Interview Tips continued

To continue my article about finance interviews, here are a few more companies I have interviewed with:

XL Capital
The interview: very laid back. I interviewed with this company in their Hartford office, and the people there are very friendly and relaxed. To give you an idea, the Professional underwriters (insuring CEO's and board of directors) wear shorts and t-shirts to the office, have a pool table and ping pong table in their lounge, and generally do whatever they want. They can, because they bring in millions of dollars of business a year. For this interview, it is important to fit in with that culture, and not appear too uptight. They are not going to ask you any tough questions, and from what I've found they go on the quality of your resume. However, just to put into context, my interview was for an internship (which I got) and I never had to interview for a full-time job.

Liberty Mutual:
Liberty Mutual's first interview isn't tough in terms of finance, but they want to hear you are good in teams, are goal-driven, ambitious, etc. The second and final round is at their office, and you are among a group of about 10 people from various schools. First you have three interviews with various people in the organization, they feed you, and then you have a case study. You also have to take an online tutorial "test", but it is nothing to worry about- basically you read about insurance, and then answer questions based upon what you read. The case study is individual, and they give you a calculator- it is somewhat calculation intensive (given that they give you raw data and you can do whatever calculations you choose with that data) and definetly taxes your analytical skills. Make sure you have solid reasoning for any type of decisions and as long as you can back it up, you'll be fine.

I've interviewed with a lot of companies, so if you have questions about a specific one I haven't covered here, feel free to ask. My advice is not to limit yourself to "only investment banking" or whatever catagory you feel makes the most money, because I've learned a lot about myself and what I do/don't want to do with my life in interviews. Remember that you must be critical- you are deciding how you want to spend 40+ hours of your life a week.