Morgan Stanley Insight Programme

Morgan Stanley European Spring Insight Programme

(also see Morgan Stanley Internship)

The European Spring Insight Programme is another form of internship available at Morgan Stanley. It is designed for first-year students on a three-year degree course, or second-year students of a four-year course who are considering a career in banking. The programme gives you an opportunity to learn more about the investment banking industry and a chance to experience working life at Morgan Stanley.

The Programme lasts for one week and will give you an overview of all recruiting divisions, including Investment Banking, Sales & Trading, Private Wealth Management, Investment Management, Credit, Finance, Operations, and Technology.

Application and Assessment process

Online numerical test --> Telephone interview --> Assessment centre

Assessments are held at Morgan Stanley's offices in Canary Wharf. About 120 candidates will be invited to attend it and about 80 of them will be given an offer.

• 30 minute 1-on-1 interview
• 8-10 minute presentation, followed by 5 minutes of questions (25 minutes preparation time)

Numerical Test

The numerical test involved finding data from tables and graphs and making simple calculations. Time is very tight and there is a lot of info in each table/graph.

Telephone Interview

It will be a 30 minute one on one interview. The interviewer will normally be an analyst or associate.

The interview will be heavily focussed on your CV and cover letter; although competency based, there is scope for technical and commercial awareness questions.

First Interview & Interview Questions

It will be a 30 minute one on one interview. The interviewer will normally be an analyst or associate rather than from HR.

Interview questions likely to be asked:

• Questions asked:
• When have you worked in a team?
  • What was your role?
  • Did you have difficulties with any of the other members?
  • What did you learn from the other members?
• What career do you want to go into, or are you undecided? Why?
• Tell me about a team you haven't liked.
  • What did you do?
  • Was it successful in the end?
  • How would you deal with the situation differently in the future?
• What do you know about what's going on in Investment Banking at the moment?
• Why did you choose your uni and degree course?
• Tell me about a time you've shown initiative.
• What other interests do you have?
• Describe a situation when you had to obtain information in order to solve it. How did you obtain the information?
• Have you got any questions for me?

As a first year you will not be expected to know in great detail information about financial engineering and financial markets, you will be mostly asked about your CV and cover letter.

Presentation

You will be given a set of articles and asked to summarise and analyse them, using your own knowledge of the topic. Over head projector and other presentation facilities are not available.

You have 10 minutes (do not surpass the time limit) minutes to present your topic, followed by a 5 minute question time. The better you know the subject the more you will impress the interviewer during question time.

The presentation in 2010 was regarding regulation.

Morgan Stanley Internship

Morgan Stanley Internship Interview Questions

Candidates should apply for the Morgan Stanley internship online. If successful, you will be invited to an assessment day. The assessment day consists of:

• Introduction and company presentation
• First interview
• Guided tour
• Question and answer session (with refreshments)
• Group Exercise
• Second Interview
• Aptitude tests
  • Verbal reasoning
  • Numerical reasoning

Introduction

Morgan Stanley will start the assessment day off with a short presentation and discussion about the assessment day as a whole. There are usually 12 candidates in any one assessment day.

First interview

Morgan Stanley standardise all interview by providing interviewers with scripts. You will be asked a set of questions that all other candidates will also be asked. Your questions will include:

• Tell me about yourself
• What is state of financial markets
• Often your job will involve delivering technical and complex information to clients who have varying knowledge of markets and products, how will you ensure that the information is clearly presented so that it is easy for anyone to understand?
• How will you protect against the possibility of information being misinterpreted.
• Tell me why you want to work in investment banking?
• Why do you want to work in "the position you applied for"?
• Tell me about the non-academic activities you do
• Tell me about a recent demanding research project you did
• How do you go about conducting such research?
• Tell me about your greatest achievement
• What do you think people do in "the position you applied for"
• How did you prepare for this interview?
• What was the share price of MS yesterday?
• What is Morgan Stanley's market capital?

• Why Sales and Trading?
• What area within Sales and Trading interests you most?

At the end of the interview you will be able to ask any questions you may have.

Guided tour

You will be shown around the Morgan Stanley offices in small groups and are able to ask HR questions as your move around the building. At the end of the tour there is a chance for refreshments.

Group Exercise

The group of 12 candidates will be split in to two groups of six and separated for the group exercise.

Your group will then be told that they are committee, appointed by the board of a large company (which may be a pharmaceutical company). Each of the six of you will be representing different departments of this company within the committee.

The board will have decided to allocate a sum of money to be spent on a particular project to enhance the company's performance in line with its mission statement. Since each candidate is representing a different department, you will each have different measures to advocate. The funds available to the committee will not be sufficient to pay for all these measures.

The task requires your group of six to consider 18 different measures, and agree on
a spread of your allocated money within the 40 minutes allowed. Three Morgan Stanley assessors will be taking notes throughout your group discussion. Each candidate will be marked on their personal involvement in the discussion, their individual ideas and the quality of team work skills displayed by the group as a whole.

Second interview

This interview will be very similar in format to the first interview, although your interviewer will be different. Expect similar competency based questions and question such as:

• Are you a good communicator?
• What communication skills do you have?
• How do you get information from your colleagues?
• Can you handle conflict?
• Tell me of a time when you worked as part of a team
• Tell me when you successfully lead a team

Expect questions concerning your CV and application to occur throughout the interview. You interviewer may link competency based questions to experiences they notice on your CV, such as extra-curricula activities, projects or academic qualifications.

Aptitude tests

Morgan Stanley's aptitude tests are fairly straight forward.

