Step 1: Before the Interview – Preparation

Before the interview, you want to prepare for different types of interview questions. In a Strats Interview, you will typically be asked behavioural questions, finance questions and technical questions (including brainteasers). Below, I show you how to prepare for these three categories of interview questions

1. Behavioural Questions

As you can see, I am starting with the easiest first. Why? Because these types of questions you can always prepare for! If you feel you already know how to ace behavioural questions, feel free to skip this category. So, let us go through a few behavioural questions.

a.

The first question you are probably going to get asked is: “Tell me about yourself” or another variation. When you get asked this, you should straight off tell them what you have already prepared. Prepare a < 2 minute brief about yourself, but remember only about your career self! I recommend something along the lines:
“My name is Jessica Pointing; I am a sophomore at MIT studying Physics and Computer. This summer, I did an internship at Morgan Stanley as a Strat Summer Analyst. I worked on a tool that saved the firm X amount of money. At MIT, I am involved in… I really enjoy doing X and that is why I would like an opportunity to be a Strats Analyst at X”

b.

After that, you may get asked questions about your resume. KNOW YOUR RESUME. “Of course I know my resume” you say. Surprisingly, however, you can get caught up on questions about your resume! Let me give you a couple of examples. On my resume, I had the courses I had taken – one was a biology course. Then, in an interview, my interviewer had done a PhD in Biology and started asking me technical questions about that biology course! That tripped me up. Another example is an organisation you are involved in. I work at my college newspaper, and the interviewer started asking me questions about our revenue, our profit now and ten years ago! So, try to know as much as possible about your resume.

c.

Other typical behavioural questions include “Tell me your strengths”, “Tell me about a challenging time” etc. I am not going to go too much into these. I recommend that you look up common behavioural questions and then write answers to them. Yes, write down your answers. But DO NOT memorise your answers. Write down a general outline of a situation that would answer the question.

d.

Although these are not exactly ‘behavioural questions’ you may get asked about the role you are applying for and the firm you are applying for. Know about the firm you are applying to – know their general information about it such as the year they were founded, where their headquarters are, the CEO etc. Then, also know the role you are applying for – what do they do? For example, Morgan Stanley has this nice overview of the Strats role.

Strats interviews, in my opinion, focus less on behavioural questions in comparison to, for example, investment banking interviews. Know your behavioural questions, and get prepared for the next category of questions.

2. Finance Questions

Finance questions are less easy to prepare for compared to behavioural questions, since there are many financial things they could ask you. However, there are some general financial questions which you can prepare for:

a.

Read a recent article about the firm or the group you are applying for. I was asked in my interview ‘Tell me about a recent article you read’. Voila! Then I told them. Easy, huh? As long as you read an article. I recommend reading at least two articles on something very recent (within the last couple of days). It may not be too easy though – they may quiz you about certain things you mention. For example, I told my interviewers that I read that Morgan Stanley helped in the largest IPO in history. “Ahh, what is an IPO” they asked me. “An IPO is an initial public offering – the first sale of stock by a company to the public” I replied. “Why would a company do that?” they asked me… And the questions go on.

b.

Know something about the group you are applying for. For example, if you are interviewing with the ‘Securitized Products Group’ try and read something about Securitized Products. What is a securitized product?

c.

They might quiz you on general financial concepts, such as “What happens to bond prices as interest rates go down?” “Bond prices go up!!”

3. Technical questions

Oh boy. These are the fun ones (and the trickiest in my opinion). We could have included the above financial questions as technical questions but when I am saying technical questions, I mean programming, probability and brain-teasers. Let us start one by one:

a. Programming

A strats role may involve programming and thus you could be quized on this. Before we begin though, make sure you are honest with them with your abilities. If they ask you how much programming do you know and you blurt that you are a fluent programmer, they will probably ask you more difficult questions that could trip you up. I mentioned that I took a basic introduction to computer science course and thus they asked me basic programming questions.

b. Probability

I got a few probability questions. Ahh. You should know probability basics such as the probability of rolling a ‘1’ on a die is 1/6. No, it won’t be that easy. They will ask you about a 20-sided die with different conditions… But from there, you can use the simple concepts to figure out a solution to more complicated situations. Look up different dice probability questions and have a go at some of them.

c. College Course questions

If you have taken a differential course and they know that, they may ask you to solve a differential question. If you have taken an electricity and magnetism course, they may ask you to derive the charge in the circuit… Yes, I have been asked such things :O

d. Brain-teasers

Ahhhhh. The majority of questions I got asked were some sort of brainteasers. But they were logical ones – not silly ones like ‘come up with some peculiar solution that requires no logic’. Here are a few brainteasers:

– You have 25 horses. What is the minimum number of races in order to find the top 3? In one race you can race up to 5 horses, and you don’t have a timer.
– If you had a stack of pennies as tall as the Empire State Building, could you fit them all in one room, the size of a typical bedroom?
– You have 12 balls. All of them weigh the same except one, which is either heavier or lighter than the rest. You have a scale but the maximum amount of times it can be used is three.  Identify the different ball, and state whether it is heavier or lighter.

