Congratulations. You’re about to graduate with honors from a top-tier undergraduate
or MBA program. Your degree will be in economics or finance and
you have been hailed as the best captain the crew/tennis team has ever known.
You were president of the debate society, have played the stock market since
age three, and read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every morning (starting
with the section on “Money & Investing,” your favorite). You desperately want
to be an investment banker and consider yourself an ideal candidate. Your GPA
never once dipped below a 3.6 and you aced every standardized test thrown
your way, without so much as a single prep course. You are a natural-born
leader. You are well groomed and have never been rejected from anything you
have ever applied to. You are a shoo-in at any firm. Right?
Wrong. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if this doesn’t quite describe your
accomplishments to date), for the first time in your heretofore successful life,
all of this is not enough. Have you given thought to how your hand feels when
someone shakes it? Or how you would react if an interviewer started to read
the paper at the exact moment you entered the room? (And maybe not “Money
& Investing,” either—maybe the comics or Ann Landers.) Can you do a backof-
the-envelope valuation of a company? Do you know what an investment
banker does and why you want to become one? Do you know how to sell your
biggest weakness as a strength? Can you differentiate one investment bank
from another? If you hesitated and had to think about any of these questions,
then you’re not ready for your investment banking interview. The key word here
is P-R-E-P-A-R-A-T-I-O-N. Kudos on your past accomplishments, but thi ...