My way to FICC GS(ZZ)

xqmelissaUID: 140370

发信人: prettydoll (丫头·Miss Independent), 信区: Job
标  题: [合集]My way to FICC GS
发信站: 北大未名站 (2005年03月26日18:46:39 星期六), 站内信件

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作者  mistiantian (universe), 信区: Job                                      
标题  My way to FICC GS                                                      
时间  北大未名站 (2005年03月26日00:08:36 星期六) , 站内信件                  
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一直很犹豫要不要发这篇文章，一来觉得很有show之嫌，二来毕竟是intern,又有运气成
分，没什么值得高兴的。但在career版潜水很久了，始终觉得有愧，同时也希望其他拿到
offer的人一起交流，以供学弟学妹参考。（我的中文打字很差，故前部分用英文，见谅
）
My way to FICC GS-for those who have encouraged and discouraged me…

Finally, after very painful interviews, though just 3 rounds of telephone, I
got what I want, what I have always been dreaming of and working hard for-the
offer for summer internship from FICC GS.
This program will enable me the chance to spend 5 weeks in Tokyo and 5 in Hon
g Kong this summer, where I will get the best access to, through rotations, a
ll the business areas, with focus on Fixed-Income. In the following article,
I would like to give a detailed description about the interviews and recruiti
ng process, as well as my experience in the past two and a half years.

The first guy was an ED ( executive director) in FICC and very nice. After gi
ving my personal introduction, he asked me to speak Chinese since he thought
my English was definitely enough for Ibanks). Questions were pretty challengi
ng ( sorry for that I can’t lay out the answer).
1 please compare Citibank, DB and GS and tell me why you want to work for GS
( I have internship in Citibank and a kind of volunteer work in DB)
I mentioned that I wanted to work for US Ibanks, due to their deep commitment
to clients.
2 so why don’t you go to LB, CSFB, ML and MS?
LB declined me, CSFB never recruit interns, and I have applied for both ML an
d MS, which was the true. But I by no means could say so…….
3 why FICC? Compare that to the other 3 divisions..
Blablabla…..
4 I mentioned BS formula in my last answer and he began to question me about
the deviation, assumption and important steps involved there.
Luckily, I got the MIAN JING for a tsinghua student who actually got an full-
time offer for Equity in GS just the night before and crammed a little bit, b
ut it seemed far from enough….. he kept questioning every corner ( what’s I
to lemma, Ito process, markov, BM and risk neutrality…)
Finally, I gave up and he began to explain…..( a good teacher, but not at th
e moment (( I felt very ashamed.
5 some complex option strategies and let me explain under what a circumstance
s we can make much.
It is far beyond the text books that I have covered, so in true, I was perple
xed. Then, I calmed down and told him my opinions. For the first, I ran to th
e right answer, guided by him, of course. And for the second, I directly told
him that I knew nothing and asked him to show me, and finally arrived at the
right answer.
6 some questions about my resumes…
7 my question time, which, in my regard, makes me impressive to him…..\
Our conversation lasted nearly one hour, far exceeding the scheduled 30 min…
…at the time he asked me write down his contact way voluntarily, I knew I co
uld pass………

It was in Friday and I crammed for my probability and Stochastic Process for
all the weekend….
On the very morning of the next Monday, HR called me to say Director strongly
recommended me and they would arrange more tele-interviews for me. Then, I h
ad to continue the suffering.

The next was another director, who was so keen on my resume (admittedly, I ha
ve good experience, but he was too curious…..) I talked and talked, all in E
nglish. Then he said, ok, shall we speak Chinese? Then more and more question
s. ( personally, resume questions are quite simple because you have prepared
well. The key point is to say what you benefited from the past work)

He put a tough question for me-why not go to graduate school?
Besides other reasons, I think the most important is that my GPA is not high
at all, how can i? I just told him the true and said, for me, the opportunity
cost was way too high ….if I join GS, my learning curve would be much steep
than I would have in graduate school….

