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peter.kavouris@bmo.com
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..…2

SALES & TRADING / EQUITY CAPITAL MARKETS (“ECM”)…………………………………………….…………..3

M&A…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………..……9

INTERVIEW TACTICS…………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………15

NAILING THE RESUME AND SECURING AN INTERVIEW…………………………………………………………..23

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INTRODUCTION
So, you want an internship or a job on Wall Street? A lot of people do. I certainly did when I was starting
my career. I have since left the business, but I do not regret one second I spent in it. Before we dive in to
interview strategies, how to get a job, and so on, let’s first cover some basics - Wall Street 101. This
overview will give you the big picture on how things fit together. It’ll give you the tools to be able to
speak intelligently about the different types of players in the business, how they make money, and
more.

Why do I have the authority to speak on these topics? I interned on the floor of the NSYE, at a small
brokerage, and at a big bank. I then did full time work in sales and trading (S&T) and investment banking
(IB). Also, I have many friends and family members in the business. This all enabled me to have a well
rounded high-level perspective of the business.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not comprehensive. These are my own observations and my own view of the
financial landscape. Wall Street is so large and complex that it’s overwhelming to try and absorb
everything at once. Don’t feel discouraged if you don’t understand large pieces - 30 year industry vets
don’t either. As you go, you just keep adding new pieces to your incomplete mosaic. These are some
pieces of mine.

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SALES & TRADING / EQUITY CAPITAL MARKETS (“ECM”)
Let’s start with the difference between sales and trading (S&T) and investment banking (IB). These
make up the “Wall Street” side of finance. This explanation will include some of the ins and outs of the
equity (stocks) business as I have personally observed them.

The easiest place to start is to separate Wall Street into 2 parts. The buy side and the sell side.

Buy side – money managers

• Hedge funds
• Mutual funds
• Pensions
• Endowments
• Any large pool of money

Sell side – people the buy side pays

• Broker dealers
• Research-only firms
• Prime brokers
• Investment banks

Those are some of the types of firms. Note - they all offer overlapping services too. For example, JPM is
a broker dealer, an investment bank, prime broker, investment manager (buy side), and pretty much any
financial service you can think of. Understanding how these players interact is the real discussion.

Types of Roles (simplified)

Buy side
• Portfolio manager – Investment selection, risk management, portfolio construction
• Analyst – Performs investment analysis, pitches the PM ideas
• Trader – Executes the PM’s portfolio orders and provides feedback to obtain best execution

Sell side
• Equity research analyst – Publishes research on stocks. Responsible for corporate access, and
providing value to the buy side analysts
• Research sales – Manages the relationship with the buy side analysts and PMs, makes sure they
are aware of (and consuming) as much of the research platform as possible
• Sales trader – Manages relationship with buy side trader. Keeps their finger on the pulse of the
market to make sure they are aware of the flow. Works with the buy side trader to achieve best
execution
• Market maker – Determines how much risk the trading desk can handle on given trades.
Executes client orders directly on exchanges

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Example
Illustrated with an example. A hedge fund managing a bunch of money is taking long or short positions
in assets. They hire analysts to come up with the ideas, portfolio managers to make the ultimate
decision, and traders to execute the transactions.

Banks and brokerage firms execute those transactions. These investors are huge, so when they buy or
sell something, it’s not like you or I moving 50 shares on Robinhood. It’s millions of dollars that need to
be moved - as quietly and with the least disruption to the market as possible. It’s not easy.

Say a client wants to sell 200K shares of XYZ which is trading for $100. That’s $20M worth of stock. How
do you move that much money? The sales trader has other clients. Some are holders of XYZ. Some may
have told him they are building a position. If he sells the stock to another client, that’s the dream. He
gets commission from the selling client and from the buying client and he doesn’t move the market very
much. This is called crossing stock.

With this understanding in mind, it is attractive for a buy side trader to send orders to larger brokerages.
Larger brokerages have more clients. That means they are getting more order flow. If they have more
order flow, they have a higher chance of finding the other side of your trade. This is an important point
to understand – flow begets flow. This idea is so important that traders will “advertise” their trades on
Bloomberg once the trade is complete. Prospective buyers and sellers of a certain stock will check to see
which banks have been most active in trading it, and use the information to help determine who to send
the trade to.

Buy side traders do not always want to exclusively use the big guys for various reasons - but more on
that in a bit.

What if this 200k share order comes in and there’s no natural buyer? The market maker (position trader)
might say it’s worth it for his firm to buy the stock to secure the commission, and then unwind the trade
over the day. This assumes they can unwind the position without it moving far enough against them
that the losses negate the commission. The +/- a trader has is referred to his profit and loss (P&L). There
are many horror stories associated with trades gone wrong. I’ve seen a few phones and screens get
broken in my time on the trading floor…

The commissions from those trades is how brokers make money. So, you might be thinking people pay
the firms who are the best at making those trades… but this is where it gets more complicated. You pay
brokers for their entire service package, not just trading. The trades are not just a service, but a payment
mechanism. Trading is just one piece of a broader service platform.

S&T “Platform”
The platform includes:
• Trading
• Research platform
• Equity Capital Markets (ECM)

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A product of the research team is those notes on stocks with a buy/sell rating and a price target many
people have seen. Not commonly discussed though is that it also includes conferences, meetings with
sell side analysts, and most importantly, corporate access. Corporate access is the ability for brokers to
get their clients direct access to the management team of various companies. This is more valuable than
anything else the sell side S&T business does (emphasis on S&T business).

A quick list of things on the “research platform”

• Notes/calls on stocks or other assets (I use equities for this example, but this applies to many
assets)
• Access to company management (Non-deal roadshows “NDRs”)
• Attendance at conferences
• Calls with analysts
• Client entertainment

As I mentioned before, the payment mechanism for these services are trades. If a broker has a company
management team in town, and limited time for meetings, the buy side firm who pays them the most
will have the higher chance of getting the meeting. This is why it is valuable for buy side firms to have a
large number of brokers - to get more access to all these different opportunities.

