Questions by Function

Consulting

What background do you have that would be helpful in consulting?
Why consulting?
How do you think the consulting industry is structured?
What are some differences among the consulting firms that are important to you?
What were the sales of your last employer? What was its profitability?
Are you a generalist or specialist? Where do you see yourself specializing?
Are you competitive?
How are you going to make your decision if you get more than one offer?

Health Care

Why are you interested in the health care industry?
Why are you pursuing an MBA vs. Master in Health Administration?
What strengths do you have for the health care industry?
Prioritize the most important issues facing health care management.
Provide your recommendations to address these issues.
What is the current administration’s goal towards health care?
Why have some HMOs been successful and others have not? Elaborate.

Investment Banking

What would you do if you weren’t going into investment banking?
What was your quantitative GMAT score?
Some technical finance/accounting questions:
- How do you value a firm?
- What is an interest rate swap?
- What is DCF? How do you calculate the discount rate?
- How do you determine if a stock is undervalued?
- How would you price the stock for an IPO?
- What is the yield on a zero coupon bond trading at par with 10 years to maturity?
- What is working capital? Quick ratio? Free cash flow?
Tell me what you know about [the firm].
Tell me about the cultures of the different firms.
How are you going to make your decision if you get more than one offer?
What do you want to do and why- M&A, capital markets, or corporate finance?
The bond market is going down; what is the stock market going to do?
Where is the industry going? What is the market doing?
What are the headlines in today’s Wall Street Journal?
What do you read regularly on the industry?
Why choose investment banking? Why pick this bank?
Tell me what an investment banker does.
Tell me the difference between commercial and investment banks.
Why pick corporate finance as opposed to sales and trading?
What are your outside activities? Why would you be willing to give them up for such a demanding job?
What role do you play in group situations?
What would you do if offered drugs as part of the deal? (or other ethically-oriented questions)
Sell us on your quantitative skills.
How smart are you? How do we know how smart you are?
If we made you an offer today, would you take it?
What did the Dow, S&P, or NASDAQ close at yesterday?
What stocks do you follow and why? (Be prepared to discuss the stock’s performance.)

Marketing

Give me the attributes of a good brand manager.
Now take me through your background and demonstrate how you have each attribute.
Rate Yale’s marketing program.
How would you sell more [Tide]?
Talk about an ad—what makes it effective? interesting? etc.
What are some examples of bad advertising? Why?
How do you sell your ideas?
What are you looking for in a consumer products company?
What do you think are the most important traits in a marketing person?
Describe your leadership style.
Provide an example of your problem solving approach.

Sales and Trading

What other firms have you talked to?
What makes you think you can sell?
Would you like to do sales or trading? Why?
Tell me what you think a trader (salesperson) does.
Why choose selling debt vs. selling equity?
Why didn’t you choose corporate finance?
What do you think having an MBA does for you in this field?
What particular markets or instruments are you interested in? Why?
Will your personality make you a good trader? Why?
How will you motivate yourself to make the calls you hate to make?
What are your grades? (Yes, they know about the Yale SOM grading process.)


Strategic Planning and Corporate Finance

What do you hope to gain by working for our firm?
Where do you see yourself five years from now?
How do you see your career progressing in our firm?
What do you know about our industry?
How would you describe our competitive position?
Our ____ division is thinking of introducing a (such and such) new product. How would you go about determining if this is a good idea?
We are having trouble managing our ____ division. What do you think are the key performance metrics? How would you improve them?
How would you value our _____ for a potential sale, spin-off, or liquidation?
How does M&A activity in banking affect our industry?

Venture Capital

What is venture capital?
What strengths do you have for venture capital?
Tell me when you have worked with all management levels--from CEO to analyst.
Describe your analytical and interpersonal skills.
What operations exposure have you had?
What managerial exposure have you had?
What do you look for in a venture?
Do you think more effort should be put into human capital or raising funds and investing them?