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Q. Hello, thanks for taking the time to interview with us, we know that M&A life is very busy. Could you just give us a brief introduction of your background to start with?

A: I first studied accounting as na undergraduate, and then I studied for a master in Finance from LSE (London School of Economics). Before getting a full time job in M&A, I first did a one year placement with Citi IBD in Healthcare.

Q:How was the interview process like when you first applied for a job in M&A? How about when you moved to Barclays Capital?

An MBA is typically regarded as a prerequisite to reach the higher echelons of private equity, especially at the larger firms.

But is that true? What does the data tell us?

You will find MBAs are almost in every PE firm

After only a year at BigBank, you receive a mysterious phone call from your headhunter. He found a unique and challenging opportunity for people of your caliber. If you accept this offer at Little Boutique, not only will the hours be much better, but you'll get to work directly with the MDs and get direct financial lessons from the big guns! Your salary will increase, and you'll get the chance to be part of an growing, entrepreneurial environment that promises your a better learning experience and no more associates. You are finally recognised for your own abilities, you think to yourself, and you'll finally get to show the world what a superstar analyst you really are with more sleep.

For students and graduates, besides the technical questions,CVs, questions and brainteasers, this is a question you WILL get during asked at interviews: "Why investment banking?"

There is no engineered answer for this, but, based on our experience of interviewing candidates, the best answers are:

1) The learning curve in investment banking is very steep and you want to learn a lot and take on new challenges

Now that you have gone through the investment banking interviews and signed your contract with BigBank and that you have permanently infiltrated the ranks of the investment bank full time staff, take a few minutes to consider the following advice based on our combined decade of investment banking wisdom.

Rule #1: Do not be a smartass

Private Equity recruiting tends to be much more informal compared to banking or consulting, however there are very common steps that most Private Equity Firms go through for interviews. I would describe a typical process in the UK (or Europe in general) as follows:

The First Round: fit, case studies, technical tests

"fit" questions

A question that we often hear about brainteasers is "how important is the ability to make quick calculations and solve brain teasers in investment banking interviews, relative to other portions of the interview?", or, simply said "How important are brainteasers?"

Brainteasers are not a major part of the interview process compared to your performance on the other parts, but they are useful for the interviewers for the following reasons:

1) It is another test of analytical ability .

While PE firms tend to recruit people through their network first (e.g. alumni, bankers they worked with, friends and ex-colleagues) before going to headhunting firms, here is a list of the well known headhunters in London that have a specialised Private Equity practice

KEA consultants (www.keaconsultants.com)

A day in the life
From ‘The Bitter Investment Banker’

6:15. Alarm goes off. I’ve told myself I’m going to start working out in the mornings. All those late night M&Ms sweets. A quick calculation , two hours and fifteen minutes of sleep. Not too shabby. Only five or six coffees required to get myself out of bed. That beeping noise; there must be a bunch of sound technicians tinkering away in a room trying to find the perfect frequency to completely crush my soul.

8:20 ****. That infernal Pavlovian pushing of the snooze button. Ten minutes until I’ve got to be at a pitch. Can’t remember what it’s about though, stayed up until four in the morning cranking it out.

If you are working in Investment Banking, you'll often hear about private equity, and bankers wanting to move to private equity. But why do people want to move to private equity and why is it so competitive? A few answers below:

The job is considered intellectually more challenging than investment banking.

While in investment banking, you are merely advising companies on what to acquire, divest, or on ways to optimise itself financially, private equity professionals are the ones taking the risks by directly investing money in companies.