A common method a buy side firm uses to determine how much it is going to pay its brokers is through a
vote system. The buy side analysts and portfolio managers will literally cast a vote on how valuable the
research has been to them over the past quarter. This creates a ranking of brokers, and gives the buy
side traders a roadmap of who they have to pay. If the buy side isn’t paying enough, they start to lose
sell side resources, which hurts their research process.

So as you can see, there is a bizarre payment mechanism. The brokers provide value, then the consumer
tells them how much that value is worth after it has been provided. This makes the job of the research
sales and sales trader extra difficult as they need to manage the relationship and also squeeze more
commissions out of their client – sometimes in a confrontational way. Sometimes it is necessary to cut
off resources and say no to client requests if they do not pay enough.

Equity Capital Markets

Okay, you get the basics of S&T (remember, equity only)… now let’s talk about banking, and more
importantly, show you how all of this comes together.

Investment bankers help companies access capital. If you get this question in an interview, you will say
they do these two things.
1. Help clients raise capital
2. Advise on M&A transactions

Realistically they do more, but this is what you need to know at this stage.

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Let’s say a company wants to go public. You need investment bankers to do that. Remember the broker
dealers who were doing the trades in my earlier example? Well, most of those firms have investment
banking capabilities as well.

Let’s use an Initial Public Offering (IPO) as an example. An IPO is when a company sells shares to the
public for the first time. For the most part, the people buying these shares are institutional investors. It’s
not like you and me can get access to the hottest IPOs at the IPO price (unless you’re ultra high net
worth). If you’re a manufacturing company, or any type of company, it’s not like you know hundreds of
hedge/mutual funds to reach out to for an investment. That’s what the banks are for. How do these
banks know these institutional investors? Trading, research, banking – yes, this gets circular. Think of
everything as a platform.

Okay, so you have a company that needs to raise funds. They hire a bank who knows how to manage the
process, and the investors who can fund the deal. This is a valuable service, and the margins are GOOD.
It’s relationship-based, so that’s why bankers make good money.

The companies hire many banks to go out and sell the deal. The equity sales people at these places
make calls to clients and gauge interest in the deal. They try to solicit orders to fill out the order book. If
the company is offering 20,000,000 shares, and there are orders of 40,000,000 shares, the book is 2x
covered. (Don’t be afraid to use vocabulary like “covered” in an interview – it will impress the
interviewer).

How shares get allocated in a situation like this is dependent on the banker’s interpretation of who
would be good shareholders – which can be highly subjective. This subjectivity leads to favoritism, so
you’ll often see that a fund’s relationship (aka how much they pay banks) matter to their allocation. This
is an important point, and something you can use in an interview. This means the more you trade with a
firm, the more likely you are to get an allocation. A strong ECM franchise (ability to raise equity for
companies) incentivizes firms to trade with the bank.

A less understood piece of this process is the importance of the sell side research analysts. The bankers
are often less important than these analysts. The analysts matter because it is good for companies to
have people covering their stock (publishing research on it). The more people covering your stock, the
more attention the street is giving you, the better understood your stock is. This benefits the company
as they can essentially have sell side analysts pitching their stock to the street (if things are going well).

Further than the IPO example, companies might want to sell bonds, or do a secondary offering. THIS is
where things get weird. The bank now has an interest in keeping a good relationship with the company
so that the company includes them in any investment banking services they need going forward.
Another reason the bank wants a good relationship with the company is for future corporate access
(remember how important that is to the research business).

This naturally creates a huge conflict of interest. The analyst now has to publish an opinion on the stock
knowing his job performance is tied to his ability to get them to use them for IB services and corporate
access. Countering this bias is the desire to be credible in your client’s eyes. If you’re dead wrong on

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stocks all the time, then that’s even worse than making an enemy of a company. This creates a weird
political game where it’s tough to rely on ratings, price targets, and commentary.

I want to pause and emphasize how connected everything is. Research, corporate access, and ECM
activity encourage trading, and then trading begets trading. The stronger an overall platform is, the
more it compounds on itself. This is a simplistic explanation. There are caveats and nuance to everything
I’ve said so far, but this is how I see and understand this small piece of the industry.
Again, this is just the equity business. It would blow your mind how many different things go on,
especially under one roof at a larger bank. The interconnectivity of it all only gets more complex. As I
said earlier, think of your understanding of the business as an incomplete mosaic. You start putting
points together and you can kind of see a general picture, but there are gaps, so you can’t truly see it in
its finest detail. But don’t worry, this is okay, especially if you are interviewing for entry level.

The important thing I want you to keep in mind from this section are the insights you can slip into your
interviews. These are things you would not have known unless you spent some serious time and energy
learning the business. Here are a few examples:

• Firms advertise the companies they have been actively trading in

• NDRs are one of, if not the most, valuable services a broker offers
• Trading is just the cash register, the vote determines how much the broker gets paid
• Equity sales people and sales traders often have to have confrontational conversations when a
customer is consuming too many resources and not paying for them
• IPO order books are often oversubscribed, and this results in the bankers deciding who gets
allocated shares
• Your ECM franchise can lift your trading revenue - “XYZ bank has all these great deals, we have
to trade with them so we can be included”
• Companies want good research analysts covering their stock, and this often helps drive banking
business
• Strength in one part of a bank’s business typically strengthens other parts of its business – this
has a compounding effect

Another note, I used equities for a few reasons:

1. It’s what I understand best

2. It’s a good demonstration of how interconnected a bank’s service offerings can be
3. Interviewers will only really expect you to understand equities

Here is a super non-exhaustive list of other broad business lines you can take a look at independently:

Prime Brokerage
Wealth Management
Fixed Income
FIG
Asset Backed Securities

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Derivatives
Electronic Trading
Repos
Structured Products
Credit
Trading in any and all asset classes
Etc.

