This one is very personal. Prepare in advance an answer, which is original. Original in the sense it corresponds to you and is not a generic answer. Be sure to always bring proof of what you say to the table.

Essentials skills for a career in Finance:

• Strong team players
• Positive attitude
• Commitment and drive
• Initiative
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Passion to excel
• Excellent communication skills
• Adaptability and flexibility
• Ability to manage pressure and multi-task
• Decision making skills
• Analytical skills
• Problem solving ability

In an interview, the main piece of advice is “be honest”. Well, obviously, if you are sloppy and disorganize with your work, you will not say that…

The key here is to find weaknesses (true or not), which can be converted into strengths or advantages for the job you are applying to.

Let’s say you are going to investment banking and you are asked this question. You could answer, “I have trouble respecting long-term deadlines. I always start working when I am under pressure, and when I start, I can only stop when I’m done”.

This can be a weakness for some job. Let’s say you had a previous experience where you had to plan your work in advance and where people were leaving at 5pm every day: being unable to start working a long time in advance would have been a serious problem. On the other hand, for investment banks, it would be the perfect profile: working under pressure, for short deadlines and late at night. Always back up your stories with examples (previous work experience or others).

You want to demonstrate that you are committed to investment banking. Be sure to mention that you are very excited about becoming an junior and that you want to make the most of the position in terms of learning, get as much transaction experience as possible, etc.

You should really know this question well, it is guaranteed to be asked. When you answer this question, your goals should be:

1. Display your personality and let the interviewer get to know you better;
2. Walk through your life decisions/accomplishments and how it has shaped you; and
3. Convince your interviewer that you are truly interested in investment banking (or S&T, PE etc.) and you have the skills necessary to be a successful analyst (intern, associate etc.).

A majority of interviews will start out with the interviewer asking you to “walk me through your resume.” This gives the interviewer a chance to read over your resume and also to get to know you. This is a situation in which you can talk about your background, and also use an opportunity to make your case for why you want to be a banker.

Give the interviewer a story that shows your achievements and how everything fits together for you to be a successful investment banker. Make sure to point out how each job has let you take on more responsibility, or required you to acquire more finance/business knowledge than the one before it.

Be clear about the progression of your career and why investment banking is the best logical next step for your development. Make sure to spend a majority of your time talking about your most recent job experience and the classes you are taking at University. Plan to spend about 3 minutes or so on this story (5 minutes at the maximum).

For this one, you need to be able to give good reasons. You can be interested to work for a specific company for different reasons:

• Achievements of the team
• Future projects
• Small vs. large team
• Culture
• Work environment
• Prestige
• etc...

In any case, you have to build a rationale, which would match your own aspiration.

Investment banking is the business of raising capital for companies and providing advisory services on financing and merger activities. A company will approach an investment bank when it needs to raise capital (debt or equity) or when it needs advice in negotiating and structuring an acquisition of another company. Examples of workstreams:

• Underwriting: an arrangement whereby investment bankers raise investment capital from investors on behalf of corporations and governments who issue public securities (“public offering”). These securities can come in the form of equity (IPO, secondary equity issuance) or debt (high-grade debt, high yield bonds, government securities, etc). Investment banks make money by securing underwriting fees (% of the capital raised) from the public offerings.
• Financial Restructuring: provide advisory services including recommending the sale of assets (corporate divestitures), potential bolt-on acquisitions and merger opportunities, or even working with M&A bankers to sell the company entirely.
• Investment Banking Job Hierarchy: Analysts → Associates → Vice Presidents (VPs) → Directors → Managing Directors (MDs) General
• Pitch Book: Created by the bankers and used to guide introductions and presentations during a sales pitch. Pitch Books contain general information and include a wide variety of selling points, such as an overview of the investment bank, including details of its specific capabilities in research, corporate finance, and sales & trading, and usually provides updates on industry/market and recommendations on the optimal capital structure strategy for the company.
• Deal-Specific (Pitch Book, Modelling, Term Sheet, SPA): Highly customized depending on the situation; includes valuations, comparable company analyses, and industry analyses, as well as the bank’s reputation, prominence and acumen of its research analysts, performance on past/similar work, and information on rankings/expertise.

Deal that you have monitored in the Press:

• Know buyer and seller
• Know the price and the multiples (Purchase Price / EBITDA) if they are readily available
• If public deal find the investor presentation: http://www.publicisgroupe.com/en/media/display/id/6879
• If US IPO go on http://www.sec.gov/ or http://dealbook.nytimes.com/
• Discuss the dynamics of the deal – how it developed, if anyone else was interested, and what implications it has for the industry

Tell me about a deal you have worked on: If you have prior investment banking experience the interviewer will be much more likely to want to spend a lot of time talking about your experience in detail. The most important thing to take away here is: Do not write down deal experience on your resume unless you are very confident you understand everything that happened in the deal process (within the obvious limitations of your rank within the company).

If an interviewer starts asking you questions you don’t know, then it could mean the end of your interview process with that bank. The interviewer will also want to know if you did any sort of valuation modelling for the deal. If so you’ll need to really understand how the company functions (the economics of the industry, how the company makes money, how investors value the industry) and how you valued the company (DCF, multiples, etc.). Make sure you know why the company wanted to sell itself, raise debt or equity, acquire companies, or be bought by other companies. Be able to connect corporate valuation with corporate strategy.

You need to know your deal inside out:

• Brief overview of the transaction, buyer and seller (describe the companies, give approximate financial – revenue, EBITDA, market cap)
• Transaction rationale: Why did the company you were representing want to sell / buy?
• What was your role on this deal?
• Describe the deal process (broad, targeted auction, financing)
• Any obstacle to getting the deal done?
• Data about the market (trends , competition etc.)
• Valuation 

To answer this question, you need to understand the situation of the interviewer. He /she wants to know if you are a desirable person. If you say “no, I’m applying to your firm only” (thinking that exclusivity will look good), you are wrong.

Interviews are like dating. You need to pretend that you have several opportunities in front of you, and you do. When you give names of other institutions you applied to, be sure that they are similar. If you are interviewing at Rothschild (a boutique), you cannot say you are also interviewing at Goldman Sachs (a bulge bracket).

They do now work the same way and have different business models. The best answer to this question is “I already secured a position at X but I am more interested in joining your company, for Y and Z reason” (do not lie).

Try to meet people from the sector and from different companies. In any case, the answer must be “you”: “I met with people from both companies and the ones working at your firm seemed much happier with the culture and the working environment”.

Make your research and find the differentiating points for the different institutions you are applying to: culture, geographical footprint, sector expertise, product expertise etc…