Frankly, i have a good ability in communication so that I kept the initiative
of saying what I wanted to say and what made me unique…. As for the questio
ns, I asked him a very technical one “why should we pay close attention on t
he narrowing between yields of the 10 year TB and 2 year? He was surprised by
that and started to guide me, when I was so nervous for the fear of not bein
g smart enough at the moment. During the process, he also inquired about the
latest yields in the market, which was something I always paid close attentio
n too…..

I had great confidence that he would let me pass because he not only left his
office number, but also the mobile ( he insisted my calling would not bring
any inconvenience when I asked whether it would…….)

I had another call from Tokyo that, a trader watching the market for over 10
years. He had delayed our phone call for twice before we made it. (so you see
how busy the traders are). I guess he had never seen my resume before, becau
se he suddenly asked me which division and location I applied for!!!!!!!!! Go
t the answer, I was required to give a general description about the FICC mar
ket environment. I was not very clear and just searched my brain like crazy a
nd said something about MS and LB, highlighting the advantage of GS. It turne
d out I was right about the competitive advantages and disadvantages.

My good time ended, for he began to ask math…….for the first question 19*29
, I gave the answer at once. And the second probability, I got the right quic
kly and told him, but I was so silly as to think mine was wrong during the ex
planation and hesitated along time. though I realized that finally, I thought
poorly of my performance.

For the questions, about Japanese market, culture, and judging the performanc
e of traders( he thought my questions were all too tough to him).

The next day, I rang HR and was shocked that they all thought I did exceeding
ly well??????!!!!!!/

About 20min later, the first director called me back, saying that though they
usually have more than  rounds, they have decided to give me the offer immed
iately and asked me whether I would accept……..

其实没有想到自己这次会这么强，因为我不仅拿到了GS的，其他的面试我都有，大部分拒
了，ML的昨天去了，毕竟是Final,想去让他们明白本科可以做得很好（ML，JP和DB都极其
鄙视本科）。总的感觉是爽，问的问题比GS简单得多，面试经验多的话很容易的。（我走
的时候一个Director笑着问我是不是有很多offer了，如果ML给我我还要不要，我明确说
你们把机会留给别人吧，我已经答应GS了）
此前花旗IBD也给我了，我身体不好，ibd我干不了，所以所有的ibd我都没投，人贵有自
知之明。
我也很无奈，成绩烂阿，保研出国绝对没戏。。。。。。。。

关于投行
我对投行一直halfhalf,不是FIXED或Equity坚决不去，我干不了，我的身体不允许。
我知道很多人都拼命往里钻，个人认为没有必要，毕竟投行不意味着幸福的生活，如果活
的郁闷，钱再多也没用。我想去是因为我喜欢那种生活方式，喜欢不断变化的市场，但我
不喜欢IBD，当然我估计他们也不会喜欢我。：（
在申请投行之前，问问自己，如果所有人都说投行不好，你还去不去？我知道拿offer的
都会被认为是牛人，我始终不这么看，个人有个人的路，自己觉得好，就行，幸福与否只
有自己知道。
一年前我还不知道投行，只是在里面工作的朋友都说我适合，那就试试，反正还年轻。。
。。

关于面试
其他的大家都知道了，准备是必须的，但重在平时积累，特别是多看相关新闻，我就每天
刷一遍有关网站。
be humble, be moderate, and be yourself
一个学姐说得好，投行是要找和他们相同的人
不要去装，即使拿了offer以后再一起干也会很痛苦。

