Hirevue interviews in investment banks: the nightmare of short response times
Student hiring season for banks is well underway, and that can only mean one thing: the feared and dreaded HireVue interview.
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HireVue interviews have long moved past the reputation for eyeball perspiration tracking and vocabulary monitoring that made students cower in fear when they were introduced. Nowadays, it’s more just answering a simple interview question, with the transcript analysed by AI. Easy.
Generally, banks all have the same formats for HireVue interviews. You’ll have 30 seconds to prepare your answer, and either 90 or 120 seconds to deliver it. That might seem tight, and it is. As always with interviews, preparation is key – and knowing what questions to expect is crucial. We have a definitive list of banking HireVue questions here.
If you're serious about the interview, you should have prepared a heap of responses to the most popular questions. If you haven't, you need to be quick on your feet (as you would be for a real-life interview) and be able to summon the sorcery of the S.T.A.R. Technique on command - HireVues are generally behavioural questions.
As one student told us, however, it's not just about what you say - it's about how you say it. "Banks want to know that you are well-spoken, logical and charismatic," she said. You should dress like a banker and talk like an (enthusiastic) banker. The S.T.A.R. Technique plays into that. An added benefit is that relying on such a structured method of answering questions will cool any nerves you have, too.
The most interesting exceptions to the 30/90/120 structures are the buy-side firms, which have completely reversed arrangements. Both Blackstone and Blackrock let candidates prepare their answers for 180 seconds, with shorter answer times of 30 seconds and 90 seconds respectively. The questions they ask are not wildly different either, and can be found at the bottom of the page here for both Blackrock and Blackstone.
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