Bank of America Securities Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - know the industry before you speak with senior managers; they know these companies cold.

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Bank of America is a wonderful company to work without pressure and working environment also really good, manager(my team) the way he treats to associates is awesome

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: details of the initial interview process?
• Group discussions
• Case study Analysis , presentations etc
• Assessment centre
• Management games etc
• Panel / one on one interview – First round was primarily a personal interview
with their CEO and the HR head. Interview centered around my resume, my
background and other personal questions.
• Telecon interviews – Final round was a telecom with most of the technical
team (about 5 of them) – which was primarily technical and about projects I
did.
• Video conferencing etc
Tips: On resume – brushing up on projects I have done; making sure past mistakes
are not repeated; and identifying primary focus areas where I can sell myself
better; in fact I modified the order of my projects in my resume a little bit to
put the equities project I have done at the very top.
• Communication skills
• Mock interview practice – 1-2 mock interviews; I had done enough already
for prior interviews
• Collecting information of company / role – researched company website; read
DSP’s market outlook report; and found out what types of funds they have.
• Technical / subject / functional preparations – read quite a bit on Portfolio
Management (from a book in lib – don’t remember the author’s name);
reviewed O&F fundaas and IA fundaas..
• PPT’s stage

College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: I think they were looking for Analytical ability (more in terms of thought process of approaching a problem), good awareness of financial crisis and general gyaan and willingness to work in markets (i.e. how convincing my reasons were etc). I wasn‟t tested too much on derivatives and puzzles, but I believe a few others had lots of questions in this area.

I think the personals & financial crisis questions went very well, pretty decent with the puzzles too. Started a bit slowly on the problems, but was able to arrive at the solution quickly once I had the hang of the question.
Tips: I prepared pretty well for derivatives & financial crisis. Though my approach was not very quick for the former, this was not a problem because I was not hurried for these questions and they were also seeing how I was approaching the solution. I was well prepared with the personals section – very clear on why I wanted markets, not consulting etc and I think I gave them nearly 6 reasons for Why Deutsche 

Round: Technical Interview
Tips: For most banks, and for Deutsche especially, be prepared with personals at three levels (Tell me about yourself etc | Why markets, why not consult / IBD etc | Why Deutsche). I had done my homework by speaking to seniors in this respect and I think
Name
Ashish Viswanathan
Educational Qualification
B. Tech Chemical Engineering, IIT Madras
Workex
Shell Global Solutions (1 year)
Summers Company & Role
Deutsche Bank Global Markets, London Associate

Networth Fin Summers Guide 2010 6 | P a g e
my clarity of thought on these questions clinched it.

Round: Technical Interview
Tips: Make sure you understand what you are preparing in case of derivatives. Don‟t get caught up and confused by the math, learn the basics of why and how the derivatives work

Round: Technical Interview
Tips: Make sure you are well prepared with financial crisis / current affairs / bailout and efforts to fight the crisis. Have an opinion on issues like „Do you think it was right to not bail out Lehman?‟ etc and be prepared to defend your opinion

General Tips: Have some basic knowledge of the recent M&A deals and some basic knowledge of good companies to invest into.
Skill Tips: Intermediate knowledge of Corporate finance and ability to read balance sheet, Cash flow and P&L from annual reports. Basic ratio analysis. Good excel skills preferred.
Skills: Finance, Data Analysis, Excel skills
College Name: IIM Bangalore

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Went through a few sample resumes to get some idea.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Candidates were short-listed on the basis of resumes and then there were three rounds of interviews. Ultimately ML recruited some 7-8 people for three different locations. Only two for Mumbai office I believe. As far as I know, some 10 people made it to the third round.The structuring of interviews was not exactly the same for everyone. People were being interviewed randomly by different panels.   Round 1 (2 interviews): Mostly HR. Why ML? Your strengths, weaknesses? Any idea about the job profile. Why do you think you are appropriate for that kind of job? Some stuff about my projects. Round 2 (1 interview): Again HR. Family background. Why finance and not CAT n management? Grilled a lot about IIMs &  wanted to make sure I was not interested in doing MBA immediately after BTech which I wasn't anyways. Surprisingly, no questions regarding my apping intentions.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Round 3 (1 long interview): Mostly about finance. Wanted to know how much awareness I had about the terminology. 2- 3 case-studies kind of thing. Again some stuff about the projects that I had done.

General Tips: Be prepared with typical HR questions. Sound convincing as to you want to do nothing but join ML. A little preparation for case studies will help for sure. Also go through the interactive DVD to get some idea about ML. That helped a lot.
College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I took a lot of help from seniors in making my resume. I had a lot of people review my resume most who were seniors already working in the industry. I think a person should review the resume again and again and again. After making a draft of my resume, I spent 3 days refining it with the help of other people and changed it a total of 25 times at least. I did not take any help from reading material or the internet for making my resume but I think getting it reviewed by so many people made up for it. Attending pre-placement talks is very important. That is one time when you can talk to your potential employers one on one and know exactly what you will be doing in the company. I attended pre-placement talks of all the companies that I was interested in and in my case I had narrowed my list to a few companies to apply to. I talked to my friends and seniors working in various different companies (especially the ones working Investment Banks) in choosing between companies.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: There is a standard list of HR questions in the institute by the name of HLPQ.doc. It helps to look at the standard HR questions and make a mental note of the points you would want to highlight in the answers to those questions. At the same time, memorizing answers is not advisable since it becomes quite obvious to the interviewer that the answers have been memorized.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Technical I read up parts of the book Options. Futures and Other Derivatives” by J.C. Hull to prepare for the interviews. I also bought a couple of books from the internet which helped a lot. One of them was Vault Guide to Advanced Finance

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: There are many websites to practice puzzles (probability puzzles in my case)

Round: Other Interview
Experience: Quantitative Interviews and the other one had information about the company I was applying to (Merrill Lynch).

Skill Tips: Dressing well is an important part of the interview process. You should create a good first impression. For investment banks, wear a suit especially if you are applying for front office positions. Take a shower, shave and dress neatly (remember you get only one chance to create a good impression). Be nice and courteous to all the people of the company. Reach well before the time of the interview and always carry sufficient copies of your resume along with a notepad and pen
College Name: IIT BOMBAY