写给学弟学妹的话
1 好好学习，特别是数学。我的GPA在强手如林的光华金融顶多是中上水平，但我的数学
没有问题，专业课也还行。学东西是为自己，这点要明白，虽然我由于实习和社交不怎么
去上课，但我认真学了，还看了自己觉得应该看的书，比如BIBLE(options, futures an
d other financial derivatives)
2 英语很重要。我来自不太发达的地区，我们高中不说英语，只应付高考，所以我两年前
口语很滥。我永远也不会忘记第一节口语课的FRUSTRATION，也许赶上别人很难，但我做
到了，也没觉得很痛苦，一年都是很长的时间，只要你有心，一定会有进步，千万别因自
己基础不如别人而放弃，路是走出来的。
3 身体很重要，少打游戏，多锻炼一下吧。我的身体很滥，高三基本没上，高考发挥好进
的光华（或是老天觉得我适合这一行？）第一年各方面都一团糟，但有一点，我从不放弃
能够改变现状的努力，现在身体好很多，至少在Citibank的overnights我还是挺下来了。
4 要明白自己想做什么，适合做什么。我曾经想出国，或许是受高中教育的影响，老师告
诉我们出国就是成功。但我很快发现这路我走不了，我是那种可以很轻松上85的人（仅限
数学领域和专业课，本人政治课及类政治课，比如MIS，考得一塌糊涂）,但杀了我我也考
不了太高的份，那就不要勉强自己了，找个工作吧，以后再说。
始终觉得自己对市场和数字有兴趣，那就去投行做吧，不行就去做sales,收入不低，工作
也很有意思。
如果真想去投行，要多看金融的网站和有关的书，培养对市场的感觉（听HR讲，她们这次
要我主要是觉得这方面很强）
5 学会buildup network,这点做什么都重要，搞投行尤其如此。首先多和学长聊天，你会
明白各个行业是怎么回事，将来也可以互相帮助，投行就是一个小圈子，大家互相帮助，
共同进步。尽量争取实习，never mind small things, 不管工作多么基本都好好做，我
们家没有关系，但我还是找到了很好的实习，当然如果有的话，一定要充分利用。
6 多实习，多做项目。首先会让你明白究竟能做什么，我一直以为花旗很好，但一个月的
实习让我对所有商业银行彻底地失去兴趣。我也在不错的公司做过consulting, 老板对我
满意，我对自己不满意。另外，通过实习你会认识很多人（如果你本身足够impressive）
, 以后很有用。会让你很mature,外边的世界和校园差距很大，能否恰当应对还是看你究
竟有没有经验。GS很喜欢mature和有idea的人。
7 我们是本科生，只有4年，一定要抓紧这四年，不然怎么可能比研究生有竞争力！！！
？
8学会share,学会帮助别人，不要以为自己可以独享资源和信息，那样你会没有朋友，生
活不会有意思。

后记：
这是我在拿到暑期实习时写给别人也写给自己的纪念。我承认自己这两年活得很辛苦，我
的基础不好，也没有关系，但我始终活得很有理想，我做了我自己喜欢的事，所以总的来
说，还是值得的。
路还长，据说东京的实习会很tough, 还要努力，为了我的full-time offer, 为了爱我的
所有人。

致谢：
首先谢谢我的父母，尽管他们不知投行是什么，不懂英语（每次和他们聊天前我都必须先
解释IBD，FIXED-INCOME是什么意思，他们似乎永远也记不住5555555），也不怎么管我的
事（应该是也管不了），但还是很支持我走自己的路。

感谢我已经过世的姥姥，作为皇室后代，她一生历尽坎坷，并在没人管我时收留了我，教
会我做人的基本原则。很遗憾的是那一刻我在工作，真的不能回去。。。。。。。。

感谢我的BF，别人看到的我永远是smile和energetic的，那是因为我一见他就开始compl
ain,已经发泄够了：）他以前从没听说过投行，咨询，昨天我惊讶的发现他知道罗兰贝格
！！！我很多项目他都帮忙了，这很难得，因为同是名校名专业的他也很忙。

感谢所有学长的指教,感谢学弟学妹的鼓励和帮助………..
感谢我的外国朋友陪我练英文（他们从不要求我陪他们练中文：）
感谢所有帮助过我的我认识和不认识的人。。。。。。。

最后，感谢我自己，我两年前我不会讲英文，一年前不知道投行，半年前不知道fixed-i
ncome和GS，但我始终很努力。。。。。。。
In a word, thank you all!!!!!

lakeqianUID: 157560

汗。。。原来顶级的投行还在用B-S...
不过北大的本科生还是很牛，机会一把一把的阿！