Why technical preparation is crucial, from an Interviewer's perspective

At my prior firm, we were hiring for a summer analyst intern to join our investments team. We received over 800 resumes from various sources, many of which were from top 10 business schools. With so many promising names to filter through, we had to schedule 15 minute phone calls with 20-30 of the best resumes and quickly make decisions on which candidates to drop and which to elevate to the next round. Every single time, there were 3-5 people who made it to the next round while the rest of the 20+ short stack resumes were thrown out.

Why did these candidates rise to the top? Because of their ability to articulate basic fundamental real estate concepts. And nearly all of the candidates did not have any sort of relevant prior internships in the field of institutional real estate acquisitions. This taught us that these students had clearly taken time to extensively prepare and learn as much as they could using only their own set of resources. This showed strong initiative, which is one of the crucial things that employers look for in potential interns. In our experience, these students were very bright, ambitious, hardworking and many of them ultimately received offers to join our firm full-time.

Was it clear that they were subject matter experts at underwriting and financial modeling at the time? Of course not, but we could tell that they had their arms around the basics, and that we could teach them the rest.

We learned the hard way that it was futile to hire summer analyst interns just because they had a top school on their resume. Instead, we broadened our approach to include nearly every school, with a focus to just hire the best and brightest, regardless of school rank. Subsequently, there were countless cases of a candidate from a low or mid-tier school beating out a top 15 public or ivy-league student because they were able to articulate themselves extremely well, and demonstrate an understanding of basic concepts.

The punchline is that a school brand might get a first round, but preparation matters if you want to secure the actual role.

Lead Tutor background: 5+ years in REPE acquisitions (real estate private equity), development, and capital markets. $2B+ transaction experience.