November 5th, 2009 by Riyan Richter

Why do you want to do investment banking?

Expect this question in every single interview – so be prepared and have a good answer ready.

But if you read most guides and articles out there, you’ll get very poor ideas for what you might say in response to this question:

-You want to be a lifelong learner.

-You like finance and accounting.

-You like a fast-paced environment.

And if you want to sound exactly the same as everyone else, feel free to use these types of responses.

But if you want to succeed in interviews, you’ll have to be more memorable and give answers that make the other person actually like you.

There are two main ways you can do this: the “Big Picture” method and the “Slice of Life” method.

If you’re a career changer, you don’t have a finance background, or you can’t think of anything specific that made you interested in finance, use the “Big Picture” method.

The formula is: Background in One Field + Experience in Finance = Long-Term Success.

So maybe you’re an engineer and you want to do investment banking so that you can go into venture capital one day; or maybe you came from healthcare and you want to do investment banking so that you can advise healthcare companies on major financing decisions.

Don’t know what you want to do in the long-term? Not a problem – just make up goals and be consistent with what you say.

The other method – the “Slice of Life” – is better if you’ve been a finance major, or you have some full-time experience in the field.

Here, you start off with a specific event that made you interested and then explain how that interest developed over time.

-You observed some family members trading stocks when you were younger, so you got interested, started following the market, and did some trading internships.

-You had the opportunity to meet female executives at banks during a leadership retreat and that sparked your interest.

Feel free to combine both of these methods, as well – just make sure your story doesn’t go on for 5 minutes.

Aim for 20-30 seconds at most, keep it brief and on point, and you’ll be well-ahead of 90% of interviewees.

Riyan Richter writes about the job development process, how to successfully network, and how to break into the finance industry at Mergers … Inquisitions, the internet’s leading resource for investment banking and answering the why investment banking question in interviews.

career, Careers, finance, finance interviews, interviews, investment banking, investment banking interviews