This guide is your starting point to an overview of the investment banking industry and training on the behavioral portion of investment banking interviews. This guide is constantly being updated and improved, and it should be able to give you the tools necessary to establish and begin a career in investment banking.

For context, I’m an ex-investment banker from one of the bulge-bracket banks in New York City. Currently, I am working as an analyst at a major hedge fund in New York. While at the bank, I worked within the M&A group, structuring transactions and providing advisory services to our clients. In addition to my M&A duties, I worked closely with the recruitment team, so over the years I’ve interviewed hundreds of applicants and reviewed thousands of resumes. As a result of this experience, I am able to provide detailed, insider advice to those who are looking to get their foot in the door.

Additionally, my original journey into the investment banking industry was unique and difficult, as I was an outsider to the industry and came from a “non-target” school. This tremendously increased the difficulty of getting a job in banking. It took a tremendous amount of trial and error in my undergraduate sophomore year before I finally got a handle on the interviewing process. By junior year, I managed to land a summer internship at an NYC-based, middle-market investment bank.

Once I graduated college, the recession was looming and the bank was not hiring, so I quickly had to start applying to others. After almost a year of interviewing, good fortune struck: I landed a full-time job at one of the largest bulge bracket investment banks in Manhattan. This experience taught me a tremendous amount about how to navigate the recruiting process into the industry. I did not go to one of the top schools at which investment banks direct the lion’s share of their recruiting effort. As a result, I had few people helping me, and none of the banks were looking to find me. I had to do all the legwork. The result is that I taught myself how to handle the interviewing process to get into the industry as an outsider with little or no outside help.

You can too, and I can help you.

My goal is to educate candidates on what to expect in investment banking recruiting, how to prepare for investment banking interviews, and a general understanding of the day-to-day expectations of an analyst. I found that unless you attended an elite college or had substantial outside help, it is very difficult to learn this vital information. While, the state school I attended was reputable, they were very ill-equipped to help me, and without help I found that it’s easy to be blindsided by many things in networking and in interviews.

Ultimately, the hiring process at any bulge bracket investment bank is extremely regimented and intensely competitive— if you don’t know how and what to prepare, you will have a hard time being successful. You need to have a strong understanding of how the process works, what characteristics banks are looking for, and what questions they will likely ask you. My road to Wall Street was unbelievably tough, but as my own experience demonstrates, investment banking recruiting can be learned.

Investment Banking Overview→