Crushing Your Interviews

With summer internships quickly wrapping up and a new season of recruiting beginning, many of my younger friends have begun reaching out with questions about interview preparation. In talking to them about the types of roles they were interested in, I realized there was some advice for interviewing that was applicable to problem-solvers, analysts and creatives alike. The rest of this piece will lay out some key strategies that will make all the difference between crushing and getting crushed by your interviews.

This article covers general behavioral interviewing, overarching advice & tactical interviewing advice for cases and finance interviews — feel free to jump to what makes the most sense for you.

Before we dive in, I wanted to give a massive thank you to Eryn Cohen, one of the most talented and brilliant writers and thinkers I have had the pleasure of knowing. She's played an absolutely pivotal role in these last two pieces, couldn't have done it without you, E.

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Do your research.

I am always so surprised when I hear someone walk out of an interview and say “I had no idea what to expect walking into that.” There is no problem with being caught off guard; as a matter of fact, some interviews are structured to do just that and see how you fare. However, there is no reason to walk into the interview totally in the dark. Oftentimes, students feel awkward asking what the interviews are like, but rest assured, it is completely appropriate to ask a recruiter or someone you’re networking with what to expect.

But you can’t just stop there; It is important to go beyond this. For example, just learning that there are cases involved in the interviews is not enough. Use the time you have with people at the company to understand if it is perhaps a Bain-esque, interviewee-lead interview or possibly a calculator-in-hand case with managers at Capital One. By having a firm grasp on what you’re getting into, you’ll be able to adequately prepare and work much much smarter.

Pro Tip: One of my favorite questions to ask on a phone call is “If you were in my position, how would you recommend I spend my time leading up to the interviews?” It shows you’re sincerely seeking their advice and gives you clear action items to work on.

Start with Why.

Simon Senek coined this philosophy as a way to ensure he was taking a sincere approach to all that he did. He gave a TED Talk on the topic and wrote a book on it as well—both are absolute gold and are great practices to incorporate into your interviewing technique (and life more broadly for that matter). Senek conveys the message that if you explain something starting with your sense of purpose and motivation and then connect it back to the specific things you do, you’ll come off infinitely more genuine. And nothing sours an interview like sounding fake. 

Getting in the habit of leading with your values when answering questions is a surefire way to demonstrate honesty in your interviews and life more broadly.

Understand how the company makes money.

In my experience, one of the highest leverage exercises in preparing for interviews is understanding the business case for the company’s different products and initiatives. 

To explain what I mean here I’m going to walk through exactly what I did to prepare for Capital One. One of their main revenue drivers is their credit cards business. To better understand how they monetized the business, I built out a rough formula of the unit economics, gathering all the revenue and cost drivers, how they were denominated and how they filtered to the bottom line. In the process of doing this I came across concepts such as charge-offs, interchange, cost of rewards and cost of funds. After thinking through which ones were variable vs. fixed it became much much easier to think through what levers the company could play with to drive a certain outcome. 

After finishing the credit cards business, I moved onto auto-finance, commercial lending and so on until I had broken down the economics and strategy for why and how each business exists.

Having a solid of an understanding of how the company operates is wildly helpful in crushing your interviews. Even though it might seem labor intensive, it gives you a massive leg up in terms of not needing to actively learn new concepts and terms during the interview, allowing you to spend your time (and brain power) solving the problem and connecting with your interviewer.

Practice the Game-Day attitude.

At the end of the day interviewing with firms serves two purposes: it provides you with (1) an avenue to the job offer and (2) a way to self assess. While most people get caught up in the first area (and rightfully so, it is your career after all), working on strengthening the second area is critical to becoming a resilient interviewer.

Let’s use a sports analogy: A regular season is made up of practices, down-time, scrimmages and game days. Each is critical to developing a winning team. I find that bringing the same mentality to interviewing is a great way to anchor your journey through the process. 

First, take practice seriously. When you are preparing for your interviews, put on your game face and really lean into what you are working on. Dedicate 100% of yourself to it — no distractions. What you get in, is what you get out. 

Don’t burn out. When it is time to relax, it is time to relax. It lets what you’ve learned from the practice set in and keeps you thinking fresh. Overworking yourself is a great example of working harder rather than smarter. 

Just as scrimmages give you a taste of competition, mock interviews mimic the circumstances and pressure you will face coming soon. Take these seriously and see them as a low-risk way to identify areas of weakness in your strategy and game. You can use these to guide your practice leading up interview day.

Game day. What we have all been waiting for. A chance for you to give it your all and leave it all out there. You walk in confident and as well prepared as you could possibly be given your circumstances. When it is all over, take note of areas to improve on and give yourself credit for the things you did well. If things didn’t go your way, don’t beat yourself up and lose your composure — just get back to practice and run it back as hard as you can. 

Embodying the game-day mentality will help you see real value in the interview rather than being hyper-focused on the job offer itself. It will also make you a better candidate and professional moving forward. 

Master behavioral Interviewing.

As you do your research, practice, and eventually begin to formally interview, you’ll see a few types of questions start to come up more and more. Based on my experience, I compiled a list of what I believe to be the ‘core topics:

1. Tell me about yourself OR walk me through your resume
2. Why this firm? 
3. A question about my interests
4. Tell me about your role on a team (or some other teamwork question variation)
5. A question about a meaningful project 

These are your table-stake questions, and chances are you’ll be seeing them often as you interview. Use this to your advantage though and practice them to a point where you can start your interview on the right foot. The above questions are typically called behavioral interview questions and are used to understand who you are as a person. In my eyes, the absolute cornerstone of good behavioral interviewing is remembering that powerful Simon Senek philosophy: “Start with Why.” 