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M&A
I have not yet spent a lot of time on Merger & Acquisitions (M&A) because the focus has been on how
S&T and IB interact. M&A is a different animal. It feels the most siloed from everything discussed in the
prior section.

Note: The discussion below will deal with middle market M&A, not large public company mergers (I have
no experience in the latter).

M&A advisory is when investment banks help a company get bought or sold. For example, say you
started a business that now has $100M in revenue and $20M in EBITDA. You want to sell it for 10x
EBITDA. Do you know anybody who would be able to write a $200M check? And if you did, can you run
the company and convince somebody to write that check at the same time? This is where bankers come
in.

The banker helping facilitate the sale of that business will be acting as what’s called a sell side advisor.
There are other situations where an investment bank can act as a buy side advisor. This just means they
help a company purchase another company.

You will often hear people in the industry refer to M&A as the “M&A process”. PE folks and bankers are
big into the “process”. The reason being is this is usually around a 6 month (often longer) set of
procedures that are supposed to complete a deal with the best outcome possible. Here is a typical
(emphasis on typical… things go haywire all the time) M&A process:

1. Pitch (bake off)

2. Org meeting
3. Buyer list
4. Teaser
5. Warm up meetings
6. CIP/Model/QoE
7. First round bid
8. Management Presentations
9. Follow up bid/LOI
10. Diligence
11. Sale & Purchase Agreement

Before we get too into the process, it would be helpful to understand what the roles are on the
investment banking side.

Hierarchy of bankers:
1. Managing Director – the highest person on the totem pole, the ultimate strategic decision
maker, the manager of the client relationship, and often times the one who sourced the deal
2. Director – recently got promoted from VP and is starting to be allowed to source their own
deals. Usually just starting to specialize in a certain sector and flex up to the MD level. This is a
transitional level

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 3. Vice President – the VP is the king of the execution team (VP, associate, analyst). This person is
ultimately in charge of the day to day operations of the deal team. Any work that goes out to
the MD usually goes through the VP
4. Associate – manages the analyst, checks analyst work, and makes sure the work product that
goes to the VP is as error free, and on the right track as possible. Often synthesizes VP orders
and divvies up the work between himself and the analyst to get things done in an efficient
manner.
5. Analyst – does whatever they’re told by everyone else and apologizes for existing

Business Development
Your MD met a smaller company called XYZ Healthcare at a conference two years ago. It is owned by a
PE fund that your MD knows a partner at. The Company has been held for 5 years, so it’s time for the PE
fund to sell the Company, so that they can get paid a carry ($ from a realized gain). The MD has done a
good job of staying in touch with the Company and the PE fund, so they invite them to do a “bake off”
(where multiple investment banks pitch to win the deal). The winner of the bake off will be selected to
run the sell side process for the PE fund and Company.

The Pitch
You receive some background information from the company, usually in the form of a company-made
financial model and a short investor deck. Often times the pitch team will take these materials and
create a question list, then have a call with the Company in order to do a more informed pitch.

The pitch is all about the deck. Here is a typical table of contents of an investment banking pitch:
1. Bank Update – this section brags about what your bank has been doing lately, all the deals
they’ve recently done, revenue growth numbers, awards, etc.
2. Executive Summary – summary of everything we are about to go into detail on
3. Positioning – this explains how we see the Company, and what selling points we would highlight
to prospective buyers
4. Process – usually includes a timeline, a gameplan, and a step by step process of what we’re
going to be helping with
5. Buyers – a list of PE funds, and companies we think might be interested in buying the company.
These are usually tiered to highlight who we think are the best fit
6. Valuation – often includes an LBO, DCF, and comps analysis to discuss how much money we
think we can get for the company

Your job as a member of the pitch team is to put this book together. Usually the VP or associate starts
by putting together a shell (recycled pages from old pitches, placeholders, etc.) then you fill it out using
company specific information.

After your VP “turns” it (this is what a draft is called), it gets sent to the MD who is supposed to add
value to the book by writing specific content, designing slides, and being insightful about the business,
buyers, and anything else. This book gets turned a bazillion times and it takes forever. If your pitch is in 3
weeks, you will turn it for all 3 weeks, and it will never be done. A common theme in IB is that work
expands to the amount of time allotted. This means the more time you have to complete something the
more hours you work on it.

Post Pitch/Org Meeting

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Sometimes after the pitch there is follow up. Maybe a question from the meeting, further analysis, or
more likely, they ask what kind of fee we would charge. At that point you use a data service as well as
look at past deals your bank completed to estimate what a fee should be for this type of deal. Then you
usually have some sort of tiered fee to show your confidence in the valuation range you set forth (i.e. if
you said the company would sell for $100M, you’d get paid a higher % from $80M to $100M in order to
show you feel good about hitting $100M).

Okay, now let’s say you won the deal. This means you are going to kick off the project with the org
meeting. Which means your hands are going to be sore from taking notes. The sponsor and the
Company are going to explain everything they possibly can about the business to you. Your notes from
this meeting will be very important. Pay attention. You’ll look stupid if you don’t.

Buyer List
It’s pretty easy to find potential buyers in something like real estate - just list it on Zillow or MLS then
put a for sale sign in front. But what about a $200M healthcare company that makes some sort of
complex medical device? Well, there’s definitely a market for that, but you have to figure out who the
buyers are. That takes some expertise. There are benefits to running a narrow process (meaning you
only go to a few buyers). The M&A process takes a ton of time and attention away from the
management team. So, having the ability to determine if you need to go out to a handful or many
buyers makes a difference.

Importantly, there’s two types of buyers – strategics (regular companies), and financial (PE
funds/sponsors). Strategics are companies that will buy your client for strategic, market related reasons.
Sponsors will buy the company strictly to charge a management fee on it and sell it later. Sponsors think
that they can buy a company, harvest some cash flows, and sell it for more later at an IRR that exceeds
their hurdle. (Google IRR - you’ll need to know it for your interviews.)

