muffin09 and thommo77 have given good points of advice. I have a few things to add, given my own experience interviewing for investment banking jobs in 2003-2004 as well as my experiences in private equity, both as an interviewee and interviewer.
Now that you’re in your second rounds, you’ll probably get some more BEHAVIORAL questions. The THREE QUESTIONS you *must* answer flawlessly, as you hopefully did in your first round, are:
- Why investment banking?
- Why our firm?
- Why now?
Separately, there are other behavioral questions you should expect that relate to your understanding of the industry, as well as your personal qualities such as leadership, teamwork, resilience, and perseverance. Sometimes these questions will be portrayed in the form of “Tell me about a situation where…”, “key strengths,” or “key weaknesses.”
You might also encounter situations where you’re asked about the role you’re interviewing for and what you’re expecting out of it. In all cases, you must demonstrate that you know what investment banking analysts do on the day-to-day, and that you have some idea about what it takes to be a successful financial analyst. Many candidates are also dinged here because they spend too much time focusing on saying the right things about themselves, and not enough time learning about the job that they’re actually interviewing for! Truly shocking.
Furthermore, in the late rounds, interviewees that are generally polished are DINGED because they don’t understand the role they’re interviewing for, or that what they consider their key strengths don’t actually align with what the firm truly values. In fact, it’s always been a bit of a mystery as to why these candidates aren’t dinged earlier, but I can’t tell you how many times candidates that are otherwise intelligent and hard-working that don’t really know what investment banking is. In fact, it was for this reason that I did not get an investment banking internship when I interviewed during my junior year. I thought I knew what banking was and what bankers did, but I was so wrong.
Fortunately, I was OK because I ended up getting an internship at a top asset management firm anyway. Nonetheless, I was determined not to make that same mistake during full-time recruiting, and naturally my efforts translated into positive results and I landed several investment banking offers before ultimately deciding to pursue equity research. Always be prepared; I learned the hard way during my junior year and was determined not to make the same mistake during full-time recruiting.
On the TECHNICAL question side, the most important subjects you must understand are (1) company valuation and (2) financial statement analysis. You need to know how the three financial statements link together, and also have a sense as to how companies are valued and the pro’s and con’s associated with each valuation methodology. Depending on your background, your understanding of (3) the M&A process, (4) public markets, and (5) other peripheral finance topics like stocks, bonds and interest rates, currencies, and options might also be tested. However, you should be principally concerned with preparing for (1) and (2).
I hope this helps. Good luck!