Breaking Into Wall Street Interview Prep

Breaking Into Wall Street – Investment Banking Interview Guide

Sample “Story” Template #1 – Undergraduate from a Non-Finance Background

You can use this template if you’re an undergraduate – or recent graduate – and you’re

interviewing for investment banking positions without a finance background. In case you’re

confused, here are a few examples of what that means:

•

•

•

You have had no finance internships or work experience – nothing in investment

banking, private equity, hedge funds, private wealth management, trading, or even

commercial banking.

You are not an economics / finance / business major.

Most of your experience up until now has been in a different field, like engineering,

biology, history, and so on.

In the “Story Overview” video we mentioned the 5 most important points in your “story” –

here’s how that applies in this template:

•

•

•

•

•

The Beginning: Where You’re From

Finance “Spark”: A Mentor You Met in One of Your Internships

Growing Interest: Clubs You Joined Since Then and Your Most Recent Internship

Why You’re Here: Your Background + Investment Banking = Long-Term Success

The Future: Combine Your Expertise with Finance

You do not want to copy or memorize this template 100% word-for-word – use it as inspiration,

but you need to change it around to match your own background. For more on how to do that,

see the video tutorial accompanying this template.

Interviewer: Why don’t you start by walking me through your resume?

Interviewee: Sure. I’m from [Place Name] originally, and spent most of my life there before

moving to [Location of Your College] to explore another part of the country and to go to

[College Name].

Growing up, I was always really interested in [Your Background Before This], and I did a lot of

[Activities, Sports, Hobbies Related to Background] when I was younger.

Since [College Name] had a great reputation in this area and since I wanted to go somewhere

really diverse for university, I...