An important principle to understand in M&A on the sponsor side is the leveraged buyout (LBO). I am
not going to get into too much technical detail, or else this book would be a billion pages long, but there
is one technical piece that will be important to demonstrate an understanding of in interviews.

SIDENOTE: A common strategy for sponsors is to buy something called a platform. A platform to
sponsors is just a large player in a fragmented industry. For example, a dental company with 3,000
offices nationwide. One dental practice is pretty risky. One thing goes wrong and the business is in
trouble. For there to be the same impact on the entire business of a 3,000 practice dental company, that
thing would have to go wrong 3,000 times. This means the company is less risky from a downside
standpoint. Additionally, the large dental practice benefits from having common systems and economies
of scale. For this reason a platform will trade for let’s say 15x EBITDA and a smaller group will trade for
10x EBITDA.

The implications of this is something called multiple arbitrage. When a buyer goes to buy the platform
that has $20M in EBITDA, and they are willing to pay 15x for it, then the purchase price is $300M. If that
$20M EBITDA company buys a $2M EBITDA practice for 10x, they pay $20M for it, BUT now their EBITDA
is $22M (pro forma, which means after the deal).

So instead of being a $300M company, the company is worth $330M ($22x15)… but the company only
paid $20M for the $2M extra in earnings. The deal created $10M of value with no work done. Now think
about this principle and consider that they are all using leverage on these deals. Instead of paying $20M

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in case for that $2M of earnings, they likely took on $10M of debt and paid $10M in equity. Which
means they paid $10M out of pocket for an extra $30M in value. That is why PE guys have nice houses.

Back to the buyer list, it is an important part of the deal. Your MD and usually the PE fund selling the
company will have ideas about this and spend a lot of time on it. These are the parties you will be
marketing the deal to.

Teaser
Next, you’ll want to start letting those buyers know your deal is coming to market, but without telling
them the exact company. This means you will create a document that lets people know some generic
information about the company (i.e. blinded company description, revenue/EBITDA, and some salesy
information). This lets potential buyers know that a company they may be interested in will be coming
to market, or it gives them the opportunity to tell the deal team it’s not the right fit for them right off
the bat.

Warm up meetings
Sometimes (not always) the deal team will select a handful of buyers they think are the best fit, and give
them early access to documents, and to the management team or bankers. This typically means the deal
team will put together a small (10-15 page) deck with some financial info and other company
updates/highlights, and have a call with these groups. The goal is for these groups to run ahead and
possibly make the entire process a lot more efficient.

CIP / Model / QoE

After you send teasers to everyone on your buyer list, you’re going to get a barrage of responses. Many
will be an immediate no for various reasons. Then there will be many companies on the fence that are
going to want to learn more. The way we give them more information is through the Confidential
Information Presentation (CIP) and financial model. The reason I mention them together is because
there are typically financial projections included in the CIP that are taken from the model.

The CIP and model take lots of time and hundreds of iterations to complete. You will start the CIP with
an outline. The bones of the CIP mostly look pretty similar:
1. Company Overview
2. Investment Highlights
3. Market Overview
4. Product Overview
5. Go-to-market Strategy
6. Customer Overview
7. Growth Opportunities
8. Financial Highlights

This can be shuffled around, have certain sections removed, and others added. I just use this as an
example to help you understand the point of the document. It’s important to note that throughout
every step of this process it’s usually a VP or Associate directing a first draft. Then the Associate kicks it
to the VP, then the VP gives comments. After those comments are made, then it goes to the MD. The
MD gives comments and then the analysts associate turn the comments, and kick it to the VP… who
makes more comments. Then back to the MD, then to the client. Guess what the client does? Provides
comments.

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So you will do that first with the outline, then use the final version of the outline to build the deck. CIPs
can be from 45 to 80 pages or more. As you can imagine, this process takes forever. You will spend a ton
of hours creating pages and content that ultimately gets scrapped in the comment cycle from hell. All
the while, you are receiving information (financial or otherwise) from the company that you will need to
clean up and display in the CIP.

A lot of smaller companies do not have the systems in place to give you clean data (I worked at a bank
that does mostly <$300M deals, so the data was messy). Something like “how many customers do you
have?” is not necessarily readily available information. A lot of the time you receive raw data from
company software systems, or manually inputted data, and you have to clean it yourself. For example, I
have spent hundreds of hours reconciling customer names.

You will also be using this information for the financial model. The model is built to forecast a P&L, but
in order to do that, you have to build most of the line items (meaning revenue, COGs, sales & marketing)
on the P&L using some sort of defensible logic. This means it’s not enough to say, “I think wages expense
will rise 5% YoY”, you have to say something like “we have 100 people today, we need to add 2 sales
people, those sales people will make $X, resulting in a 5% increase”. You don’t literally say this, you
show this with a backup calculation.

So now that the model is done, you plug the numbers in to the CIP and send the finished CIP to the
buyers who have executed the NDA. The NDA process is either run by an outside counsel or the junior
deal team. A lot of the buyers you send the NDA to will try to push back on certain terms and send a
redline, thus causing an annoyance for the deal team to make sure NDAs are always in motion.

Process Letter / First Round Bids

After the buyers have had time with the CIP, a lot of them will pass and others will ask questions or
provide feedback. For the ones still interested in remaining in the process, the bankers send a process
letter. This provides buyers with a deadline for their first round bids (which are in no way binding, it’s
just an indication of interest). Since they haven’t done enough diligence, a lot of them will provide very
much preliminary terms, and a valuation range. Some ranges are so low that you know immediately it’s
not the right fit. At this point the deal team reads through all the bids and creates a summary deck for
the client. The client then decides how many people he will bring through to the next round based on
how well-thought-out and attractive the first round bid is.

