Spoiled Banana Interview
I scheduled a zoom interview with a firm (7-10B AUM), the interview was supposed to be with four people, but only one analyst showed up. He said, "Hey, let's get started," and then off the bat started asking increasingly difficult technical questions, every time I finished, he'd look at me like I was an idiot and kept asking me for random formulas, which wasn't too odd.
However, it started getting odd when I started talking to him about my background and previous experiences. I started going over my resume, but he kept interrupting me by telling me the ways he would have done the role and had conducted due diligence (industry research, business development, comps, precedent transactions, or modelling), then I began by saying, "Well, the reason we didn't do it that way was because blah blah blah," to which he abruptly interrupted and began to talk about his former employment and his experiences attending a target school, which I found interesting given that I too attended one. After his rant I just said I understood where he was coming from, due to him not letting me explain my rationale.
We then sat there for maybe 30 seconds of silence staring at each other via zoom. Shortly after the silence that only a monastery could dream of… He asked why I decided to get my masters from the same school as my undergrad, to which I started to respond to, only to be again abruptly cut off to him asking if I had any questions because he had another meeting in 5 minutes. So, I asked him how long he had been with the firm and which portcos he had helped close... I was blown away by his response: "I have been here close to two years, and I haven't assisted in the closure of any current portcos..." -enter more silence, until "well it was nice to meet you"
Safe to say I wanted to reach through the screen and give the guy a nice gorilla face high-five for contributing to the most awkward interview that I have had to date.
What awkward interviews have you had for better or worse?
Tbh at the start of my career I interviewed at some smart AMs and it was a similar experience with snobbery and the like. had an interview where they even snickered and yawned at me. Thankfully working at a mega AM which dwarfs them. from my experience the reason why many of these small firms both sell and buy side stay small is because of culture, anyone with any actual personality or talent gets the hell out of there after a few years
A lot of these guys get really nervous for interviews, even from the other side. Sounds like this dude has no social awareness at all but I've found some junior people cannot turn off the need to impress people / treat everything like they are the one being interviewed, even to their demise
I was a freshman in college many moons ago interviewing for a SA role at Gleacher and someone asks me what 16% of 4.27 was (something non-5% number and something to two decimal places) and then after 2 seconds says "too slow, in the real world that won't fly!".
My brother in Christ, I am not Shakuntala Devi; please ask me to walk you through a DCF and get on with your day. But apparently, fast mental math was not the key to success in the real world, given where Gleacher ended up...
On the flipside, I've had other people who are really kind, high EQ interviewers. I ended up going into consulting and at a large cap PE firm where I ultimately accepted my offer, I had just finished a modeling test. One of the senior investors there who was a notorious slave driver of Associates asked me a question about estimating the tax effects or something (not really relevant) of using MACRS vs. some other depreciation scheme.
I had no idea and just said "I'm sorry, I really don't know but if you let me Google it and give me a couple of minutes I know I can get you an answer." They just smiled and I forget exactly what they said but I could tell what they meant to say was "It's ok, we know you're not a banker and you've done well thus far and completed our modeling test, this is accounting trivia so we won't hold it against you."
My favorite one was interviewing for one of the late stage venture firms years later (2021 I think, maybe early 2022 before full panic) and they asked me my thoughts on Bird or Lime or some scooter company. I said I'm sure it has a great market in urban areas but probably won't be great for commuters in suburbs or people taking groceries home or dropping their kids off at practice, and they looked me square in the eye and said "that is ridiculous, almost everyone will be using a scooter in all areas except rural in the next 3 years". Hardest I've had to contain my laughter and needless to say did not continue forward.
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