The Investment Bank Interview Playbook: Mastering Behaviour & Technical Questions

Hello and welcome to The Deal Room. Today we're leaving behind deals and we are talking all things interviews. Ant, I have seen you over the last few days in the office and you have been on call after call doing practice interviews, mock interviews, interview preparation as part of our academy process to deliver really high potential candidates into roles in finance. Uh, how's it been over the last few days?

It's been great. I mean, there's the, the quality actually, I would say, has never been higher. I don't know whether that's because there's just more information immediately available through social media, YouTube. People seem to have like trained up a decent amount. There's still definitely recurring areas I think that, um, we could talk about. That I think are quite easy fixes once you're aware of them. Commercial awareness, that's the name of the game, I think. I'd say that's probably the main area of deficiency a lot of people have, which we can talk about as well, which is when the world seems like it's a never-ending snowball of information and someone tells you, "Tell me about something in markets." There's definitely a way to structure those answers and and what to talk about, I think, in the current sense. So, yeah, happy to talk about it.

Yeah, we'll definitely get into some of those because I know that feeling when you're given a curveball question or even a question that you're expected to hit out of the park and suddenly your mind gets overwhelmed with all of the things that you want to say and you end up saying nothing. So this is a podcast for anyone that is thinking about or has got interviews coming up, would like a bit of a refresh on really what is best practice. We're going to deal with a few of the most commonly asked non-technical questions, and then we're also going to deal with a few of the most commonly asked technical questions, especially from an IBD investment side of things. So let's kick it off, Anne. Over the last few days, and obviously in your, with your experience, what is the kind of, what would you say is the kind of best practice in terms of interviews, more from a soft skill perspective? What stands out as good for you?

Yeah, I think, I think you made a really good point actually about there's so much preparation that you do ahead of an interview and it's almost like I must say these things because you've kind of rehearsed it and rehearsed it. And almost at that point you can lose sight of actually answering the question because you're just thinking about I need to insert these words to demonstrate that I'm ready for this role. So you have to be comfortable with your knowledge level in order for it to flow more freely in that way. Otherwise it can sound very scripted, and when it does, you lack that passion, that motivation, that authenticity. And that really is what an interview is about. I mean, let's face it, most of the roles— I know, I know there's definitely technical skills, But if someone has the intellectual curiosity, certain intellectual competencies, you can teach them this stuff. The whole point is you're taking them on at a grad level. So what they wanna see is, what are you like? Are you worth the investment of our and my time? Do I like you? And so how you are describing things, the way you're doing it is equally, if not more important than the actual content that you're saying. And so that's one of the main observations, I think.

Yeah. And how do you move away from being scripted to being natural, but also knowing that there are certain things that you want to pick up upon?

I think there is a lot of truth in preparation. If you know your subject matter well, what you will find is— and the example I always use to people when I'm in a forum with students, I say, right, someone tell me something they're interested in. And someone will say the yield curve, and I'll say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't wanna know about the yield curve. Tell me something you are genuinely interested about. And then someone will say something like F1 and okay. Okay. So tell me about F1. And they start telling me about every single nuance and it's like goosebumps on this person's skin. And they're like, they're, they're just so enthused. Their eyes are like double the size. And they're like, they're there in the seat of an F1 race sort of thing. I'm like, that's it. That's the, what you need. So think about it, you— what— how have you got to that level of knowledge about F1? You read the news, you follow it, you engage with it as a— as an event, you look at the pre-race events, you do— so you're consumed in the subject matter, which means then it's almost by osmosis, you're part of the conversation and it's natural. So I think you are kidding yourself a little bit if you want a job in one of these competitive fields and you're not super keen and enthusiastic about the subject, it just makes it really hard to sell it in a natural way.

Yeah. And I think that synthesis is so much of what we do across the whole— I mean, across the whole job spectrum, but especially in finance. You know, how do you take a lot of knowledge synthesize it into an investment case or synthesize it to your boss who has got the kind of too long, don't read approach to a lot of things. So yes, you may have this, you know, this fun, this massive load of knowledge about that particular thing, but how do I synthesize it so that I don't speak, so that I don't go into that minutiae of detail that quite frankly, we don't want. And we've all been in a room where you've been interviewing someone and they've just gone off on one and it's 3 or 4 minutes later, you're checking your emails and you're thinking, when is this guy going to— I'm going to put him out of his misery.