Management Presentation / Preliminary Data Room

Now that we know who is for real and who is not, we can start spending time on them and giving them
more access to management and company files. Management presentations (MP) usually occur at the
Company’s headquarters, where the prospective buyer can see the operations, and get to ask
management a ton of questions in a 1-2 day session. Yes, you will have to create a deck for this. You’ll
repurpose a lot of the slides from the CIP and take them a step further (more info and updated financial
information).

You will also often open up a preliminary data room before or in tandem with the MP. A data room is
just a secure portal where company files are organized. This first data room will hold back the bulk of
the diligence files, and only include things like additional financials like sales analyses.

Follow Up / Final Round Bids

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The next and sometimes final round of bids comes after the MPs. This is when you typically get down to
a point where you know which prospective buyer is likely going to win. The best processes have multiple
buyers in that camp. A lot of times a buyer will ask for exclusivity, where you shut down the process for
everyone else and allow them to do confirmatory diligence.

Confirmatory Diligence
This is when you let them see almost everything. They engage other firms to make sure there is nothing
that can blow them up after the deal happens. This means accountants dig in on the tax and financial
side to make sure everything looks legit. This also includes HR, insurance, and other regulatory experts
that help make sure there are no liabilities that can be an issue post-deal. If all the boxes get checked,
then we move to the sale and purchase agreement.

Sale & Purchase Agreement

This is the document that actually moves the assets from one owner to the other. Probably not as
important to get into the legal detail here (I am not a lawyer and I spent little time on this). After this is
all signed up, funds are wired and we are set to get our fee, make deal toys, and go to the closing dinner
(more admin work for the analyst).

Conclusion
A lot of other interview books talk about the math behind M&A but none of them talk about the
process. Interviewers want to see that you’ve done the work to understand the mechanics behind M&A
– do that, but also know the process. You will stand out more by discussing how the process works much
better than the kid who can do a paper LBO.

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INTERVIEW TACTICS
The Basics
1. Wear a charcoal or navy suit, not black
2. Understated tie, matching shoes and belt, clean shaven
3. Get to the office 30 minutes ahead of time and sit in the lobby for 25
4. Have security call up 5 minutes before the interview begins. DO NOT show up 30 minutes early
because you think it looks good, they hate this (I did this)
5. Know exactly what role you are interviewing for (another mistake I made)
6. Have a leather portfolio with several copies of your resume in it
7. Have many questions ready to go (10+)
8. Hang on to the business cards because you’ll need to send thank yous
9. Obvious, but be overly polite to every person you see – I’ve heard of instances where they ask
the front desk person how the interviewee represented themselves

Your Interview North Star

You finally scored an interview. You have heard how intense Wall St interviews can be, but good thing is,
this is for an entry level position which means you really only need to portray a few things:
1. You are confident, not cocky
2. You are grateful to be there
3. You can learn anything
4. You can speak the language, you’ve done your homework
5. You want to build a long term career with the company that’s interviewing you

This list will help you on questions where your head is spinning. Even if it’s a technical question and you
do not know the answer, you will still use point 1 and 3 by showing comfort in the face of stress and
confidence you can learn the technical concept presented. Think of this list as your north star.

Confident, Not Cocky

This is a huge one, and also tougher to explain as it is intangible. I’ll boil it down to one word – poise.
Can you enter the room and outwardly project that you are comfortable being there even if you aren’t?
Speak with authority, smile, give a firm handshake, and keep good posture. For your actual answers
given, you want to exhibit pride in things you should be proud of, but not in a cocky way. Say things like,
“I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to do X, and when I was in that situation I did what I think is
great work”, rather than “I did really well in X situation, it was not much of a challenge.”

Grateful to Be There
You want to portray in your answers and your demeanor that you are grateful to be in the room, but at
the same time know you deserve it. You worked hard to be in the room, and you are grateful that a firm
as great as this has recognized your hard work. Do not be afraid to heap praise on the company during
the interview. Don’t be afraid to say something like, “I’ll admit, I’m very excited to be here. This is such a
good time to be at X bank for Y reasons.”

Can Learn Anything

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This is portrayed in one of two ways, 1) demonstrating current knowledge; 2) confidently acknowledging
your blind spots and explaining that you will address them. Do not be afraid to say something like, “I
think the most important skill I have is my interpersonal skills. Those are a lot harder to teach. If I need
to learn bond math, or how to price derivatives, I can just spend time learning it. But it’s much harder to
teach interpersonal skills.” I said something like this and received positive feedback from it. It sells your
interpersonal skills and mentions you aren’t intimidated by learning new complex subjects.

Can Speak The Language, You’ve Done Your Homework

This one is harder to “force” in to your answers. This will just come naturally by learning some of the
jargon. I recommend CNBC for college kids so you can learn the language through osmosis. Read blogs,
read papers, follow the markets, keep up to date with the industry. Just get used to financial topics, and
learn to speak the language. They’ll ask you technical questions, questions about markets, etc. If you are
able to answer those questions in a way their colleagues speak, they’ll start to think of you as a
colleague.

Want to Build a Long Term Career With the Company You’re Interviewing With
Sounds obvious, but companies want to hire people who want to work at their company. You are
allowed to mention you are interviewing other places if they ask, but always follow it up with that you’re
unsure about it and say something positive about who you are interviewing with. Always mention where
you start your career is where you want to work for a long time (even if it’s just a stepping stone). It’s
expensive to turn employees over, so it’s more attractive to keep somebody who is likely to stay longer.

Typical Internship Interview Cycle

1. The Phone Screen
A lot of firms will start off with a quick 15-30 minute phone interview to see if it’s worth it to pay
to fly you out for a real interview.

This is typically a pretty easy interview. They will ask you about yourself, why you want the job,
why you like the firm, and a maybe a few other fit questions. I have gotten really basic technical
questions (how do you value a company) just to make sure I checked the most basic technical
boxes.

It’s easier and shorter, but prepare just the same. I recommend wearing something nice, not a
suit, but something that makes you feel confident.

