I applied through university. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Morgan Stanley (Tokyo) in Jan 2010
Interview
Group interview, group discussion, paper exam, 1-on-1 interview with 20 people. The questions asked at the interview were pretty standard. Why IBD? Why MS? What are you career goals? Tell me about your experience when you.... (leadership, conflict management, etc). It took about 1-2 weeks to go through the group interview and discussion, and then another 1.5 week to do 1-on-1 interviews.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I'll give you 15 minutes to spend however you want to.
1. HR call of around 20 minutes for general basic questions: availability, why MS, why Budapest, what is M&A...
2. Technical Interview with London employee: very intense and many typical IB questions; both theoretical (types of debt, explain valuation methods with detail and reasoning of them...) and practical (pen and paper for calculations).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why MS, why Budapest, types of debt, valuation methods...
1) HireVue 2) First phone interview with basic questions: walk me through your resume/tell me about yourself, what are the different valuation methods and rank, what does a coffee shop have to think about day to day. 3) superday is3 interviews back to back: 1 behavioural, 1 technical, 1 market/M&A.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
walk me through your resume, what is a merger or an acquisition you would do, go through the three financial statements
It was standard from the guides, if you have the 400 question guide you will be totally fine, its nothing really beyond that at the interviews. You don't need to fundamentally understand banking.