A3 The IB Interview Handbook — Technical Preparation, Fit Questions, and Offer Strategy

The investment banking interview is won or lost in the room — and most candidates prepare for the wrong questions.

The IB Interview Handbook is a practitioner's manual for turning interviews into offers. Written by John Colley — a Cambridge graduate, MBA with Distinction, and former investment banker with 30+ years of deal experience — it shows you what interviewers are really testing, how they score you, and how to prepare for every stage from the first-round screen to the final superday.

This is not a list of questions to memorise. It is the reasoning behind the questions, so you can answer ones you have never seen.

Inside, you will learn:

• How banks structure the interview process — and what each round is actually screening for

• The technical core: DCF, accounting, valuation, M&A and LBO questions, with the logic behind every answer

• How to walk through a valuation or an accretion/dilution question out loud, under pressure, without freezing

• The "Why investment banking?" and "Why this bank?" questions — and the frameworks that separate genuine answers from rehearsed ones

• Behavioural and fit questions: how to tell your story so it lands

• Brain-teasers and market questions — and how to think when you do not know the answer

• Superday strategy: managing energy, multiple interviewers, and the social tests

• How to handle the offer, competing deadlines, and the negotiation

Each chapter follows the series structure: a one-line truth, a plain-English and technical explanation, a step-by-step action plan, a checklist, the common mistakes that cost candidates offers, and a running case study showing the concepts in practice.

Part of The Investment Banking Practitioner's Handbook Series, Cluster A — Getting Into Investment Banking. Written by a practitioner, for practitioners.