Remember at the end of this to ask about next steps. You’ll do that after every round, but you
want to make sure that you’re always aware of what is next.

2. First Round Interview

After the phone screen they may ask you to a first round interview that’s either on campus, over
the phone/video, or in their office. I was able to schedule first round interviews in person
because I was living in NYC at the time. This meant it cost the firm nothing to invite me in for
interview, a huge benefit for both of us as I believe it’s easier to build a rapport in person.

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 These will be harder than the phone screen, and will likely include more than one person. They
will likely ask you full blown technical questions in addition to the regular behavioral/fit
questions. The goal of these interviews is to impress them enough that they want to include you
in the super day.

3. Super Day
This is the final round and it is the most difficult. A lot of these events are pretty intense, I’ve
done 4 of them and here are what many of them included.
• A cocktail hour the night before the interviews. They invited a bunch of younger
associates/analysts to a bar to meet us and talk to us. This is to judge your social skills in
these settings
• A case study, modeling test, or a stock pitch. Any sort of document they can review and
discuss with you during the interview
• A series of interviews with a wide array of seniority. The company I ultimately worked
for had me meet 12 people on their super day. It included a breakfast with the head of
the group, and a lunch with the head of the team (remember your table manners)

If you made it this far you have done really well and have a pretty good shot at the job, but it’s
certainly not a done deal. They want to see how you can perform under really stressful and
grueling circumstances, so keep that in mind. They aren’t necessarily looking for you to be
superman and know the answer to every technical question. They want you to stay engaged,
energetic, and confident throughout an 8 hour day of intense focus.

General Strategy
Don’t be boring. It’s true that in a lot of these jobs you just end up as a cog, but they want somebody
who is smart, works hard, will do a good job, but can carry a conversation and be a human being. Don’t
be afraid to make a joke and show a bit of personality. Try not to be stiff (I know it’s hard when your
primary goal is appearing competent).

Have a few differentiated opinions or points of knowledge on the role or the industry. This does not
mean you should casually slip into conversation that you understand the mechanics of a DCF. Instead,
you should talk about a new piece of regulation or comment on how the industry is structured.

This is where I want you to spend time on the industry section of this book. No, you don’t need to know
those things immediately to become great at the job. I certainly had no idea what an M&A process was
until I got to training, and it worked out fine. What I did know, however, was the inner working of S&T.
What I was able to do with that knowledge was drop nuggets that impressed the interviewers. This is
the main thing I want you to be able to do after reading this book. Just by the mere fact you’ve bothered
to buy and read this thing means you are willing to go above and beyond to get to know the industry –
make sure that is reflected in the interview.

This means if you’re asked a question, answer that question and then some more. Add in some
knowledge based on it. Let me give you an example.

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Q: Why do you want to be Investment Banking?

C+ Answer
Investment banking is a challenging and fulfilling career path that requires you to learn a broad array of
skills. I would like to be in an environment where I am challenged to grow in this way, and IB is the spot
to do it.

A+ Answer
IB combines the broadest set of business skills compared to most other career options. The M&A process
requires you to understand things deeply on a business and financial level by building the CIP and model,
and provides a view of what investors value most. It is also a client facing role where you represent your
company on every call and build a reputation for yourself. Finally, when you move up enough, it becomes
a sales role. So to thrive in IB you will always be challenged to do it all, and you will constantly be
learning and improving.

This answer shows that you know what IB is in detail. You just mentioned examples of things bankers
do, you understand it’s client facing, and understand that the career track is deal execution to sales. This
may not seem like much, but a lot of other kids don’t necessarily understand it, and if they do they
didn’t read this book so they aren’t focused on articulating it.

A lot of people think they need to harp on “I’m smart and I work hard” in the interview. There’s no
downside to portraying this, but it shouldn’t be the focus of what your verbal message to people is. Your
resume does the work on “smart and work hard”. At this stage everybody is smart and works hard, who
cares? What makes you different? What makes you different is you spent time reading books like this,
you have your answers prepared in a way that demonstrates you went above and beyond, you are more
day 1 ready than the average person, and that you are a charismatic team player.

How do we portray these things? Let’s look into some common questions so you start to see a
framework:

“Tell me about yourself”

You better have this nailed down. There is a 100% chance you get asked this in one shape or form. It
could be “tell me about your experience” or “walk me through your resume.” The answer needs to start
autobiographical and end with “which is exactly why I think this job is an excellent fit.” I’ll give you mine
as an example:

I grew up in NJ right by X town. I was always a very entrepreneurial kid. I started an ice cream business
when I was 14 which was my first foray into business. With the money from that I started investing on
my own and got really into the markets. I assumed I would ultimately end up in NYC because I wanted to
work in finance, so I decided I better take the opportunity to spend 4 years out of the northeast and
experience something different. That’s why I ended up choosing to go to X school. I had a few internships
in college, one at ABC firm in trading, one at XYZ firm in research, and a rotational at Bank X. I originally
got interested in finance through investing in stocks, but I was lucky enough to see a wide array of

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different roles across several products. Given this perspective, I have determined the best role for me is
[the one you re interviewing for], because [reasons that make sense for the role].

This accomplishes a lot of things that I would like your answer to accomplish:
1. Something interesting about myself that makes me look good – entrepreneurial, started a
business at 14
2. Was interested in finance at a young age
3. Thought ahead and have been making moves based on an anticipated finance career for years
4. Parlayed that interest into actual experience
5. Based on that interest I know exactly why I want to be in this role I am interviewing for

This is a fantastic foundation, and gives the interviewer many opportunities to ask follow up questions
for an easy flowing interview. Don’t forget that interviewers care about their performance too. If they
walk out thinking they crushed it, asked great questions, and had a good conversation, then they
associate you with a positive feeling.

Common Behavioral Questions

Why this job?
See above

Why this company?