Verbal reasoning

This is comprised of 10 short texts, with 4 accompanying questions for each. You will be given 40 minutes to answer all of them. The questions will be statements that relate to the contents of each text. You will have to decide whether or not these statements are true, untrue or impossible to work out.

Numerical reasoning

Your numerical test should be fairly simple and you will even be given a calculator. The
questions will be multiple choice and consist of:

• Graphs and tables
• Ratios
• Percentages
• Brain teasers

Morgan Stanley Technology

Morgan Stanley Technology - Graduate Interview Process

Morgan Stanley hires between about 60 graduates for its IT department each year. The application and interview process for IT is more technical than that of other Morgan Stanley graduate schemes. It consists of:

• Online application form
• Telephone interview (technical)
• Interview day
• Assessment centre

Online Application Form

The online application form is long and requires a good deal of personal information and responses to various questions.

Telephone Interview

Your telephone interview will be based around a series of technical questions,
about the role you applied for and specific technical knowledge. You will
be expected to talk in detail about various concepts and the work you will be doing if you are offered the job. Make sure you spend time researching the role your have applied for, and the team you will be working in.

Interview day

If successful you will be asked to attend an assessment day at the Morgan Stanley offices, where you will have chance to meet managers and team leaders. These people will be your eventual departmental colleagues, and are also the people directly responsible for making the decision to hire you, or not.

• One hour competency based interview
• One hour technical interview

Competency based interview

During the hour you will be asked why you have chosen to apply to Morgan Stanley and what you like specifically about the firm compared to rival companies. You will need to explain your decision in terms of your experiences and interests and make it clear that you are more than enthusiastic to work for Morgan Stanley, more than any other firm.

Expect further questions about past experiences and be prepared to give examples from school, work or university of times when you have successfully overcome problems and completed team projects.

Technical Interview

The technical interview requires you to demonstrate your knowledge on the job role you have applied for. Your assessors will ask very specific questions covering a range of topics relating to the IT department at Morgan Stanley and your problem solving ability with relation to IT. You may be asked questions relating to Java,Windows, Linux and problem solving questions relating to these programs.

Assessment centre

The assessment centre lasts for two days and consists of:

• Introduction/company presentation
• SHL test
• Office tour
• Evening meal

• Technical interview
• Problem solving exercise
• Group exercise
• Role play

Day One

SHL test

Your SHL test will be Computer Science based. The test questions will be totally different from any provided in the practice booklet (which you should receive shortly before the assessment centre). You should aim to complete all questions, but do not panic if you don't as you will be short on time.

Office tour

After your test you will be shown around the Morgan Stanley offices by current graduate trainees at the firm.

Evening meal

During the evening meal HR will not be present. You will be taken to the dinner by the graduate trainees who showed you around the company offices. Be sure to ask any questions about the company and the job you may have. This portion of the assessment centre is not assessed.

Day two

Technical interview

This is fairly similar to the first-round technical interview, although there will be more questions and you will be more pressurised.

Problem solving exercise

Candidates will be separated at this point, depending on the particular track you applied to. Distributed Systems and Application Development applicants will face a standard business related scenario, with a challenging question and answer session at the end. Infrastructure applicants will be faced with a technical scenario, rather than a business one.

Group exercise

Your application track group will now be divided into two smaller groups and each group will perform a group discussion. After these discussions there will be another meeting involving both previously separated groups. Pay attention to the information provided to you and make sure you get involved in the discussion, fromthe start.

Role play

Finally you will be asked to present your group's conclusion to the discussion to your interviewer, who will play the role of a Director for the company you have been discussing. There won't be much time for you to prepare for this. Try to relax, although this part of the assessment centre is very demanding. Bear in mind that they want to see how you act under intense pressure, and it is important to remain calm and clear minded, as much as it is important to make intelligent points and arguments.

After the assessment centre Morgan Stanley will call you to let you know their decision within two working weeks.

Morgan Stanley interview questions

Application Procedure

• Numerical Test
• First Interview
• Second Interview

Numerical Test

The test is 35 minutes in length and is written.

Most people will need to practise the numerical reasoning test to pass it. Pages 7-23 of this book may prove extremely useful in preparing for any of the numerical tests.

First Interview

The interview is competency based. The interview will be held with either a junior banker or a member of graduate recruitment staff.

• Team building
• Communication skills
• Pro-activeness
• Assertiveness
• Leadership skills

In order to do this, you will be asked to provide examples of times during university or work where you have demonstrated these competencies. You should have at least 2 examples per competency that you can comfortably discuss.

• Give an example of a situation when you demonstrated leadership?
• How would your friends describe you?
• What are your biggest achievements?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Give an example of when you worked in a team to achieve a goal
  • What problems arose?
  • How did you solve them?
• Why Morgan Stanley?
• Why not other financial organisations?
• You realise you don't have enough time to complete a task, what do you do?

When discussing competencies and teamwork, make sure maintain focus on yourself and your contribution, rather than the achievements of the team as a whole.

Second Interview

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The second interview is not competency based but focuses on brain teasers and technical ability/knowledge instead. It will be conducted by a senior banker.

The second interview is substantially more difficult than the first interview. The purpose of this interview is to see how you respond under pressure, and whether you crack or keep your cool. The interviewers will be looking to find your breaking point, so bear this in mind during your interview, and take your time. Generally speaking, this high-pressure form of interview is becoming increasingly discouraged, so you may be fortunate to have a more moderate interviewer.

• What is 17 squared?
• What are the top 5 economies?
• What is the UK interest rate?
• What is the GDP of the US?
• What is the level of unemployment in the US?