RPC Newsletter’s Advice Column – Best of April 2022
Each week, members of the RPC executive team answer reader-submitted questions about careers, finance, and more. To get your question answered, please fill out this anonymous Google form.
How can I appear more likable during my upcoming interview?
Interviews assess two main characteristics: (1) competence (i.e., are you qualified for this job) and (2) likability (i.e., are you a decent human being). While the former is easy to prepare for (studying the relevant technical concepts, reading the news, etc.), the latter is more abstract. On a theoretical level likability is defined in the Oxford dictionary as someone who is “pleasant, friendly, and easy to like”. On a practical level, it is best understood via “the airport test”, i.e. would the interviewer want to be stuck in an airport with this person for a 10h layover? If yes, you check the likability box. If no, RPC got you covered with the tips below.
Before the Interview: Likability is an integral part of your first impression. As such, you can begin increasing your likability score by being professional during your early communication with the firm. By email, be prompt to reply, courteous in your manners, and error-free in your spelling / grammar. By phone, make sure your surroundings are quiet, that you smile while speaking, and are never cutting the other person off. This advice applies to all positions and levels of seniority at the firm – you never know who might have a say in the final decision.
During the Interview: There are two main ways to showcase likability during an interview. First, body language. Make sure you’re holding solid eye contact with your interviewer, that you’re smiling, and have an enthusiastic tone of voice. The sub-communication framing is that you’re extremely excited about the opportunity and that there is no place you’d rather be interviewing at. However, be careful to not go overboard and appear silly or jittery. Second, personalized interview answers. By customizing your interview answers, you increase the probabilities of two events: (1) the interviewer remembering you and (2) the interviewer sharing a common point of interest. In both cases, this will increase your likability as you will come across as a well-rounded human with an interesting background and interests outside of finance instead of a robot reciting mechanical answers from recruitment guides. For example, when answering “why should I pick you?”, you could speak about your learnings from starting a charity in high school or playing a competitive sport instead of reciting a list of standard qualities and skills (hard-working, intelligent, etc.) without illustrative backings.
After the Interview: At the end of your interview, the interviewer will ask: “do you have any questions for me?”. While often overlooked, this is a key moment to break out of the interviewer-interviewee power dynamics and create rapport with your interviewer. We recommend preparing a few questions in advance and using the Professional → Personal structure. For professional, start by asking questions about the role / firm geared towards your interviewer’s experiences (“how long have you been at the firm”, “what is a recent deal that you’ve worked on that you found interesting”, etc.). Then, switch to culture-oriented / personal questions (“why did you decide to switch from X to Y career?”, “to what extent is the culture close-knit at the junior level?”, etc.). Thorough the Q&A period, read the room and get a sense of what topics / questions make your interviewer light up: this is the direction you should follow-up on.
The points above are a small subset of the broad topic of likeability and human interactional psychology. If you’re interested in learning more, we recommend reading How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and watching the plethora of YouTube videos on the subject. Good luck!
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If I didn't have any professional interning experience, how should I pitch myself on a CV or during interview?
Landing your first professional experience can appear like a chicken and egg problem. Firms are reluctant to hire you because you lack professional experience, but you lack professional experience because firms are reluctant to hire you. While this conundrum is frustrating, the importance of breaking through it cannot be underestimated. Multiple studies have demonstrated that your early roles, particularly the first after university, have a compounding effect over time on your career path development in key areas such as salaries and professional advancement. Particularly because it provides you with the most important factor to employment in line with skills and network: positive signaling.
Signaling is the idea that one party credibly conveys information about itself to another party through their actions or credentials. Quoting the wise words of a McGill alumnus and close mentor of the RPC executive team, recruitment is “at its core a signaling game” because employers use discrete datapoints from your resume and interviews as credible evidence (or “signals”) to assess your general employability. For example, education credentials are considered a positive signal and studies found that managers prefer candidates form top universities. Inversely, lacking professional experience is a negative signal because it raises doubt about your employability (i.e., why weren’t they hired before?), competency (do they have the skills necessary to perform on the job?), etc. Understanding the questions it raises in the employers’ mind is key to crafting the narrative of your interview / CV pitch.
Leveraging Your Previous Experience: While you may not have previous corporate experience, you likely have past professional experience in student jobs such as in the retail or restaurant industry. These roles are not to be underestimated as they could have provided you with transferable skills relevant to this position. Presented with the right angle, being a restaurant waiter could have provided you with the ability to be efficient in a high-stress environment (relevant for investment banking!) or being a retail sales associate could have provided you with a client-first mentality (relevant for wealth management!).
Demonstrating Proactivity: Managers ask for only one thing from their interns: willingness to learn. A signal for that trait of personality is your proactivity and involvement. At school, this translates into being actively involved in student societies such as RedPoint Capital and competing in events such as case competitions. Outside of school, this can take the form of completing educational certificates such as the Canadian Securities Course or personal projects such as writing a personal blog about your personal trading account.
Going the Extra Mile: Ultimately, your application will be compared against older students with more (and more relevant) experience. To standout, we recommend going above and beyond on factors you can control. Credentials such as having a stellar GPA and initiatives such as heavy networking or attaching a piece of work you’ve done to your application could compensate for your lack of experience and provide you with that extra edge over other candidates. Lastly, prepare great answers to probing questions that are likely to come up such as “why should I pick you over other candidates?”.
Quoting Thomas Jefferson, “to get something you never had, you’ll have to do something you never did”. However, do not be discouraged if you’re not able to find a role this summer. There is still a ton of other options to explore, as highlighted in this Mergers & Inquisitions article.