Doostang.com

[volatilicious]

Great source for professionals in finance. For an invite send your email address to volatilicious@yahoo.com.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Thanks. sent you an email

 

[volatilicious]

sent an invite to you all

 

[volatilicious]

For those with interviews in coming weeks, I thought this might be helpful. These questions were posted on doostang.com

So for everyone out there looking to break into the finance world, here are some questions that I have heard throughout my career on Wall Street. Let's get a thread going here, esp. since interview season is right around the corner!!!

100% Guaranteed Questions
- Walk me through your resume.
- Why Investment Banking / Sales & Trading / Private Client Services?
- How do you value a company (particular to investment banking)?
- Why did you choose (school name)
- What were your fall term grades? What was your SAT score? Why didn't you do better in ____ class?
- What qualities do you think are important for this industry? Do you possess those qualities?
- Do you understand the structure of our summer program / your job requirements?
- What is your greatest weakness?
- Why should we hire you?
- What do you do for fun?
- With what other firms are you interviewing? Are you also interviewing with consulting firms or for opportunities outside Investment Banking / Sales & Trading / PCS?
- If I gave you an offer right now would you accept?
- Rank the firms with whom you're interviewing in order of preference.
- What questions do you have for me?

Personal Goals & Accomplishments
- What made you choose your undergraduate school? Why did you major in ___?
- What was your favorite class so far?
- What are your 5-20 year career plans?
- What is your proudest accomplishment? Your most challenging personal experience?
- Tell me about a time when you led a team or took responsibility either at school or in your prior job?
- How do you work in teams? How do you handle a non-contributing team member? What do you add to a group when you take on a team assignment or group task?
- Describe a failure. What did you learn from it?
- How do you handle stress?
- Tell me a joke.

Financial Questions
- Why would two companies merge? What major factors drive mergers and acquisitions?
- Why might a company choose debt over equity financing?
- Where is our firm's stock trading?
- Where is the Dow Jones today? S&P? NASDAQ? 20-year or 30-year T-Bonds?
- Where do you think interest rates will be 2 year from now?
- Where is the market going?
- Tell me three items on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal.
- Do you personally invest in stocks? Which ones? Why?

Accounting Questions
- Walk me through a typical cash flow statement, balance sheet, or income statement.
- What is EBITDA?
- Company X's net income is ___; how do I compute their cash flow?
- What is goodwill? How does it effect net income?
- Why would a company choose pooling over purchase accounting?
- What is working capital?
- What are deferred taxes?

General Questions
- How does your past career qualify you for a position in investment banking / sales & trading / PCS?
- What do you hope to accomplish this summer?
- Rank the firms on Wall Street. Where do we fit? Who is our competition? What differentiates our firm? What are our strengths / weaknesses?
- Describe a typical day for a full-time analyst.
- What is your greatest concern about Investment Banking / our firm?

 

[volatilicious]

i realize that the financial and accounting questions are less relevant for us here. but the rest i think are definitely potential questions in quantitative interviews

 

[Andy Nguyen]

sent an invite to you all

My impression of doostang is that even though it appears to be very career focused and serious, it lacks a sense of community and interactivity.

People there go by their real name, address, company. There are good info to be found and interesting people to meet.

I hope they bring more sense of active community to that site. Thanks for the evite, volatilicious.