1. Could you walk us through the recruitment process?

I always knew that I wanted to be in an investing role. I am more interested in private equity because I can work directly with businesses instead of investing in public stocks. I am more interested in active investing. The classic path towards private equity is you first go into investment banking for two years and then switch to private equity. I networked super hard for investment banking, and for my second summer, I got a position at Fidelity. This experience helped me build my Excel and Powerpoint skillset, which is extremely important in investment banking. I had networked around all the banks and private equity firms in Canada. I liked White Horse, So when I got the offer, I thought, if I can go directly into private equity, why would I do investment banking first. So I accepted the job.

2. Can you talk about the interview process at White Horse?

The first round was one interview, and the final round consisted of multiple interviews. The interview itself was much harder than investment banking interviews. So I spent two nights before the White Horse interview, learning important stuff about private equity. Things like LBO(leveraged buyout) modelling and lots of mental maths questions were quite tough. The questions were more challenging because they were more out of the box and focused on investing. In investment banking interviews, they might ask questions like: walk me through this financial model or tell me about the market, which is a lot more general. The private equity interviews are more like long mental maths questions like they might ask you to do LBO without using the calculator.

They also asked a lot about investing, like what industry would you invest in and why. And they would keep grilling you on that. They wanted to know if you can think outside of the box. They were also asking why not investment banking. There were other questions that I wouldn’t expect that focused on how you think. For example, I was given two random industries, and I needed to talk about two strengths and weaknesses of that industry, and you may not know the industry—lots of weird questions that made you think on your feet. Kind of similar to consulting interviews in which you need to prove that you are a logical thinker. 

3. Behavioural questions

Fidelity was focused on getting to know you. If you know how to talk to people, you will be fine. But in banking or private equity, it is not like that. It is much more technically focused. I know I got all those technicals wrong, but I still pushed to the final round, so maybe my behaviourals were what helped me through. There are different ways to answer behaviourals, but you want to make them interesting. I put things into the framework they expect but add my personality to the mix. For behaviourals, it’s essential to know yourself and why you do what you’re doing. So I will make a list of why I want to do this and build the interview answers based on that. Each behavioural is basically about four things, tell me about yourself (why are you a good fit, why do you want to do this job, why this firm, and why should I hire you. The final round will be with lots of senior people, and the questions will be more focused on you. Juniors always ask about teamwork or a time that you worked hard. Seniors will ask what success means to you. They like to ask big idea questions and expect really good answers. You need to be well prepared for them.

4. Why not investment banking and why private equity 

95% of investment bankers want to go to private equity afterwards. I like PE because you are buying and owning a company without the risk of starting a company. Investment banking is more like advising. I like to own a company rather than close a deal, move on to the next one, and not care about what will happen next. I find a lot more creativity involved in investing with exciting ways to structure deals. You want to have the stamp of investment banking because everyone knows that you work very hard. Investment banking is an excellent option for people who don’t know what to do out of undergraduate.

5. How to mitigate the risk of a challenging technical question?

Don’t say you don’t know. Try to answer it, prepare as much as possible. Understand that there will be questions you don’t know. When you face an unfamiliar question, you can say I am not 100% sure, but here is what I think. Walk them through your thought process. You can say things like, “If I am not on the right track, just let me know.” They like that.