How do you try to handle rejection?
Rejection is a part of nearly every role related to wealth management; whether thats trying to source new clients or pitch new ideas to existing clients. Even in wealth management roles that are relatively detached from clients – such as some junior analysis roles within major investment banks – those roles will invariably morph into ones that are more client-focused within a few years.
As a result, an individual needs to be able to not only handle rejection well, but to be willing to face rejection multiple times a day, ever day.
This is partly why a candidate being heavily involved in sports has always been viewed favorably in the world of wealth management. Because at least then you know that an individual is used to trying, failing, and then trying again.
The best answer to this question will start with acknowledging that you understand that rejection is simply a part of wealth management for everyone and that you fully understand that reality. Further, you should say that you try to focus on the process youre following, not the outcomes, wherever possible.
As a result, any rejection that occurs you dont take personally, but rather you try to reevaluate your process in light of the rejection and see if there are any improvements that can be made (while understanding that rejections will be inevitable no matter how well refined ones process or approach is).
This latter point is essential to bring up – although you can phrase it in a different way – because many people who enter into a relatively client-facing role take the rejection that inevitably arises very hard and that causes them to flame out early. Those who tend to succeed through the tough early years are those that have been able to be resilient and not to get too downcast about any rejection or failure thats come their way.
What’s a market you’re following closely?
This is a great question to ask because its deceptively simple, but allows you to show off your knowledge a little more (a common theme we wrote about in the wealth management interview guide).
The vast majority of interviewees when asked this question will simply reference an equity market (normally the S&P 500). Theres nothing wrong with that necessarily, but its so broad and so generic that you better have something good to say as an explanation for why youre following it!
Especially in the current climate, a much more unique answer would be to talk about either a certain sector within the equity markets (i.e., commodity equities since theyre doing well given the geo-political volatility of late) or something like the rates markets.
For example, when answering this question you can talk about how you think whats driving most markets right now are rates and the volatility inherent in equity markets, for example, is being driven heavily by rate expectations. You can reference how quickly the 2-year and the 10-year treasury have risen, and also reference that the 2-10 curve has inverted (which is frequently talked about as a recession indicator).
You can then say that a continuing move up in rates will have especially out-sized impact on growth stocks (i.e. technology stocks) given that they have most of their cash flows coming in the far future and so when rates rise these future cash flows are discounted at an even higher rate.