Thoughts on Interview Strategies
There are many useful guides out there that give information about how to prepare for interviews - smile, research the firm/position, send follow-up emails, among others. I would agree that these are all important steps but the reality of today's job market demands much more than simple heuristics. The job markets I will speak to in this post involve analytics, consulting, business and finance at a general level.
I originally prepared this information for a volunteer speaking event done for UniCareer- a career development organization targeted towards international students, but these tips and methodologies are universally applicable in today’s job market. From my peers and first-hand experience interviewing at financial services, consulting, technology, and marketing firms, there are a few predominant practices and categorizations I find helpful to distinguish.
I believe the most useful initial breakout of an interview is behavioral vs technical. Broadly speaking, behavioral interviews involve story responses while technical ones involve a search for a right answer or thought process.
Behavioral Interviews – Story time
The most important and common question is without a doubt “Tell me about yourself” or some variation. This question naturally comes to mind to figure out if you want to work with that person. With a near certainty of being asked this question whether in person or on a phone screen, this should be the question you have rehearsed the most. For recent grads, a solid answer would be a 2 minute response that includes 3 things:
Other story questions you can expect:
Technical Interviews – Get the Answer
Part 1) Job specific
These involve analytical questions that vary based on the position you applied to. These skill-sets can be further broken down to knowledge and technical skills. Knowledge in this case means understanding statistics, expected value, percent change and other basic math. Knowledge also means understanding of relevant terms like CPM (marketing), relational database (technology), Cash Flow Statements (finance), etc. Technical skill-sets in analytics, consulting, and finance jobs may involve actual tools and experience in using them such as: Excel, Powerpoint, SQL, R, Python, etc. The distinction of knowledge and technical skills matters because the ideal candidate will have a balance in both areas. For example if your background is statistics and therefore probably R and/or SQL, take the time to learn what CPMs or GRPs mean if you are applying to marketing jobs (whether on the big data or marketing side). Just being able to speak about them generally will show the interviewer you care about their industry.
Part 2) Brain Teasers
Brain teasers scare many people but this should not be the case. In these industries, teasers are mostly math based - probability and optimization questions.
A probability question can be “A submarine has two missiles each with 1/3 probability of hitting target, what is probability that at least one hits?”
An optimization question can be “I have a random number in my head between 0 and 1000, after you guess I will say higher/lower/correct, what is the least number of tries to do this? Can you optimize it further from your first method?”
Teaser questions vary wildly in difficulty and the best way to prepare is to do sample questions (ideally of different types). Especially for probability questions, many of them will use the same fundamental understanding of conditional probability or Bayesian stats to calculate probability or expected value of playing a certain game. To prepare, go on Glassdoor’s interview section for the company in question to do example questions. Once you’ve exhausted those, go on the Glassdoor pages of trading firms (Bridgewater, SIG, etc) as they have more teasers than you will ever want to do. In short, practice math, specifically probability, and sample questions.
Part 3) Market Sizing
Market sizing questions test your ability to think on your feet where the intent is for the interviewer to evaluate your process rather than the actual answer. These types of questions include:
How many tennis balls can fit into an airplane? How many fast-food restaurants are in Manhattan? While the interviewer in theory isn’t supposed to punish you for giving estimates, but giving a very bad first assumption of something such as population size can easily derail your case. The interviewer might discredit the rest of what you say or not take you very seriously if you grossly over/underestimate something. Therefore you should memorize a few facts such as: 350 million U.S. population, 7 billion world population, 3 people per household in the U.S.
These things are important if you were to be asked a question like how much milk does the U.S. population drink each year? Obviously you will need to estimate the U.S. population for this answer or some derivative of, regardless of your methodology. These numbers are nice and round, which is what you should be using when required to do calculations and estimates.
Part 4) Case Study
The last category of technical interviews is the case study. These come in all kinds of flavors and require logic and basic algebra, and usually last at least 30 minutes. A phone screen case study usually is less than an hour but an onsite one truly varies.
They usually begin with a brainstorm type question such as “what seasonal factors might affect car sales in the U.S.?” You will then give a list of different factors, then the interviewer will guide the interview and usually give numbers like “brands x, y, z have a, b, c sales” and ask you for various types of calculations.
Unlike market sizing questions, interviewers will usually expect you to arrive at a specific answer so accuracy is key (then comes quickness). There are obviously many types of case studies but the most important skills to refresh are break-even analysis, calculating % change, and expected value.
You can practice for free on McKinsey’s website which has many sample case questions. Additionally the book “Case In Point” by Marc Cosentino is a very comprehensive guide on case study and market sizing strategies.
There are certainly differences in the way people might categorize these questions and the intent of this guide is meant to share my thoughts on differentiation of interview questions and methods of preparation. If you are interested in learning more about interviewing or UniCareer's services, feel free to email me at xi.lin@unicareer.org.