You can find the answers somewhere on the Internet  🙂

How do you approach Brainteasers since there are so many ones?!

Step 1: Get a pen and paper and START WRITING. (unless they said no strict pen and paper). It is much easier to keep track of what you are doing when you can see it rather than it floating in your head. Write down the question. Draw diagrams of the elements involved. Start writing, please.

Step 2: Talk. Just keep talking. This may seem the less natural, because when you are in a test and figuring out a problem, you can’t talk. In an interview, however, you are being assessed by what you say and your thought process. How can they know your thought process if you are not telling them? How do you tell your thought process? SAY WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. For example, let’s say you think there are two possible ways to do it but you are not sure which way will lead you to the right path. SAY IT. They may actually HELP YOU and tell you that one path will probably be better. If, instead, they say “hmm interesting ok”, then pick one path and explain why you have picked that path instead of the other one.

Step 3: DO NOT BLURT OUT AN ANSWER WITHOUT THINKING. Again, they want to hear your thought process. Blurting out a random answer is showing nothing.

Step 4: What happens if you have no idea where to start? Try starting from the bottom up or the top down. For example, if an interviewer asks a brainteaser involving 100 dogs, try and figure out the situation with 1 or 2 or 3 dogs and you might figure out a pattern.
Step 5: Do not be worried if you do not arrive at the answer by yourself. Sometimes, the interviewer will help you and you may feel bad about it. But that’s fine. Again, it is about the thought process – not whether you come up with the perfect answer, although that helps 😛

4. Your Questions

“Wait, this category was not mentioned?” you say. No it was not, because this category does not include questions they ask you – it is the category of questions you ask them! Yes, that needs preparation too. I find this pretty difficult, because you need to ask them smart questions and it is hard to ask smart questions when you have no idea what they do. Hopefully, your research comes handy. Several questions I like asking that are generic:
– How did you get into finance/this specific role?
– What is the profile of someone who does really well in your group?
– What is the profile of someone who does not do well in your group?

Pheww. Looks like I have gone through the three categories. So what are my highlights to take away?

1. Know common behavioural questions and prepare answers in advance
2. Read the most recent news
3. When asked a technical question, say what you are thinking and write
4. Prepare questions to ask

Now, here comes the big day…

Step 2: On the day

You have prepared… somewhat and now you are ready for the day. What should you do? If you are doing a phone interview…

1. Find a room to do the phone interview in preferably before the big day.

2. Make sure the room is quiet and even put a sign on the door of the room saying “In an interview from X to Y. Please do not disturb”. You definitely do not want something barging through your room mid-interview.

3. Print out pages of stuff. During a phone interview, you can usually have documents in front of you (unless they tell you strictly not). “What sort of documents?” you ask. I recommend having a copy of your resume, a copy of the job description, a copy of a few articles you read, and maybe even copies of your answers to behavioural questions.

4. Make sure your phone is working, and all other technology you shall be using. Use a headset.

5. Speak well! Remember the bulk of their impression of you is coming from the tone of your voice. Yes, the TONE. So, speak enthusiastically (but please not obviously fake). Do not speak monotone and try and engage them. Speak like you are having a conversation.
6. Grab their information!! If the recruiters did not give you their contact, ask them for their email. You will need it later…

Step 3: After the Interview

Well done, you made it. Or at least you will make it if you are reading this before your interview. Now what do you do? I recommend writing down all the questions they asked you and other things you discussed. Then, send out each interviewer an email thanking them for the interview and mention things you discussed.

Well those steps got progressively shorter. Yes, indeed they did. The hardest part is preparation. Once you have that, there is less to do. Feel free to comment below to ask any more questions. A few resources I recommend for the interview are:

– “Vault Guide to Finance Interviews” – they have a brainteaser section at the bottom
– ” The 400 Investment Banking Questions & Answers you need to know” – they also have some brainteasers – yay!