Yeah. I mean, the reality is that when I used to recruit people for the macro research desk I worked on, I'd almost need to untrain them out of the academic way of thinking because I was very much tied to market timings. So things needed to happen pre-market open, when events announcements were happening. So we had multiple deadlines throughout the day. And so efficiency, translating quite complex matters, but, but making it concise, making it digestible for the traders, was the art. And it was almost like less is more. So translating that into interview talk, you know, one of the techniques that we try to encourage is this structuring of answers. So that you frame them appropriately with the beginning, which is, okay, so what do I think about this? Well, here are the 3 reasons why I think this, ABC. And then you spend maybe 20 seconds explaining each one of the 3 points, and then you conclude to reaffirm what it is that you were saying. So it's kind of totally bedded into the interviewer's head. So that, that's how you would do it. When I used to do the morning calls, for example, with a whole room of traders they have no time for me to faff about. It's, "Ant, tell me what I need to know and then go away." And I was kind of cool with that because it put me under some pressure, which helped me improve. And that was the reality of the situation. The market's gonna open. It's not gonna wait for me to explain something because it's new or complex. If it's complex, well, then I just needed to get in earlier and figure out how could I deconstruct it into the same time slot as I would normally do? So yeah, that's the reality of it.

Yeah, I, I, I love that rule of 3. Uh, I try, I use it quite a lot and it's just a really nice way of structuring and it's actually a really nice way of receiving information as well. The other thing I would do in terms of preparation is weirdly enough, listening back to yourself is cringe, but it's good. And it will usually give you a couple of indicators as to whether you are talking too quickly. In fact, it's almost certain that you will be talking too quickly. I think one of the benefits of actually doing this podcast with you, Anthony, is you learn how to speak a little bit slower because it's always good to get off in a rush of energy and speak really quickly. But if you're on the other end of the line, You're kind of, it's all glossing over you. So just listen to yourself a couple of times, maybe do it with your partner or whatever it might be, and just get that feedback. You know, you're doing it, you're too quick, you're too slow, you're umming and ahhing too much, and it will really help. It would definitely pay dividends.

Yeah. Another invisible cue that I think gets forgotten as well is your body language in a sense of two sides. One, your body language when you're speaking, and then also when you're receiving information from the interviewer. And then in a virtual format, when someone else is answering a question, what do you look like on camera? And one of the things I was seeing in these group sessions was, and I could, I can sympathize with this, you know, we are purposely throwing curveballs at people because we want them to feel a bit of pressure in a real life situation. And it's almost like 'Phew, he didn't pick me. Oh, thank goodness.' And you can see them in their chair just kind of like zone out, and they look totally disengaged from part of the session. And for me, I look at that, and I was watching all of them going, 'Well, that's not the type of team player I want, you know, on my side.' I want someone to be supportive and look engaged and look proactively like they're listening, even if they're not. You can almost sell that that physicality of you that you're interested in taking part of that discussion.

Yeah, it's so interesting. So on the IBD academies that we run, so we do these M&A finance accelerators, which a lot of our audience would've taken part in, but the high potential candidates go through to the academy. And as part of the academy, groups, teams do presentations. And we always encourage the teams that are not doing presentations to write a question, to think of a really engaging question that represents what, what that presentation has spoken about. And actually for us, because, you know, we're assessing candidates as we go, for us, anyone that has asked a smart question showing that they haven't just done their bit and then, yeah, as you said, turned off their camera and gone and made a cup of tea, that for us is just kind of 10x value add in terms of our way of assessing. And it really shows that you're, you're up for the whole session.

