Behavioral Interviews: Formulating Your Story

                                    

Almost 80% of the questions you are asked during the behavioral portion of your interview are related to your story. Candidates never win offers based solely on their technical skills. In my previous post, I explain how to structure your story. This post addresses the two main points you should remember when formulating your answer.

Be Interesting
Interviewers look for candidates who can pass the “airport test”. Are you the type of person I wouldn’t mind being stuck in an airport with? The key to having a causal conversation is being a “well-rounded” person. Have interests outside of finance. I’m sure you’re all every interesting people, but remember this is still an interview.

  • Pick a few interests that demonstrate your potential leadership, creativity, stamina, or intelligence. Here are a few examples:
  • Games are awesome. Pick a sport you’ve played. I’m guessing that you know about the sport so you can converse about the stamina, leadership, as well as competitive spirit needed to partake.
  • Pick a hobby that requires intellect or strategic thinking. Personally, I’m an FAA certified pilot.
  • Do you have a study/ work abroad experience? This is a great conversation topic. Be sure to focus on the studying part and less on the partying.
  • Mentioning you know a language is pretty cool as well. Just be sure you can speak the language in the fluency you portray. Be honest for all of your interests, because you will have to talk about them.

Remember playing those icebreaker games in high school? Thinking about what you’re known for and talking about that will set you apart from the rest of the candidates.

List these at the bottom of our resume under the interest portion. I once had an interview where I spent 30 minutes talking about Bob Barker and the Price is Right because I have “game shows” listed as an interest.    

Spinning Your Background Story
The great thing about you story, you can frame it how you want to. Are you going into the interview with non-finance experience? Similar to “bankifying” your resume, you need to be able to connect your story to the banking job you are applying for. Turn your experience’s associated weakness into a strengths.

  • Engineering - Focus on your communication skills
  • Arts and Science or Lawyer - Explain your analytical attributes
  • Pre-Med - Demonstrate how you’re outgoing
  • Corporate Finance/Sales/Consulting - Have the work stamina

On the other hand, if you have worked in banking, your interview will be monopolized by questions about your deal experience. Spend time creating a list of projects you worked on, your impact, and the outcome.

Behavioral Interviews: “Out of the Box” Questions

                              Don Draper Pressure and Creativity

I decided to add another section to the Behavioral Interviews section. There are often times during interviews where the interviewer asks “fun”, outside the box questions. Many times, they are trying to throw you off balance, test your creativity, or gain a better understanding of how you think.

Regardless of the reason, the worst thing you can do is have no answer or take the questions too seriously. Remember, bankers look for candidates who they would like working with. Below are a few of the common “out of the box” questions and ways to correctly answer them.

1) Brain Teasers

Thought by some as pointless, I find brain teasers fun. However, during an interview, you are being judged and should be able to explain your thought process logically. During my sophomore year summer, I picked up the book: “How Would You Move Mount Fuji?”. At the time, this was the best. Now, I would recommend the Khan Academy brain teasers videos since they illustrate systematic solutions.

If you are interviewing for sales and trading positions, practice your mental math calculations and estimation skills. For mental math, I recommend understanding these strategies . If you were asked, which is bigger, 64^2 or 63x65, answer 4x4 is 16 and 3x5 is 15 so 64^2 is higher. Another question asked might be what is 27x42? Breakdown the function according to the distributive property into manageable portions (i.e., (20+7)x(40+2)= 800+40+280+14) resulting in an answer of 1134.

An example of an estimation question I received was, “How many pennies stacked would it take to reach to the top of the Sears Tower (Willis Tower)?” I answered by claiming a stack of 100 pennies is a foot long, there are 9 feet making up a floor, and 120 floors (including the antenna). The result is 96,000 pennies. Another question I got was how many McDonald’s are there in the US? Breakdown the problem in a similar fashion (e.g., instead by area, city, and then state). The resulting solution doesn’t have to be correct, your math and logic does.

I heard rumors that back in the day, Morgan Stanley would have candidates sit in a room and not talk to them for an entire 30 minutes while three interviewers just stared. Another story I heard was at the end of the interview, they asked the candidates to open a window that had been sealed shut before hand. Interviewers would then giggle as they struggled and then admitted defeat. One interviewee got so angry that he threw a chair and broke it open!

All of these methods seem silly, but that is beside the point. Chances are high that you will encounter these questions and situations. Focus on anticipating them and reacting calmly.

2) Skill and Interests Questions

Know your skills and interests, while nothing is off limits, these will most likely be talked about in at least a few of your interviews. I once spent an entire interview (35 minutes) at BarCap talking about the Price Is Right because I had “game shows” listed as an interest on the bottom of my resume. This is a good sign, and I ended up with an offer.

Nothing on your resume is off limits. Interviewers will steer the interview towards less serious topics to make you feel more comfortable and get a better sense of the candidate. Asking what you do in your free time, what are your favorite movies and TV shows are, and your opinion on political issues test your simple conversational skills.

The key for these questions is to remember to keep your guard up. Personally, I pretend I am a formal dinner party. Avoid saying anything controversial and make sure you know about your own interests! Lastly, if you list a language, you must know it well enough to describe your last internship in that tongue.

3) Creative Questions

If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be? This is the creative question I received at my Goldman Sachs’ internship interview. My answer, “Pineapple. Spiky on the outside, but sweet on the inside.”

The goal is to express your personality, and not be too serious. The interviewer is trying to see what makes you “cool” compared to the other candidates.

Another common question: tell me a joke. Again, don’t be controversial (i.e., racist or sexist) instead say something like, “What is the difference between a vulture and a consultant? One get frequent flyer miles.” Haha.