Your answer to this question should include 3 things:

1. Praise of the company culture
2. Praise of a differentiator
3. Nuanced insight about the industry

For example, in an S&T interview at a small firm, I got this question. My answer was, “I have spoken to
XYZ person and a couple of contacts in the industry. Universally, people have said there is an amazing
culture here, which is important to me. You also have an impressive reputation in research, especially in
XYZ sector. Also, I would prefer to work at a small firm. When you work at one of the big banks, you do
not matter as much as an individual. The person on the other side is doing business with you because
they have to because of the banking franchise. The opportunity to move the needle is much better at a
small firm.”

This hits all 3. Praised the culture, called out their research as a differentiator, and showed industry
knowledge by mentioning large firms get business just because they’re large. This last one has the added
bonus of you telling a small firm you don’t care about having a shiny business card (even if you do, lie).

What makes you think you re a good fit for this role?

This is a personal question, but you need to hit on being hard-working and ambitious, and having
attention to detail. You have another opportunity to demonstrate understanding of the job role here
(i.e. I want to do sales trading because I find the idea of hunting for the other side of a trade exciting).

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What is not on your resume that you think sets you apart?

This is always a great question to get. This is where you want to mention how strong your interpersonal
skills are. I always said, “I am able to get along with people with a wide variety of personalities. I think
this would be helpful in this job because you’re going to interact with [list people the role you’re
interviewing for has touchpoints with].” This way you mention you have good interpersonal skills, and
show that you’ve thoroughly researched the role.

What do you think of the markets?

I only included this one because I think people get really turned around here. I recommend watching
CNBC and regurgitating a thesis that sounds intelligent. CNBC is also a good way to learn industry jargon
(but don’t listen to it for investment advice).

What was your least favorite class in college?

This is always a tough one. One time I said managerial accounting because I did not think it was useful… I
went on to use managerial accounting a lot in IB, so that ended up being a horrible answer. Stay away
from any business classes and just mention that you were forced to take some fluff electives that were
poorly run. If they ask a favorite class then say financial accounting because it made things click for you
if you want to give a dorky try hard answer. I said History of Rock & Roll to show some personality.

What do you do for fun?

You need a good answer for this. You may be in college and getting drunk off your face, but that is not a
good answer. If you have to lie, then lie. I always said intramural sports, pick up basketball, and watching
college football. This is not even that good of an answer. You should hopefully have some sort of
interesting hobby that they can ask follow up questions on.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I hate this question. Like any of us know, come on. I just describe a generic situation, “I want to be
working for a great company, on a great team, working for people I respect, and doing more and more
valuable work everyday. I don’t have some sort of exact title or salary in mind, but I know if that is my
situation then I’m continuing on the right path.” It’s cheesy, but it plays.

Spin
You will receive a technical question that you do not know the answer to. You will draw a complete
blank, and it will feel terrible. The best way to handle this is to remain calm and confident. A lot of times
in interviews they ask you harder and harder questions just to see how you emotionally respond under
pressure. They don’t care that you don’t know some complicated concept. They can teach that. It’s much
harder to teach poise under pressure. It is imperative you keep your composure, and get comfortable in
an uncomfortable position.

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I want you to become the master of spin. In one interview I pitched a stock, he asked if I had a pitch for a
short, which I had not prepared. I answered saying, “I actually don’t have one prepared, and have never
done one. I am long only in my account, so I have not given it much thought, but that’s a good idea, I
should do one for the thought exercise.” This answer shows confidence that it doesn’t bother you saying
you don’t have one, shows you are confident you can learn how to do one, strokes the interviewers ego
that he asked a good question that will help you, and brings the topic to your personal trading account.
See what can be accomplished with answers to questions that should ve made you look bad?

“Do you have any questions for me”

This is an opportunity to stand out. There are generic ones you can use, but you should make an effort
to ask differentiated, high effort questions. Ones that show you understand the industry and the
company’s place within it. You should minimally have 10 of these prepared just in case some of them get
answered while you are talking. Here are some good questions ranging from generic to highly specific.:

Generic
1. What first attracted you to this company?
2. What would you change about your company? (This one is riskier if you’re feeling confident –
gives off a we are both interviewing each other vibe)
3. What are your long term goals with the group? (If talking to a manager)
4. What is the best way for me to prepare before day one of starting a job in this role?
5. How would you describe the culture of this group?

Firm-specific
1. Your company has such enormous strength in XYZ sector, where do you think is the next area of
focus?
2. I read that your company splits your teams up in [this way], why do you think that works better?
3. What are the limitations/benefits to being at a firm in X situation? (X can be large firm, small
firm, a firm with a rep in a certain area etc.)
4. How would you describe the firm culture?
5. How soon does your firm allow junior people into XYZ advanced situation?

For banking
1. Since equity research has an impact on ECM activity, how do you manage a relationship with the
equity research team given the Chinese wall?
2. What is the banker’s role in securing ECM business?
3. When pitching new clients, why do they typically give you the mandate? Do you have a
reputation for running the best process? Is it relationship based?
4. Do you have any sort of business development team as a firm that maintains relationships with
financial sponsors, or do you have the managing directors maintain the relationships as
individuals?
5. Could you tell me about a time where you worked on a deal where the process did not go as
planned but the deal succeeded anyway?

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For S&T
1. What sectors are strongest on your equity research platform? Where do you think you could
invest?
2. What is the main reason people trade with you?
3. What has the impact of MIFID II been on your business? (Google this regulation)
4. How quickly can junior brokers or sales traders start prospecting?
5. How do you interface with the bankers given Chinese wall implications?

Thank you Notes

You have to send a thank you to every single person you spoke with and to the HR rep who helped you
set up the interview. I like to keep these short (nobody wants a novel) and personal. To personalize, I
write down 1-2 words on the business card they gave me so I can remember a tidbit for the email. For
example, “Notre Dame fan” or “former trader.” This will allow your typical thank you to look like this:

Hi Mark,

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me yesterday. I really enjoyed hearing about how your
experience in trading has helped you differentiate yourself in your current role. I am excited about XYZ
firm, and hope to meet you again soon.