Yeah. My, my final kind of observation before we talk a little bit more technical questions is we had this one student and was fantastic. They're probably gonna be listening to this, so hats off. I think you've got a very bright future ahead. But his story was he'd already done lots of— he's gone to a great business school, studied the right subjects, has done internships already. However, bolted onto that, a 2-time national 1500-meter champion of France has competed at a European championship level. So when you hear that kind of stuff, when someone says, tell me something unique about you, you're kind of like, that's pretty impressive. And I've heard some pretty amazing achievements over the years, meeting lots of different students. But one thing I'm always very conscious of is that not everyone has an equally impressive story to just pluck out of the hat. And that meaning that, you know, we all can't say we're international sportsmen as much as we might, might want to. And so one of the things I'm very clear to stress to students is what your goal is really is, if I'm an interviewer, I'm probably meeting several, if not even more students all in one intensive session. And academically, you're probably all very similar. So really what stays with me is if there's any unique story or fact about you as an individual which made you stand out. And that doesn't necessarily need to be this awesome high achieving thing. It could just be that it's just distinctly unique. Like you might have created an algorithm online to able to create an arbitrage between reselling of sneakers, For example, I'd be like, well, that's pretty cool because you know what, I'm actually a sneaker collector myself. So you've just hit the right spot for me individually. Or the one that always sticks in my mind from all the years I've ever talked to students or interviewed them was one girl once said to me, what's your unique thing? And she said, I roll my own sushi on a weekly basis. And I was like, this wasn't a Japanese person. I was like, okay, so So how did, how did you come about that? And what do you do? And what filling do you put in? And we talked for 20 minutes about rolling sushi. And at the end of it, because think about it, our rapport was so good at that point because we were just talking about something we both enjoy. I was like, I really like this person. They're already academically qualified because they're sat in front of me. So at that point, yes, this person goes on. So the point being is It doesn't have to be mega impressive, it just needs to be memorable.

Yeah. I once hired someone solely because their, their tell me something unique about you was that they placed in the top 20 in the FPL fantasy football last year, the year that we were out of, I don't know, 2 million people that play this thing. I have no idea that, I mean, that, I mean, I was totally bowled out, totally bowled over. Again, it was a little bit nerdy, but you know, what, you know, that's fantastic. And it shows great commitment, analytical skills, passion, you know, data analysis, all of this kind of stuff. But yeah, let's, um, let's get into a couple of questions. I'm going to ask you a few non-technical questions that tend to get asked in these interviews, and maybe you'll ask me a few technical questions. I'm going to start off with how the heck do you answer the question? So, um, Tell me about yourself. Horrible question to be asked.

Yeah, I, I think, um, yeah, there's definitely— this is— takes a lot of hard thinking to think about a couple of things. A, what is actually genuinely something that's unique to you? You do also need to be conscious of what is it that this role requires that I'm applying to. Hopefully the fact you've landed in the position in an interview the two are succinctly aligned. So you want to be, again, using that structured format, you know, this is what makes— this is who I am and what makes me unique, ABC, and tell a slight short story almost about what is supportive evidence that can— that has some sort of quantitative factor of your impact, your ability, where you can demonstrate then you have all of these skills. So what I would, would suggest is have a pitch that you've worked on that lasts for 30 seconds, for 60 seconds, and for 3 minutes. And so feel comfortable within those different, um, time slots where you can go give the overview, little bit more detail, and then the full board pitch, so to speak. So you've always got it in your pocket where you know you can deliver within the format that you're in because there's HireVue, there's virtual, there's in-person, there's different levels of seniority you speak to. They all require a slightly different adjustment.

And would you approach that question chronologically or is that really boring? You know, tell me about yourself. Well, I was born in here and then I did these GCSEs and those A-levels and—

I mean, I'm not sure there's an exact science to it. I like, I would not do that personally because it's very, uh, it doesn't immediately grab my attention. You want to start strong, so you want to come out with your biggest weapon first, almost, you know. So lead strong with the example and then come with the other attributes and then conclude. I think if you start going chronological, it's probably the case where I mean, unless you're like me, my basketball career peaked when I was 14, and so it was a long time ago. I probably would start, uh, chronologically— reverse chronologically. I'd say, well, I peaked at 14. Um, so yeah, I, I, I definitely go with your strongest, um, storytelling elements first, over and above then necessarily the chronological order.

And this is a good one to say whatever you do, in terms of my biggest red flags, any form of perceived arrogance is game over for me. So if you're giving yourself the big one saying, you know, I was the number one X and Y, you know, in my year, and I absolutely smashed all the competition whilst also doing this and doing that in a way that comes across as arrogant, or look, I'm the real deal here. That is not, you know, look, you're hiring for a very junior position. You know nothing. You should go in with that, should go in with that kind of approach and be totally open to the feedback that you're getting from them as well.

