people come back to interview you, so if you can get them to remember you then you're in great shape.
Last year I met a guy from one of the bulge-bracket banks that came on campus who was out hiring for full-time in October. I talked with him a lot and gave him my resume. He called me back the next day and told me he wanted to interview me! It turned out that he thought I was graduating in 2008 (even though I told him I was a junior and my resume said "Graduation 2009"), but you can bet that when internship season rolled around, he actually called me and asked if I would be at the info session because he wanted to catch up and help me get ready for interviews with his bank.
Another guy I met in October took a look at my resume, liked it, and then told me that he would get me an interview with his bank. He then proceeded to threaten me that if I screwed up the interview he would basically kill me, but I promised him that I would destroy the interview. In the winter, he did in fact get me an interview, and I did in fact destroy it - I got an offer from that bank. I didn't end up taking the offer, but it's just another example of how important it is to meet people when they come on campus for the full-time hiring. Even if they say that only seniors are allowed in the info sessions (which is extremely rare, usually anyone can come), if you can just get some one-on-one time and hand them your resume, you will be in a great position.
This all assumes that your resume looks good. I'm going to write a post soon about resumes, but at this time last year was when I was making some major revisions to my resume. It went from having Chuck E. Cheese (my first high school job) on it to looking like a banker-worthy document. I've put over 100 hours into that resume, and I continue to update it constantly. It's one of those things that you need to get up to a certain quality level as soon as possible.
Resume post to come...
Friday, August 22, 2008
History repeats itself
I don't know what it is about starting internships, but for some reason I always end up spending my first night on the ground. I flew out to Washington DC today and this morning the guy that just moved out of the place I'm moving into called me and said that he took the bed that was there and that there won't be a bed for me. Great. Apparently he's going to help me find a bed, but it's already 9:45 PM and I'm sitting on the floor of an empty bedroom. Oh well, at least I'm inside the house instead of out on the street like in New York. I guess the last internship turned out pretty well so hopefully this is a good sign that things are going to work out.
It's a bit different being in Washington DC because I've never been here before. I know maybe 3 people in the whole city, and not even that well. when I was in New York I had been there multiple times before and knew 30-40 people. I actually just want to get to work here because I think that will help me get over feeling alone out here.
I've been reading primers and news articles on the housing markets and it looks like it's going to be a very busy time for me out here. I'm still not exactly sure what I'll be doing on a day-to-day basis, but whatever it is it will be interesting stuff.
So as far as the job search goes, I haven't accepted my offer yet and am talking to other places just to see what else is out there. It's amazing to me how different it is when you contact people and you can say, "I have a full-time offer at XX bank and this fall I'm going to do an internship at the Treasury." Whereas before they would give me some excuse about why they couldn't help me out, suddenly all these people are interested in talking to me. That's great with me, but it's interesting to see how things change when people think you might add value to their firm. It's been WAY easier to contact different banks and get opportunities to meet with people, even at firms that were not even an option before.
Well I'm going to go create a place to sleep, but the internship is getting started!
It's a bit different being in Washington DC because I've never been here before. I know maybe 3 people in the whole city, and not even that well. when I was in New York I had been there multiple times before and knew 30-40 people. I actually just want to get to work here because I think that will help me get over feeling alone out here.
I've been reading primers and news articles on the housing markets and it looks like it's going to be a very busy time for me out here. I'm still not exactly sure what I'll be doing on a day-to-day basis, but whatever it is it will be interesting stuff.
So as far as the job search goes, I haven't accepted my offer yet and am talking to other places just to see what else is out there. It's amazing to me how different it is when you contact people and you can say, "I have a full-time offer at XX bank and this fall I'm going to do an internship at the Treasury." Whereas before they would give me some excuse about why they couldn't help me out, suddenly all these people are interested in talking to me. That's great with me, but it's interesting to see how things change when people think you might add value to their firm. It's been WAY easier to contact different banks and get opportunities to meet with people, even at firms that were not even an option before.
Well I'm going to go create a place to sleep, but the internship is getting started!
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Back of a $10 bill
Hello everybody -
Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be continuing my blog! I got an internship for the fall semester working at the US Treasury in Washington DC. While I probably won't talk a lot about what I'm doing there day-to-day, I'll keep you all filled in on recruiting season and how things turn out with accepting offers and things like that. Once again, if you have questions then post a comment!
I'm going to work on the back of the $10 bill!
Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be continuing my blog! I got an internship for the fall semester working at the US Treasury in Washington DC. While I probably won't talk a lot about what I'm doing there day-to-day, I'll keep you all filled in on recruiting season and how things turn out with accepting offers and things like that. Once again, if you have questions then post a comment!
I'm going to work on the back of the $10 bill!
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