@Andrei Radu @Ram Sabaratnam @Jessica Booker
Do you have any advice on how to answer the following?
1. What would be challenging for you as a trainee and how would you overcome that?
2. What are some of the main challenges you faced?
3. Who would be your dream client?
4. If you had a million dollars, what would you invest in right now?
Thank you!
Hi
@KBanana those are definitely some interesting questions, here's my thoughts on them:
1. To come up with a good answer to this question, I think you need to identify both (a) a challenge that is actually be relevant, in that it would both have a significant impact on your performance if you do not overcome it and in that there is no simple and easy way of overcoming it; and (b) an actionable and practical way of mitigating its impacts, which demonstrates a nuanced understanding of your role in the firm and the resources you can rely on. As you will appreciate, what works for point (b) is highly dependent on what you choose for point (a). In turn, what you choose for point (a) is highly dependent on your particular skillset and interests but also on the specific firm you would train at. However, I think some good candidate challenges for point (a) could be: rotating between seats and starting again at ground 0 after finally gaining some expertise, balancing efficient work with ensuring a constant very high quality work product, estimating capacity and not overcommitting, managing competing deadlines, managing relations with a demanding client/senior colleague.
I thought it may be useful to copy bellow an answer I provided to this question in my past
DLA Piper application (as I got progressed):
The first challenge I anticipate is delivering high-quality work even when I must simultaneously manage multiple workstreams with tight deadlines. Firstly, to prioritise effectively I would ask the assignor of any work how long it should take me to finish it and how strict the deadline is. Secondly, I would ask for the support of my trainee buddy to learn how to complete routine tasks more efficiently. In my summer internship I finished my Legislative Update email quicker by using Paula Iusan’s tips, which enabled me to focus on research for a presentation I delivered in front of the entire firm. Consequently, I received positive feedback from my supervisor for the many cases and academic sources I cited.
The second challenge I envisage is starting from the beginning with each rotational cycle, which can be difficult after finally gaining some experience in the previous seat. I would attempt to make the transition easier by anticipating and preparing for the usual trainee work in that practice area, using resources like the Internal Knowledge Hub. I would also invite trainees from that seat for a coffee, where they can share advice and experiences in adapting to the style of the supervisors.
2. Once again, what challenge you identify will be highly dependent on your personal circumstances. However, my two generally-applicable pointers here (which are a bit similar to the aforementioned ones) are: (a) to select a real challenge, an area where you were actually failing - avoid trying to disguise some kind of positive feature here (eg I saw some candidates say that their biggest challenge is that sometimes they work too hard or demand too much from themselves); and (b) choose a challenge which you have actually worked on overcoming and ideally did overcome or at least made significant progress in this regard - and which you can ideally evidence by citing practical steps/results.
To give you a personal example I used here: i talked about my difficulties with networking and forming connections in the industry. As a slightly introverted person by nature, I used to find approaching a lawyer to network an extremely dauting and anxiety-inducing experience. However, I knew that networking skills are not something you're born with or without and that like all other skills, you can work on improving them. As such, I went on to explain how I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and went to dozens of law firm networking events, which slowly but surely significantly improved my capacity to socialize in a professional environment.
3. This will again highly depend on the firm you are applying for and your own interests. My advice would be to choose a big client in the practice areas and/or sectors you are interested in the most, but also ensure that the firm has significant operations in that practice area and/or sector (or ideally, has actually advised this client in the past). Subsequently, I would advise you to further research the operations and history of that client and show a genuine interest in their business. You should also seek to be able to differentiate the client from its main competitors in the industry and explain why you chose the relevant client over these other businesses.
4. I do not think there is a wrong or right answer for this one. Fundamentally, I think the firm wants to assess your familiarity with the world of investments and see if you can provide a cogent argument for an investment strategy. What your strategy will be depends on both you personal financial goals and the level of risk you are comfortable with, and on your view on some key debates in finance.
To also give you my personal answer for this one, I think I would invest around 70-80% in an S&P 500 ETF or Index Fund, around 20-30% in high-yield US Treasury bonds. My reasoning is the following:
- The significant majority of hedge funds has underperformed the S&P returns over the last decades. Hedge funds managers are some of the most skilled, experienced and sophisticated professionals in the finance industry. If most of them fail to consistently beat or even match market returns, the chances that a retail (and very inexperienced) investor such as myself will manage to consistently achieve this over the long term are slim to none. As such, my best bet is on market returns, which are not bad at all when also accounting for the compounding effect over longer time period.
- Given my present financial goals, while I am comfortable with the moderate level of risk over a medium term investment horizon, I also want some downside protection. There's arguably no safer investment than the US Treasury, and their bonds are especially valuable during times of crisis. As such, I want a significant minority of my capital invested there.
- Finally, I just wanted to add a point about why I do not think picking out individual stocks or classes of stock is a sensible target for your investments. The price of that stock already accounts for all the information you might have which is relevant to it. In fact, the prices of those stock is determined by a lot of information you are not privy to because you are not a finance professional. As such, trying to reliably beat professional traders as a retail investors is a very difficult if not near impossible task.