And I definitely agree with that. And also, again, be mindful of your body language because certain body languages can look just not appropriate. And an example of this, there was one person in a recent call who was explaining an answer exactly like we're describing, but they were kind of sat back in their chair, which kind of made me think, yeah, it's not— it looks like a bit arrogant. It looks a bit like you don't really care, like you're a bit above all of this process. And so immediately, even with the best quality answer, the visual, the body, body cues I'm getting are just turning me off. So you need to be mindful of that.

Don't put your feet on the desk. Don't sit back on the desk. What about this really nasty one that I never really know how to answer? Name a time when you have faced a challenge and how did you overcome it? Where should we be pitching that challenge? Too hard, too easy? How do you answer that one?

Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a good one. I guess it, this is all about, um, that, that framing of there was a challenge or an issue and you start off by kind of setting the scene and then it's about, okay, so what was your, um, observation and analysis of that? What then did you conclude was an appropriate course of action to remedy that? And then what was then the follow-up, which then saw that that challenge was overcome. So this is that kind of STAR response system, um, that people refer to where you are trying to show progression. This is a good opportunity to show some humility in terms of an ability to again, build rapport with another individual. So again, picking, picking the, the problem. I mean, that one when, uh, people go, well, I'm a perfectionist.

Yeah.

And then you're like, okay, so being a perfectionist, generally speaking, uh, is perceived to be somewhat of a bad thing. It means you're probably quite narrow-focused. You're probably not able to change and be agile in situations. So you do have to, um, you know, work a little bit to find, uh, a story that's compatible to your life experience. That you've had. And with all of these, I see no harm in using ChatGPT as a copilot to build out, flesh out, and find appropriate examples. Yeah. Now these examples must be genuine to you, but don't think of ChatGPT as a, you ask it a question, it gives you an answer. It's there to help you develop and explore these things. So that technology can be incredibly useful now as well.

Yeah, I think that kind of, yeah, name something, describe to me something that you are bad at. It's such a tough question because you don't want to give the glib, oh yeah, I just try too hard. I work too hard. I'm, you know, that just doesn't come across well in any circumstance. And obviously you don't want to go to the other side, you know, look, I'm a compulsive liar. You don't want a fatal character flaw, but you can be relatively honest. You know, so over the last few, you know, over the last few years, I've really struggled with my attention to detail. It's an area that I'm getting much better at, but it's still something that I have to work really hard at. And that is, you know, that's honest. That is an issue. But acknowledging where we've all got weak spots and we, you know, and it's good to know what your blind spots are. So that they don't pick up, you know, so they're not, they're not gonna hinder you in the future.

All right, well, look, let's, let's turn the table then and let's talk a little bit more, as you said at the top of the episode, about specifically the investment banking division, because there are very specific questions that get asked of these, these candidates. And one of the most common ones that you hear is this blanket, tell me about a deal. I know you put out some great content every week about the deal of the week, and we discuss this on this very podcast show every week. But I guess to give some guidance and structure, when someone is asking that question, what depth of response are they actually looking for?

Yeah, again, I think the human attention span is remarkably short, isn't it? So the punchier that you can get and the quicker you can get to the why, why do you find this deal interesting? And there are different categories of why. The quicker you can get to that, the better. So I would spend a few summary seconds saying, I'm really interested in this deal in the market at the moment between Company A and Company B. It's looking like it's going to be closing over the next couple of months at a $20 billion enterprise value. The reason why this really stands out as an interesting deal is. And then you can go, all right, well, it's personally very interesting because I'm a massive, you know, sports fan and this is a sports deal and I understand it from a fan's perspective and I'm really interested in the conflict of interest potentially between the fan and the owner. And, you know, that's really getting me thinking about the job that I'm about to take on. You can also think, think about it more from a technical perspective. Well, this, you know, this looks like a bit of a hostile takeover. And, you know, I was wondering to myself, if this goes through, what is the integration process going to look like? Are there going to be culture clashes? You know, how, how does a post-hostile takeover integration work? So you've just got to pick that angle, whether it's technical, whether it's personal, whether it's just company, whether it's market-based, you know, This company's being bought because it's in sector market decline. Pick your thing, pick your why, 45 seconds, and that is it. They might want to go down into the next level and you've got to be prepared for that next level. They might want to say, you know, who else is in the race? Or, you know, why do you think this may not happen or whatever it might be. Be prepared for that. But in your first, tell me about a deal that you're interested, stick to a minute. Okay.

