An incoming Morgan Stanley summer analyst recommends preparing 6-7 personal stories from the past two years and extracting 2-3 core competencies from each to adapt to HireVue video questions. They also stress good lighting, camera quality, and wearing a full suit to look professional on screen.
Yeah, have you got any tips on HireVue?
Um, I think HireVue was probably the, the part of the application process that I found the hardest because I think with, with your tests and your, you know, assessment centers and interviews, you can prepare for them fairly well. But I found with HireVue, there's always one or two questions that do end up catching you, catching you off guard. Um, and I think The way I approached it this time around was, as opposed to preparing for every single question and trying to get like a model answer for every question, instead I had say like 6 or 7 scenarios that I'd been in over say the past 2 years, whether it's something, something at uni or on an internship or on placement. And from those scenarios, I try and pick say like 2 or 3 key sort of key skills or key attributes from, from that sort of story. So I try and think of something that shows, say, like your teamwork, leadership, and communication. And then yeah, if you have like 6 or 7 of those, there's not many questions that can come up where you can't adapt that story to that scenario. So I think that's, that's probably the main thing, because it then comes across more natural as well when you're giving your response, rather than just having this script. It's more, you know what you've done, and then you can apply it to that exact fact scenario, having a camera, a good camera, and a, um, like the light in the right place, it does make a difference. Because when I suppose when you look at yourself on the screen, you want to know that you're coming across well and you're presentable. And I think yes, consciously it does, it does make a big difference.
Yeah, so maybe a silly question to ask, but so what, what, what did you wear when you do these things? I mean, how smart do you go when someone says professional? What does that mean?
Um, I think I'm pretty sure what I did, I, I wore a full suit. Um, yeah, I think for pretty much all of them I wore a full suit just because I think, yeah, you can't really go wrong if you're, yeah, just dressed as, as smart as you can. The, um, the competency interview might have been with an MD because they want to see, um, I suppose you can be tested on your technical stuff by anyone in the bank, but it's more that the senior people want to see whether you'll actually be a good fit for, for that environment. And the other thing that I did was I got a lot of my sort of applications out the way before I came back to uni. So I think our term starts on the 1st of October. So I knew before I got back, I wanted to get as many applications out as possible and have gone through most of the stages, you know, obviously interviews and assessment centers come later on, but I wanted to get the bulk of it out the way. And I think as well, when you, when you go back to uni, you've got so much going on, you know, you've got your degree, um, you play sport at uni, you've got— you want to socialize, that sort of thing. And I think the first thing that, that you end up sort of slacking on is your applications. That's why I think getting them done beforehand is, is really helpful, because you can actually, you know, spend the day and go, I'm going to do this test and this IvyU, and you actually put some preparation into it and do a good job of it. Rather than— I think, you know, there's people I know at uni who say doing a test in the library and it's just you're not actually giving it a proper go, you're just doing it for the sake of it. Whereas actually, I think really focusing on it and knowing you want to do well at it and practicing it is— yeah, I think it's probably better to do just in your own space. And I think what I did, which I was quite careful on this year, was only really applying to one or two divisions, because in previous years I'd have just applied to anything that came out, whereas this year I decided, like, I know I didn't want to do investment banking, I knew I didn't want to do consulting, um, but I was fixed on doing sales and trading or commodities trading. So I, I only applied to, to those roles. And I think the benefit of that is that, well, firstly, you have less tests to do and you have less IVUs to do, so the ones you, you do end up doing, you can focus on more. And I think you end up doing a lot better in a few rather than doing average in, in lots of them. And I think especially to get through to the next rounds, you do need to be hitting, you know, the top, the top marks in the tests. So I think that was one thing I did was just, um, yeah, really just focusing on a small set of applications rather than just trying to go for everything. And I think as well on that as well, when you then get to an interview, you've then only really prepared for one type of thing. And yeah, it, it, when people are trying to find out your like motivations for the role and why you actually want to do it, I think it comes across a lot more genuine because you have only applied for that role and you've put all your energy and time into, into preparing for that. Everyone goes through a lot of rejections in, in like this process, and I did myself, but I think The main thing is really just to like to keep going with it and just knowing that it is very much part of the process and it's not a reflection on your character or your ability, but it's just these places get so many applications that it might just be that the tiniest thing, yeah, the smallest reason why you didn't get through. So I think you really do just have to not take it personally and just and get on with it and keep Have a strategy and stick to that no matter, you know, no matter what happens. Yeah, I think, um, that was quite a big thing that I did this time around was especially, um, if I had an interview, I would, um, yeah, I'd basically just go on LinkedIn, um, find people that work at the company. I'll find someone who's, say, been there for a year and is in their sort of role or division that I want to go into, and, um, I'll just send them a message, sort of introduce myself, explain my situation. And people are usually more than happy just to send a quick message with some advice or, you know, happy to have a quick call. But I think there were a lot of people that didn't respond, and I think which is completely fair enough because I know people are busy. And I think the way around that is to get started early. So if, say, 6 months ago I just started reaching out to these people and more, um, trying to give something in return before asking for anything and sort of building up a bit of a relationship beforehand. And then when the time comes, people are actually really willing to help because you've already built up that relationship beforehand. But I think, yeah, looking ahead is, is sometimes you just don't really think to do. But that's one bit of advice that I would give, is, is to really get started early on the networking because Yeah, just getting some advice on interviews a week before you go in, it, it does make a difference.