In the end, bankers are not looking for “nerds” or “geeks”, they want people who can navigate awkward situations by communicating effectively. Practicing these questions can mean the difference between getting along with the interviewer and bombing the opportunity. If you want to close, you have to answer these questions correctly.

If you have any stories of your own relating to “out of the box” situations during investment banking interviews, please share them in the comments section bellow.

Behavioral Interviews: Leadership and Teamwork

                               

Banking is done in teams. Therefore, leadership and teamwork questions generally come up in every interview. Here are some general guidelines I like to follow when answering these types of questions:

  • Keep two stories ready. One of an adverse team encounter and another of a successful one.
  • When answering these questions I start by describing the team situation, the goal of the activity, and my role.  I continue by talking about how I worked with my team to accomplish my goals. Then end the story by talking about end success.
  • Remember to be a helpful team player and a moderate leader.

For my failure or adverse team interaction situation, I prefer to take the same position as I do with weakness and failure questions: choose a sincere, but not detrimental example.  My freshman year summer, I was approached by my friends to create a business blog because of my experience designing websites and passion for finance. Of course I knew what was involved to be successful- finding a niche topic, simple design, and a constant stream of posts. Unfortunately, one of my partners was too ambitious and decided he wanted to have a universal business blog, much like Seekingalpha.com. The only difference was we aren’t staffed to produce that kind of volume consistently. Due to conflicting personalities and visions, we decided to shut down the site.  I learned it is important to make sure teammates/ business partners are on the same page before starting a company.
 
When picking a success story, I like to pick something where my team triumphs over adversity. A couple semesters ago, I was working with a three classmates on competing in an intercollegiate stock pitch competition. Registrations had ended a month ago, but since another team dropped out, our school was asked to participate. Unfortunately, we assembled a team only 5 days before the event date. To top that off my other two teammates were having a tough time deciding how to outline our presentation. After arbitrating the situation and delegating the work according to our strengths, we were able to complete pitch by working 60 hours outside of school to place 3rd against twenty other colleges.
 
Those are my two examples. Finally, this post concludes the behavior interview portion of my review. Check out the updated list of all the interview questions here. Don’t hesitate to share your answers or leave questions in the comments section. Good luck with your interviews. May we all get offers.

Behavioral Interviews: Commitment and Dedication

                             

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

- Confucius

Banks aren’t hiring many new analysts. In fact, Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, and Goldman Sachs are all lowing their overhead by laying off investment bankers. In this economy it is especially important that banking candidates demonstrate that they can handle the extreme hours and are in it for the long haul. Here are a few of the main points I like to remember when convincing the interviewer I can handle the work:

  • Talk about how you are only interviewing for banking jobs. If you can’t do banking for the big firms, you’ll try the boutiques or transaction management at the Big 4, but you are only interviewing at banks.
  • If there is any talk about how long it would take for you to sign an offer or if you would accept. Simply state that you would sign right here, right now.
  • The support to back your dedication and commitment to banking should come from your “motivation” answer.
  • People can learn new things, but it is hard to change their attitudes. Demonstrate a positive attitude and remember you are easily expendable.

These points are important when articulating your commitment to banking. However, there is another aspect of this question, and that is your dedication to the firm. Answering this portion requires research of the firm and its culture. Here are a couple of answers I like to answer when conducting research before an interview:

  • Interview Background: What is the exact position you are interviewing for? Do you know who is going to be interviewing? What is the format of the interviews? Who do I know at the firm?
  • Firm Background: How big is the firm? What is a sentence that best describes their type of culture? What are some major and relevant transactions completed by the firm recently?
  • Culture Details: Why that firm specifically? Why their product group specifically?
  • Anything Interesting: Do they have any major diversity, charity or networking events that I could relate to?

Preparing answers for these common questions is a great opportunity to separate yourself from the other applicants.

Behavioral Interviews: Why Investment Banking? (Motivation)

                             

The economy is making interviewing for Wall Street positions harder. The lower demand puts pressure on interviewees to prepare harder. Convincing the interviewer of the reasons why you want to work 80 to 100 hours a weeks with an hourly salary of a McDonald’s manager is crucial to landing an offer. I try to introduce the answer when telling my story (section 5), however, there is always a chance for more detailed followup questions.

Before you can answer this question, it is important to understand what an investment banker does. I like to think of i-bankers as agents. However unlike Hollywood agents like Ari Gould, they advise companies on transactions and connect them with the appropriate buyer, seller, or investor. Senior level bankers are more involved in client relationships, while middle and junior level bankers work on executing the deal. 

On a day-to-day basis, analyst’s responsibilities include creating presentations, financial models, conducting research, and compiling any other marketing materials needed to complete the transaction. With all of that work, they will probably be the first one in the office and the last one to head home. Therefore, working well in teams, being hardworking, and paying attention to details are a few of the strengths required to earn and keep the job.

Now that we have established what a banker does, here is one possible way to answer the motivation question. Personally, after speaking with many people in the industry (cite them by name) and conducting my own research, I found that banking was a great chance for me to learn more about the business-side of technology. The significant amount of responsibility and exposure to management provide a practical way to understand the industry from the inside. I confirmed these points during my summer internship and realize that I want to work in banking for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, talking about a specific group that interests you can add credibility to your answer. Personally, I would like to be apart of the media, telecommunication, and technology product group since it gels with my story.  Of course, I am flexible when it comes to groups and office locations, but having a specific purpose separates prepared candidates from unprepared ones.

To summarize: showing you are aware of what banking entails; demonstrating you are capable of handling the work; connecting your passion for finance with your story; and explaining how you are into banking for the long-haul should provide you with a great answer to “why banking”. Also, and this goes without saying, don’t mention money as a motivator.