And does it make a difference where the student has done their due diligence, they've been following the news, and they know that this bank particularly has been working as the lead advisor on this deal? Does that make a difference to the interviewer? Does it show something beyond just talking about the deal?

Yeah, it definitely helps. I don't think that it's a hard and fast rule that you should only pick a deal that the bank that you are interviewing for is on, because that limits you quite a lot, and it might be hard to find that information. But if you can slip in there and go, oh, you know, I know that X financial institution is working on this, so it's a really interesting example of maybe the type of work that I'll get to work on if I get this job, and that's super exciting to me. I wouldn't necessarily lead with it, 'Cause again, that sounds a little bit too stilted, a bit too scripted, like I'm trying to tick all the boxes. But definitely do your homework. And if it does happen that your bank or the bank you're interviewing for is on the ticket, then that's brilliant.

So to be clear then, it sounded like you were just then talking about Manchester United, reading between the lines. So am I right then? It's okay to talk about Man United. It doesn't have to be the biggest deal, or it doesn't have to be a specific sector. It could be just something that you feel— it's almost better, is it, to be passionate and enthusiastic about the subject?

Yeah, there's a curiosity thing, and that curiosity could be you love that particular domain, bearing in mind that you might end up joining a sector team, right? And that sector team might— it's probably not going to be directly aligned to your interest, but you might end up in an area that you are specifically interested in. I know students that are already aligning themselves to TMT or to a particular technology media telecoms or sports or whatever it might be. So I don't think it's glib to say, hey, I'm massively interested in the business of sports. Sport is my passion. And to be able to understand it from a technical M&A perspective, it's just given me much better context. Again, unless there's a really interesting angle to your, you know, if you said, if I said to you, look, you know, a deal that I'm interested in at the moment is a backend data center hardware business acquiring another backend data center hardware business in rural, wherever it might be for $2.5 billion. I would be thinking, right, why, why, why are you interested in this? I'd be more skeptical that you're trying to be a little bit too technical. Obviously, if there's some, you know, very interesting process, there's a poison pill, or there's some fascinating story behind the founders, that can, that can be a really good story. But don't shy away from the ones that you're actually interested in. Okay.

I got, got two more for you.

Yeah.

So the next one is, walk me through a DCF, a discounted cash flow. Now I know that you, you teach a lot of this content, but what is it that they're actually looking for, for you to describe? Again, similar, similar to the last question, how in depth should you go?

Yeah, I, again, I would, I would always err on the side of not going into too much depth because if they want to drill down, they will. So in answer to that question, I would give the summary, you know, what is a discounted cash flow? It's the future value of cash flows discounted using a discount rate to its present value. Get that out the way early. And then I would say to myself, all right, what are the most important drivers of a discounted cash flow valuation analysis? Well, the first is you need to get to the stage where you can forecast free cash flows out into the future. That involves doing a forecast model, three-statement model, little bit of balancing and reconciliation. The second stage is figuring out what your discount rate is. And all three of these stages, by the way, are absolutely fundamental. Figuring out what your discount rate is. And then you can say, look, standard is the weighted average cost of capital. That's what I would use in my discount as my discount rate. Peter go into more detail as to how I would create my weighted average cost of capital. And then I'm applying that discount rate to my future cash flows. And then the last element is, let's say I'm looking 5 years out into the future, pretty standard stuff. The third big element is trying to figure out what my terminal growth rate is. And those 3 drivers working out what your future cash flows are, forecast cash flows, working out what your discount rate is, and working out what your terminal growth rate is. Those are the 3 things that are going to, you know, you tweak one of those 3 variables and the whole valuation changes. So I would really focus on those 3 key drivers. And then what the interviewer would probably do is say, look, you know, how, How do you establish a good terminal growth rate? Or how do you establish the right— how do you work through a weighted average cost of capital? Or what are the dangers with forecasting free cash flow? What do you really need to look out for? And that's where your homework comes in. That's where you can go a little bit more technical and really showcase that, you know, you know how to do a WACC, you've done a WACC, you know what a beta is, you know what the CAPM, you know, capital asset pricing model is. And you can start to really flex your muscles. Don't do that in the high level.

