During the second round of interviews you should expect to meet the group/analyst that you’ll primarily be working with. Realistically, this is the final round for everyone since this person will make the decision at the end of the day. For larger banks, if you’re well liked, you can expect to talk to the head of research/head of recruiting/head of “xyz group”. But this part is more of a formality and you can expect to get an offer once you have a casual conversation with the head, at the end of the day they have bigger issues to worry about (hiring new analysts, expanding divisions and branding their firm). Ideally you already know a bit about the analyst/group but this is where you need to shine. Unlike the previous post where there are 3 specific answers to help get you through, the final round is much more on you to sell your knowledge. Simply put you need to have 3 major selling points, because this entire interview is “why you?” and is much less about if you can do the job. Ideally your three biggest selling points are: being able to help generate ideas, ability to work with the group/analyst and willingness to learn without hand holding.
Generate Ideas: This will come up in some shape or form very quickly at the start of the interview. Unlike the previous answers to pitching a stock, instead after you pitch one of their buy rated stocks you give an additional comment such as “I am also starting to like xyz in your coverage universe” make sure this is a Neutral stock in their universe that is a mega cap name (no not RIMM). Why? This will show you understand the analyst/group would upgrade the stock in certain circumstances and that you are not an excel jockey/word processing machine. The best way to find answers is to simply Google the coverage, find mega cap neutral names, and find interviews on the stock/sector. Once you see hints of why the stock would be upgraded, give these as reasons to upgrade along with another self-researched reason. While this may sound a bit counter intuitive, as long as you are not pitching a very off the wall stock and clearly state you’re starting to like it you’ll likely get a positive reaction.
Ability to Work With The Group: After the counter intuitive stock pitch, you’ve created a great opportunity to prove you can work with the group. You’ve created a somewhat more intense situation where the analyst/group head is going to question if you read up on the firm/stock opinions and didn’t give a generic “I’m only going to talk about your buy rated names like every other candidate” answer. So in this situation, ideally you got a feel for if the analyst wants someone who is very agreeable, would be upset by your opinion, or of he wants someone who can make decisions and thinks it’s interesting you would consider upgrading a neutral stock. Long story short, there is no perfect response, tailor your opinion to his personality and continue to tailor until you see positive body language, a last ditch resort for touchy/arrogant analysts is to veer questions back to a good buy ratings they had.
Willingness to Learn: As you may imagine this is very similar to point number 2. By having a conversation about a stock in the coverage universe that ends in a good discussion, you have proven your willingness to learn. The reason why it is a separate topic is that you will certainly be asked “why our sector?” where you re-emphasize that you don’t know everything about the space and would love to learn as much about it as possible. Remember to be as humble as you can this quality exudes a willingness to learn without being a complete pushover.
Disclaimer: This post, to a quick reader, makes it seem like you’ve directed the interview and to that comment we say “absolutely”. That is the goal of a second round interview, you’ll unlikely be able to get amazing responses for multiple interviews, so you can direct it into questions you want to answer! Unlike first round filter interviews you’ll never be entirely prepared for every question, but you can certainly do your best to get the questions you want to answer asked. As a note we’ve never seen an analyst prepare a list of questions to ask, it is generally a conversation since you’ve already passed the scripted questions.
Conclusion: Do your best to direct questions you want to get back, exude a willingness to learn, good fit and genuine ability to think about stocks. Avoid debates and have discussions. In our opinion, a great interviewer can get 35-40% of final round interviews turn into offers. On a final note, always veer on the side of professionalism during a round 2 interview as we generally choose the less risky candidate when the final decision takes place.
