Skill,
I went in for the interview this morning (I had already scheduled it, and didn’t want to flake on them). Needless to say, you were spot-on with your assessment. Let me chronicle the morning’s events for you:
8:23 a.m. - I walked up to the building about 7 minutes early for my interview. It looked like one of those warehouses a Biotech would rent. You know….the type of building you wouldn’t want your friends to see you walking into. I checked in with security, and they paged the person I was supposed to be meeting with. I waited in the lobby for nearly 30 minutes before somebody came out to take me upstairs. I was ready to walk out right before he showed up. He took me into a vacant office and told me the next person would be showing up shortly. I waited for another 15 minutes and was again ready to leave, when the guy walked into the room.
9:08 a.m. - The Director of the group comes in, and seems to be a very nice guy. He looks at my resume and starts wondering why I would leave “such a great group to come work for his”. Red flag. He then tells me they need to administer basic Excel tests to their applicants to make sure they’re ready for the vigors associated with their daily duties. Red flag.
9:23 - One of the CDO Group V.P.s sits down at the desk and starts looking through my resume. I explain to him that I work in our firm’s Structured Finance Group, and focus both on ABS securitizations as well as CDOs/CLOs. He then asks me if I know what the recovery rate is for a particular Moody’s Rating. Of course, I don’t memorize the recovery rates (which recently changed, no less) and can’t answer. He then proceeds to tell me how people who interview from Accounting Firms never seem to understand the collateral that is backing the CDOs, but are just concerned with taking A, plugging it into B, and moving on. Funny…this is the same guy who just explained to me that they rely on a structuring group to make updates to their models. We do it ourselves. I guess if I was only working on one particular type of asset, I could memorize Moody’s ratings too.
9:45 a.m. - Another of the V.P.s comes in, and starts talking more about the growth of their group and what the environment is like. He seems very friendly, and is much more pleasant to speak with than his colleague. I start asking some questions about upward mobility, room for growth within DB. Rather than talking about the possibilities, he focuses more on the number of people who have left the group. He also talks, in greater detail, about how the CDO Specialists don’t actually build the models (or make substantial tweaks on the models) for the deals they do. They just use the models that have been built by the structurers. He asked whether the job sounded like something I would enjoy, and I was honest in telling him I was looking for something a bit more technical and analytical in nature. I thanked him for his time and headed back to my office.
I don’t intend to bash anybody who wants a back office position for an extended period of time, but it just doesn’t seem like my cup of tea.