Thanks again,
Austin

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NAILING THE RESUME AND SECURING AN INTERVIEW
Resume
Your resume obviously needs to be perfect. No typos or anything like that. But, the content of it will be
way more important. I cannot help you with that. Join Greek life at school, join clubs, volunteer in the
community, get jobs/internships, have interests, start a business, etc. Do unique things that you can put
on your resume that spark a conversation. You’re going to be one of a million resumes people see, so do
things that make you stand out. Your resume needs to say you’re smart, work hard, are a type A
personality, and you’re an interesting person.

Education – include your GPA which let’s hope is at least a 3.5 (hopefully higher). A good school is also
important here, but more on that in the next section. Studying abroad is a good conversation starter, so
if your school offers it, it’s not a bad way to go.

Work Experience – This is where you include any jobs, internships, or leadership experiences you’ve had
in the past. Be as specific as possible here when you discuss your experience. Below is an example of a
weak and strong bullet:

Weak: Worked on several projects for the equity research team, including an end of summer stock pitch

Strong: Assisted the healthcare equity research team with financial modeling, new company research,
and various other projects, including a year end stock pitch for Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Activities Skills and Interests – This is where it’s okay to show some personality. There was one kid who
put down some chicken restaurant as an interest and I saw the resume reviewers laugh and refer to him
as the chicken kid. It’s better to be the chicken guy than the “Notre Dame kid”. 95% of his resume is
dead serious and shows he is smart and works hard - this one thing made him seem like a human being.

Getting an Interview
You’re ready for the interview but you have no idea how to get one. I have been there. I could not get an
investment banking interview to save my life, AND I had good internship experience. The key to getting
an interview is:
1. A good resume
2. Connections
3. Hustling
4. Settling (I’ll explain)

How it worked when I was in school was your summer of freshman and sophomore year you work as
corporate of a job as you possibly can. Then the summer going into senior year, you get your best
internship, which offers you a job at the end of the summer, and then you coast senior year knowing
you have a 6 figure job when you graduate. That is the dream – this is not how it worked for me, and
may not be how it works for you. Do not panic, just recognize it’s going to be harder, more stressful, and
you may be playing catch up for years – I don’t want to sugar coat it.

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Firms have sped up this process to such a point where there is literally no such thing as too soon to start
thinking about getting your junior year internship. First semester freshman year, I would talk to your
guidance counselor about your career plans and ask what related clubs and organizations the school
offers. I joined a scholars program at my school (I went to a non-target school) that was designed to be a
feeder to Wall Street. This program completely changed my career – see if your school has one.

If they do, great. If not then you have to be creative. The best way to do this is to – as early as possible in
your college career – establish a dialogue with alumni that are working on Wall Street. Don’t worry
about role right now, you just need contacts, because those contacts have contacts.

Don’t feel weird about reaching out to people unprompted. Do not forget that everyone has an ego, and
giving people, especially recent graduates, the feeling of importance will make them happy. They will
want to help you, especially since you are hustling by reaching out to them.

You will have calls with these people and they will ask what you are interested in, based on this book,
and other resources, you should have at least a range of answers. You don’t need to have it figured out
yet though. Hopefully this prompts them to pass along your resume to other people who might be a
decision maker or would give you a job. Again, don’t be afraid to ask for help and show your hand. They
don’t give jobs to the kids who don’t ask for one.

I will be perfectly honest, the easier path forward here is going to the right school. If you go to a top
school and work hard you will have absolutely no problem getting one of these internships. It’s not easy,
but it’s 100% doable if you follow the steps.

Now let’s assume you went to a non-target school and you didn’t get that coveted junior year
internship. Come to terms with the fact it’s going to be harder for you - but it’s not impossible. Let me
tell you my story so you don’t get too discouraged.

Sophomore year I got into that scholars program that taught me a ton about the recruiting process. It
served its purpose and got my foot in the door for interviews. I had a handful of IB interviews, but no
offers. I had boatloads of S&T interviews, but I wanted banking. I settled for S&T because that was the
best I could get. For compliance reasons, I could not get offered a job at the end of the summer (I have
family in the business where there’s a conflict of interest – don’t worry, I’m not in trouble with the SEC).

So now it’s senior year and I am throwing my resume and meeting with any firm that would talk to me.
At this point IB is completely out of the question. In the meantime I started studying for the CFA and
passed level 1. Finally, because I talked to so many lesser known firms, I got a good research sales job. I
completed level 2 of the CFA while working hard at that job.

At this point I went from potentially a great S&T job to a still good but not as lucrative/prestigious S&T
job. I started out wanting banking and now I’m at a middle market bank in research sales. This was the
best I could do, I had to “settle.” Then I talked to a friend at a small bank that just started their banking
practice recently. He knew they were hiring analysts so he asked me out to drinks with his team, and put

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in the good word for an interview. I did well at the interview and got offered the job. When I went to
leave my firm they offered to switch me over to banking, so I stayed to do IB there.

I started out wanting to do investment banking, did 3 S&T internships instead, got knocked on my ass by
not getting a job, got a worse job, then finally got the IB job. Some lessons from this story:

1. Take the best option available and move forward with that – even if it’s not perfectly ideal for
what you want
2. Keep in touch with everybody in your network and let your intentions and be known to whom
it’s appropriate
3. Smaller banks care less about your school – if you went to a “decent” school and you’re not on a
minority program track, don’t hold your breath for Goldman

Conclusion
Your primary goal is to get the junior year internship. If you’re from a non-target school your life is going
to be harder, but it is not impossible. Connections are everything, so continually reach out to people,
maintain a rolodex, and ask for help. If you are banging your head against the wall trying to get the most
prestigious jobs, then go down market – settle. You have a long career ahead of you, you don’t need to
start out front office at Goldman – just get your foot in the door of the industry and go from there.

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