So, so listening to a lot of that terminology, if I'm not an accounting or an economics type student, I'm from a non-traditional background, yeah, what would be your advice to them to upskill, to get to that point of accumulating that competence?

You're teeing me up here. Do, do the, do the M&A Finance Accelerator. In my mind, there's just no better way. You know, we go through 3-Statement Model into a discounted cash flow analysis, into a trading comparables analysis, into a full valuation. So by the end of that experience, you will be able to say that you've done it. And you all, you know, you have that model for life once you've done this free session. So you can always go back into it and go, all right, if I change this variable, what happens? Ah, okay. So moving discount rate from 9% to 10% is going to have a massive impact. And you can start to go, all right, this is the technical language. This is actually what it means. What we're trying to do is value a company. So this is, you know, the input might be a technical piece of work. The output is just how much is this company worth, right? So you will get, I'm always experiential learning, right? Much easier to do it than to read and look at a formula on a textbook.

So for those who haven't done this sort of thing before, What would be the main characteristics that would make someone good at just picking up and being able to flourish in a financial modeling kind of sense? Is there certain characteristics where if someone is like a geography or history student, but they, they're particularly good at certain things, yeah, would be transferable? What would that be?

Yeah, I think you've got to, I think you've got to enjoy, you've got to enjoy numbers. It's as simple as that. You've got to enjoy being able to work with numbers, not necessarily from a massively, you know, I never did maths at university, but you've got to enjoy the satisfaction of arithmetic and, you know, trying to solve problems on a spreadsheet where something just isn't balancing or isn't working quite right. And you have to go back through your logical steps to see what's worked. So there's got to be that enjoyment of numbers. There's got to be that problem-solving element. There's got to be the logical element. If you're not a particularly logical person and you're not particularly numerate, this is not going to be the role for you because it will just overwhelm. So again, I was a political sciences student and actually this afternoon I'm doing one of our M&A finance accelerators for people from a non-financial background, which we do every so often, and we'll shout about it when we do. So that's where you need to get in because we, you know, we describe the jargon, we assume no prior knowledge, and we build it from the ground up.

Okay. My final area then is when they throw you the curveball and it's one of those, whereas how many tennis balls can you fit into Wimbledon Stadium center court? Like, what are they looking for? And how would you approach that in terms of if you were asked that question where you do not know the answer and you cannot possibly know it accurately within the time constraint?

Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, yeah. Some of these kind of lateral thinking-based questions are good and they really help you work through. Some of them are just bizarre and probably reflect a lack of thought from the interviewer, but let's assume it's a good question. We'll take that kind of tennis ball in Wimbledon question. I think, you know, you're never going to know the answer and that's absolutely fine. What the interviewer is looking for is logical steps to get to a vague proxy. Now, and by the way, that doesn't need to be overly technical. I'm, you know, if someone started trying to, trying to calculate the width, diameter, depth of a tennis ball. And try to kind of— that will probably end up taking too much time and still leading to the wrong answer. Immediately as you asked that question, the way that I was thinking about it was, all right, how many tennis balls can I fit in a human body? Because that's slightly more achievable, right? I can kind of think, all right, well, I can probably fit 10 per, you know, 20 per leg, let's say. And maybe there's 100 in my— maybe a body is filled up of 150 tennis balls. Well, I kind of know there's about 15,000 seats in Centre Court in Wimbledon, so I can kind of start to do that maths. And then I think, all right, so what, what proportion of the total stadium is actually going to be filled up with bodies and seats? Well, it's probably less than 10% if you think about the mass of a tennis court, especially if you're filling it all the way to the top. And then you can start to go, okay, all right, 150 times 15,000 multiplied by 10. It's probably not the right answer, but you've gone from very small to a little bit bigger to an approximation of the biggest. And that just shows that kind of step thinking that is so important in the type of job that you'll end up doing. So definitely worth going through a few of those exercises. The last thing you want to do is just go more than 5, less than 10 trillion, and without any form of kind of, okay, all right, well, it's good that it's more than 5, but let's, let's, let's, let's kind of build on that a little bit.

Yeah. To counter student anxiety, then it's not about the answer. It's about the journey and how you, how your rational process.

You can be 100x out and still answer the question extremely well. So really do not worry about that. Don't panic. I've got one last question for you actually, Ant.

All right.

Yep. This is one that I find very, very difficult. So Ant, do you have any questions for us?