To tackle the first question, I shoot for 90-120 seconds — you never want to rant in your answers. There are multiple strategies for answering this, but I find a chronological account of your life to be the easiest to understand. Begin with where you are from and something that colors your life experience (if you moved around a lot growing up, feel free to substitute that in for this part). If it were me, I would say something like: “My name is Zane Homsi. I grew up in Northern Virginia, but traveled a ton back and forth to Syria since that's where most of my family was growing up.” Next, mention where you go to school and what you’re studying. Third, you’ll want to mention your involvements at school and wind up covering your professional experiences as well. My favorite thing to do is to close an interview with something totally unrelated to your professional self, something that humanizes you. I tend to end with: “and on a personal note, I love listening to and dancing to Latin music and in my free time, I enjoy watching soccer; my favorite team is Arsenal.” Those closing remarks help to show that you’re not just a resume — you’re a person too. Answering this introductory question in such a way sets up the rest of the interview to have a more conversational tone. 

For the second question, make sure you’ve taken a look at Simon’s TED Talk. To me, the best answers go something along these lines: “I knew I was interested in x and y, but wanted to validate those interests, so I pursued an internship at blank. While there, I realized what I liked most was blank and as a result, I started looking for opportunities that were focused on that. Lo and behold, this role was exactly that and is why I am so excited to be here!” Once you fill in the blanks with something honest and meaningful, you’ve got yourself a solid answer.

For the “tell me about a time” type questions, I defer to the STAR method. I found that it does the best job of showing rather than telling. I don’t recommend being as static as the acronym will have you, so be sure to practice your answers so that you can seem more fluid in your delivery.

The rest of this article is split up by job type: case interviewing for consulting and technical interviews for finance-oriented roles.eel free to jump to what makes sense for you.

Ace the Case.

This might sound strange, but in terms of technical interviews, case interviewing is my absolute favorite. It is the type of interviewing that has the highest return on your time spent practicing.

To prepare for case interviews, begin by watching one so you know what to expect.

After you’ve watched the interview, read Case In Point by Marc Cosentino cover to cover, but do not practice any cases yet. Now that you have seen a case interview and vaguely understand how to approach one, watch another interview to connect it with your newfound case knowledge.

The final step is to practice. Your first two or three cases will feel awkward and contrived, but that’s how you know you’re doing it right! Find someone to run cases with you and give you feedback. The best case scenario is if you can ask someone who works at your target firm or industry to run a mock interview with you. By the time you’re at practice case #11 or #12, you’ll be a well-oiled machine and know exactly how to shine. 

The day before your interview I recommend going through the process of building out the frameworks for 10 or so cases, if you can't find any more new ones, old ones will suffice. Great frameworks make for great cases.

The next two tips assume you have some background in case interviewing:

Pro Tip: When you present a framework, end with where you think you want to start. Even if you are wrong it shows you are taking initiative and thinking ahead, which is super valuable.

Pro Tip: In designing your framework, see if you can push your creativity by introducing a new analysis vertical that might be outside of the box. There isn’t much room to be creative in cases since there is usually some definitive end goal, so this is a surefire way to show you’re pushing the right-brain. 

Tackling the Finance Interview.

Finance interviewing is an interesting thing. It is easy to confuse it for a memorization game, but don’t be fooled, there is no substitute for a solid understanding. Despite realizing these weren’t the careers for me, these tactics served me well when I was interviewing for those roles in my second and third year of school. If you are going in cold, there are two central concepts to make sure you understand: 

1. Time-Value of Money
2. The Efficient Market Hypothesis 

The reason these two are so important is that nearly all the questions you could get asked are rooted in one or the other. For investment banking, there are a number of guides floating around that give you a list of topics to prepare for. My favorites are the Breaking Into Wall Street 400 Question guide and the Rosenbaum Perl guide. 

After having read up on the two topics and gone through the guides, open Excel and try building models. Build a very basic DCF and start playing with the numbers to see just how powerful the inputs are — change up the WACC, tax rate, predicted CAGR and so on. Then, download a company’s 10K and see how the financial statements fit together. Maybe even calculate some of these measures yourself: EBITDA, Free Cash Flows, WACC, etc. 

If investment banking isn’t your jam and you’re more of a markets person, the first thing to do is to understand how the financial system fits together in a macroeconomic sense. The best way to do this would be to crack open an AP Macroeconomics textbook and focus on getting a good grasp of supply & demand, the effects of taxes, opportunity cost, interest rates and government policy. Once you learn how to piece everything together, try understanding the efficient market hypothesis and the power of diversification. 

The final thing to do is to understand a general overview of relevant market events up to the present. There are a ton of monthly market summaries and free content issued by different asset managers. Gather the past twelve months of market summaries and put a narrative together so that you can summarize the last year to someone in basic terms. Starting now, get into the habit of parsing through reports by different financial institutions to stay up to date while developing your own personal take on the market (JP Morgan Asset Management, KKR, etc.).

With this preparation done, the final step is to do some finance interview practice runs. Similar to case interviewing, see if you can connect with someone in your target industry or firm, and ask if they can mock-interview you. By having more repetitions under your belt, you’ll have less to worry about when you are interviewing for the job itself.

What are some of the best interviewing strategies you have found successful? Would love to hear your thoughts below!