I originally prepared this information for a volunteer speaking event done for UniCareer- a career development organization targeted towards international students, but these tips and methodologies are universally applicable in today’s job market. From my peers and first-hand experience interviewing at financial services, consulting, technology, and marketing firms, there are a few predominant practices and categorizations I find helpful to distinguish.
I believe the most useful initial breakout of an interview is behavioral vs technical. Broadly speaking, behavioral interviews involve story responses while technical ones involve a search for a right answer or thought process.
Behavioral Interviews – Story time
The most important and common question is without a doubt “Tell me about yourself” or some variation. This question naturally comes to mind to figure out if you want to work with that person. With a near certainty of being asked this question whether in person or on a phone screen, this should be the question you have rehearsed the most. For recent grads, a solid answer would be a 2 minute response that includes 3 things:
- Why you chose your major and why at this specific university
- Most recent internship
- How this history relates to your interest in this job posting/company
- Explain a time you had to deal with a difficult coworker or teammate
- Explain the biggest challenge you’ve faced at work
- Explain your biggest strengths/weaknesses
- Explain a time a project failed and how you handled it
- Give an example of selflessness (e.g. helped a coworker)
Other story questions you can expect:
- Why are you interested in this specific position
- What do you know about our company
- Explain to me a subject as if I were 5 years old
Technical Interviews – Get the Answer
Part 1) Job specific
These involve analytical questions that vary based on the position you applied to. These skill-sets can be further broken down to knowledge and technical skills. Knowledge in this case means understanding statistics, expected value, percent change and other basic math. Knowledge also means understanding of relevant terms like CPM (marketing), relational database (technology), Cash Flow Statements (finance), etc. Technical skill-sets in analytics, consulting, and finance jobs may involve actual tools and experience in using them such as: Excel, Powerpoint, SQL, R, Python, etc. The distinction of knowledge and technical skills matters because the ideal candidate will have a balance in both areas. For example if your background is statistics and therefore probably R and/or SQL, take the time to learn what CPMs or GRPs mean if you are applying to marketing jobs (whether on the big data or marketing side). Just being able to speak about them generally will show the interviewer you care about their industry.
Part 2) Brain Teasers
Brain teasers scare many people but this should not be the case. In these industries, teasers are mostly math based - probability and optimization questions.
A probability question can be “A submarine has two missiles each with 1/3 probability of hitting target, what is probability that at least one hits?”
An optimization question can be “I have a random number in my head between 0 and 1000, after you guess I will say higher/lower/correct, what is the least number of tries to do this? Can you optimize it further from your first method?”
Teaser questions vary wildly in difficulty and the best way to prepare is to do sample questions (ideally of different types). Especially for probability questions, many of them will use the same fundamental understanding of conditional probability or Bayesian stats to calculate probability or expected value of playing a certain game. To prepare, go on Glassdoor’s interview section for the company in question to do example questions. Once you’ve exhausted those, go on the Glassdoor pages of trading firms (Bridgewater, SIG, etc) as they have more teasers than you will ever want to do. In short, practice math, specifically probability, and sample questions.
Part 3) Market Sizing
Market sizing questions test your ability to think on your feet where the intent is for the interviewer to evaluate your process rather than the actual answer. These types of questions include:
How many tennis balls can fit into an airplane? How many fast-food restaurants are in Manhattan? While the interviewer in theory isn’t supposed to punish you for giving estimates, but giving a very bad first assumption of something such as population size can easily derail your case. The interviewer might discredit the rest of what you say or not take you very seriously if you grossly over/underestimate something. Therefore you should memorize a few facts such as: 350 million U.S. population, 7 billion world population, 3 people per household in the U.S.
These things are important if you were to be asked a question like how much milk does the U.S. population drink each year? Obviously you will need to estimate the U.S. population for this answer or some derivative of, regardless of your methodology. These numbers are nice and round, which is what you should be using when required to do calculations and estimates.
Part 4) Case Study
The last category of technical interviews is the case study. These come in all kinds of flavors and require logic and basic algebra, and usually last at least 30 minutes. A phone screen case study usually is less than an hour but an onsite one truly varies.
They usually begin with a brainstorm type question such as “what seasonal factors might affect car sales in the U.S.?” You will then give a list of different factors, then the interviewer will guide the interview and usually give numbers like “brands x, y, z have a, b, c sales” and ask you for various types of calculations.
Unlike market sizing questions, interviewers will usually expect you to arrive at a specific answer so accuracy is key (then comes quickness). There are obviously many types of case studies but the most important skills to refresh are break-even analysis, calculating % change, and expected value.
You can practice for free on McKinsey’s website which has many sample case questions. Additionally the book “Case In Point” by Marc Cosentino is a very comprehensive guide on case study and market sizing strategies.
There are certainly differences in the way people might categorize these questions and the intent of this guide is meant to share my thoughts on differentiation of interview questions and methods of preparation. If you are interested in learning more about interviewing or UniCareer's services, feel free to email me at xi.lin@unicareer.org.
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