Yeah, I do. Have you read any of those books behind you on those shelves where we're filming this?

No comment. No comment.

They're not actually books, are they? They're wallpaper.

No, no, it's a background. It's a background. No, I think that question is, you don't want to ask, you don't want to ask a dumb question, you know, so how many employees do you have? Or what does the U in UBS stand for? You know, um, and you don't want to, you know, so what, what, what is the right question to ask back at an interviewer?

Yeah. For me, I think this is an opportunity to, um, build rapport. So for me, it's about that person. It's about what can I— what have they said when they've described something about what they do? Have I done my preparation on LinkedIn and fact-finding to understand their career journey? Do I understand their role? You know, it— for me, it's about them, because if you can get someone to talk about themselves it really does break down barriers. And then once they start talking about themselves, you will get cues where if you are curious-minded, you can then start to unpick them. And they— the more they talk, the more they start to open, the more then they're susceptible to kind of absorbing you as an individual. So for me, it's a lot about the prep of who it is that's interviewing you ahead of time. I mean, the ones about the company and the culture and all these things, for me, they're kind of more erring on the generic side. So I like to keep it personal. How about you?

I think that's absolutely brilliant advice. People love talking about themselves, especially if they have a kind of rose-tinted view of their past. So if you can kind of get them on, all right, you know, I'd love to know about your journey. I'd love to know, you know, what university you went to and how you got into finance in the first place, where you landed and how you've got to now. People are just, yeah, it's a fantastic opener. Shows that you are curious, as you said, and will probably give you a few good bits of information, right? They'll open up in a way that they wouldn't do elsewhere. So I think that's brilliant advice.

And How are you with the idea of someone taking notes in an interview or referring to notes? Where do you sit on that?

I'd rather they didn't. I'd rather— I'd say taking notes is better than referring to notes. You know, it's probably okay if you take notes, if there's something that's really piqued your interest, you've asked an interesting question, but there is something very different It's a little bit like having a conversation with someone and someone's mobile phone's on the table, right? It's just, there's just like, that becomes a thing and it will just decrease the quality of our conversation by 5 or 10%. And I just feel like it's an interview. If you're constantly scribbling down and pausing and going, sorry, I'm just taking a couple of notes, or you're constantly referring to your notes, kind of shows that you're not You're not interview ready. You're still relying on the crutch that is that thing in front of you. So I would say no. If you brought in a pad of paper and you were absolutely brilliant, that's not going to be a kind of red— it's not going to be a no-go. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I would try, you know, I really want to build rapport. I want to look you in the eye. I don't want you to be scribbling away or referring to your notes. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I think just think about, I guess, remove yourself from the visualization of being in a tower in Canary Wharf being grilled by some person and just think about when you meet someone in person in real life, a friend of a friend at a party or in a coffee shop or you're on a date, you know, you keep that rapport, right? It builds through that the, the eye contact, the body language, the, the fluidity of the conversation. So yeah, I think you're right. The part where I, I'd say in the past I've interviewed people, if at the end there are something that they had when they asked that question, so amid the asking me about me, and they ask a very specific question about something, and they've, they can demonstrate they've done research about maybe a deal I'm working on or a project or that the business is involved with, then I quite like that. But yeah, not probably during.

Yeah, we all remember when we were, well, maybe this is just me, when I was, you know, 11 years old and I was phoning a girl for the first time and you'd have your 10 discussion points. I think we might have moved beyond that. If you're coming into an interview with your 10 discussion points written down, I'd kind of think, all right, you know, maybe go back to the drawing board.

You know, the thing I hated about that was that, you know, back in my day you'd have to call the house phone and it would be the mum or the dad and God forbid the dad picked up and you have to ask to speak to the daughter. Yeah. You have to give the 30-second pitch to the dad to get the gatekeeper.

Good interview training. All right.

Well, look, yeah, I found that enjoyable. So thank you, Stephen, for changing it up this week and yeah, I hope everyone got some value out of that.

Yeah, thank you so much, Anthony. And yeah, we do, we do a lot of work with students on interview best practice. There's a lot of content on our website as well. So do please drop us a note, ask any questions. If you disagree with anything that we've said today, do let us know why you disagree. And we look forward to doing more of these in the future. Thank you so much, Anthony.

All right. Cheers, Stephen. Take care.