Deutsche Bank Corporate Finance Interview Questions, Process, and Tips for Freshers

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Resume short-listing was done on the basis of CGPA, extra curricular activities and only those having a overall strong profile with a good balance of PORs and academics were short-listed
Tips: Well, one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that your resume needs to be perfect from you side.When I say perfect, it means there should be no typographical errors, no spelling or grammatical mistakes. It should be edited properly and thoroughly checked so that any chances of mistakes can be nullified. Your resume should have information related to projects (research or applied), any intern-ship or other experience of similar kind, relevant courses ( finance or statistics course, in this case ), positions of responsibilities ( PORs ), extracurricular activities and other skill sets. Points in resume should be concise and self explanatory. You should keep in mind that the interviewer takes only a few seconds to review a resume and therefore appropriate details in your resume should be highlighted to make it easy for interviewer to review it. For Deutsche Bank, having a intern-ship experience or a academic project in finance or a foreign exposure definitely helps. PORs also helps in the same fashion. Your resume should be as uncluttered as possible and at the same time should have all the details of above mentioned things presented concisely.

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: It was the first time in many years that DB decided to have a group discussion round. So most of us did not have anyone to share their experience with us. We had around 6 people, at once, in this round. Personally, It was a good experience for me, although I did not read about this topic much and had a discussion with my friend about net neutrality just a few minutes before my GD. I spoke against net neutrality contrary to all other five candidates with me. I described how moving away from net neutrality will help in providing resources to more people and open up the gates of world of internet to the deprived ones. I was objected by al,most everyone in the group but the idea is to maintain your cool, listen to other candidates and try and defend your idea and express your opinion about the topic.
Tips: Some basic tips for every group discussion goes without saying. Starting or ending the course of discussion definitely helps but at the same time it is important to understand that it is not a compulsory action that needs to be taken .I observed it in my discussion that people were so much adamant about initiating the discussion that the moderator had to request people to calm down and not create a fish market there. The idea is to think wisely before you speak. After hearing the topic, you should take your time decide whether you wish to speak for or against and then think of various points and aspects of the topic. Its always helpful to take a pen and a notepad so that you can write the points in short which you can refer later in the discussion. You should NEVER switch from the stand you have taken in the beginning. This is regarded as a weakness so NEVER do that. At the same time it not at all means that you should initiate a war of words(quarrel) with the candidates who has expressing the opposite opinion in the discussion. You need to be humble, polite while you talk. Do not use HINDI/any other native language in the discussion. Be confident while you speak and let other other complete. Try not to interrupt someone and avoid blame game to other candidates, be generalised in you opinion instead of grilling other candidates. If you plan to start the discussion, It would be helpful if you describe the problem briefly, lay down the important points which you think needs to be discussed also can suggest the way discussion can be undertaken and at the same time invite other candidates to share their views when you have finished sharing yours. If you are planning to conclude a discussion, you must remember that its a discussion and not a debate, so it is not necessary that you discussion will end up with one party emerging as correct, so you should try to jot down all the points mentioned by the two parties during the discussion and a give a generalised overview of the discussion, instead of forcing your own opinion onto it. You can try and discuss the pros and cons that were explained by different candidates and try and give a possible solution to make the system better.
Topics of GDs for DB are generally based on the current issues in the country . So you should read about current issues as that will help you to use the recent events and other highlights during the discussion to support your point.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: I was the first candidate from the short-listed candidates to be interviewed so the interviewers were not bored of taking interviews. The interview started well. I was not able to answer the very first finance question that they asked me related to P/E ratio. But, after that I was able to answer all questions comfortably. So overall the technical interview went well.
Tips: You should be aware of all the current issues. For that you can read Economic times follow Bloomberg, Business Insider regularly, talk and discuss with your other friends to learn more about the same. For the finance topics, you look at Khan Academy lectures on finance. They are very concise and at the same time introduce you to the basics of finance. You can also look at J.C. Hull's Options futures and derivatives. Sometimes they may ask some puzzles. For that Braingle.com and TechInterviews is a good site to begin with followed by PratikPoddar's CSE Blog. Its important that you remain confident throughout the interview. Its okay if you don't know answer to all the questions being asked. You can politely mention that you do not know answer to the following question and that you will follow up on the same after the interview and then at the end of the interview you can followup with the interviewer. This shows that you are interested to learn new things and are not here just because you are short-listed. It is good to ask question related to the company at the end of the interview. You can frame questions based on PPT of the company.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: All the questions were standard HR question. Other than the negative quality question, all the other question passed swiftly.
Tips: Answers should be prepared to these standard HR questions. Negative quality question should be answered carefully so that it does not influence your interview much.

Skills: Confidence, Finance Current Affairs, Finance Basics
Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Kanpur
Motivation: I wanted to get some experience in finance and understand more about investment banking. This was the main motivation for me.
Funny Moments: I was held on the negative quality question for quite a few minutes. They asked me who are my friends here at IITK and asked what would they say about my negative quality. I happened to take up one of my friend's name who was one of the guys offered a PPO from DB and was also under the mentorship of one of my interviewers. He almost gave this a guy a call to enquire for my negative qualities. I ended up laughing over this incident in the interview which was not received pleasantly by the interviewer. One lesson learnt from this incident was t never laugh unless the joke is funny to interviewer :P :P .