Invitation To Final Interview

Maria Bastone/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

After weeks of waiting, I finally received an email invitation to the final interview for an institutional sales/trading position. Having passed the online tests, telephone interview and assessment centre, this final interview will be the last hurdle in securing a full time job before graduation. From what I gathered, the remuneration package includes an annual base salary of at least $50,000 and a profit sharing scheme. I feel that the offer is quite attractive for a fresh graduate and the exposure that I will be getting from this job is immense. .

Telephone Interview Update

I think I did quite well for the telephone interview as I was quite well prepared. Here are the questions posed to me :

Tell me about yourself 

Why are you suitable for this role?

Describe an event where you showcased your integrity

Describe an event where you encountered a communication conflict and how did you resolve it?

What is the most challenging task that you have done to date?

What is the most challenging module that you have done? Why is it challenging? Did you like this module?

Do you work well in a team? How do you usually contribute to your team? Give an example where you contributed to your team and what did you learn from it?

As you can see, the telephone interview made up of mostly competency questions. It took about 25 minutes in total and the outcome of the interview will be released by the end of next week. 

Meanwhile, another bank has invited me to take their psychometric test.

We have reviewed your details against our recruitment criteria and would like to invite you to participate in the next stage of our selection process, which will be a psychometric test designed to look for key behaviours essential to the position that you have applied for.    

I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to advance to the next stage of the selection process as my friend who has a higher GPA than me got rejected by this same bank.

This coming week will be extremely hectic and I might not have the time to apply for more jobs. By the end of this year, I aim to secure a full time job and reach the $60,000 mark for my net worth.

Telephone Interview Invitation

"We are pleased to inform you that we have reviewed your application and numerical test results and would like to invite you to a telephone interview"

After a month of gruelling wait, I finally received a phone interview invitation from an international bank. The position that I applied for is a Graduate Program at the Corporate and Investment Banking department. I shall not reveal the bank's name to avoid unnecessary attention and any possible repercussion. 

Just to sidetrack for a moment, my previous post 'Wedding Cost in Singapore' had stirred much attention at TR EMERITUS aka 'Temasek Review' and I was rather amused to see such critical and judgmental comments about my post. However, there were some sincere comments that were really helpful and I truly appreciate it. I was simply trying to come up with a rough estimate of my wedding cost and it generated more than 50 fiery naysay comments in Temasek Review. To my delight, it generated more than 3500 page views on that day which translated into $3.21 of Google Adsense earnings. Contrary to what many other bloggers claimed, my Nuffnang ads did not generate as much earnings for me.

Back to the main topic, an interviewer from UK will be calling me to conduct the phone interview. If I were the bank, I would have saved some cost by appointing the HR from Singapore to conduct the phone interview instead. Assuming a phone interview takes 20 minutes and there are 100 phone interviews to be conducted, a total of 2000 minutes of costly international calls would be made. An alternative is a 'skype' interview, which is less costly and more effective as you can examine the expression and body language of the interviewee. Anyway, this is just my opinion and there might be other reasons for them to conduct the phone interview in this manner.

From what I have been told, there are a few rounds of interview in the selection process. If I meet their requirements for the phone interview, I will be invited to their office for a group interview before finally meeting the HR/Manager for a face to face interview.

The phone interview is scheduled on this coming Wednesday. In the meantime, I will read up about the bank and prepare for the interview as much as I can.  I shall update the outcome of my interview by the end of next week.

Update On My Job Applications

As mentioned in my previous post, application windows for graduate programs in 2013 are now open and I completed another 2 applications today. There are so many graduate programs out there and I am determined to find and apply for every one of them. Countless years of education and hard work all boil down to this crucial period. My aim is to complete at least 50 applications by the end of this month.

So far, these are the companies that I have applied for:

Also, one effective way of searching for graduate programs is through Linkedin. I can simply google 'Graduate Program Linkedin' and a list of Linkedin users with the term 'Graduate Program' in their profile will appear in the search results. I will then screen through the different graduate programs, compile them into a list and start applying. I will apply for another 2 positions tomorrow and update my status again next week.

Fresh Graduates Starting Pay

Application windows for full time programs in 2013 are now open and I have completed 12 applications in the past four few weeks. It is quite disheartening that some of my schoolmates have already received interview invitations while I have not received a single response yet. Based on the information I gathered from recruitment events and my schoolmates, I managed to get a sense of the starting pay for fresh graduates.

Here is what I have so far:

Auditor at Big Four accounting firms - $2,700 - $2,900
Corporate finance at Big Four accounting firms - $3000-$3500
Operations at Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Bank Of America, etc - $3,750
Personal Financial Consultant at Standard Chartered Bank - $3000 (excluding commissions if any)
Singapore Management Trainee Program at Standard Chartered Bank - $3,800
Personal Banker at UOB - $2,700-$3000
Operations at UOB/DBS/OCBC - $3000-$3,500
Management Associate Program at HSBC/UOB/DBS/OCBC - $4000 - $4500
Sales and Trading at Goldman Sachs - >$8000
General Education Officer aka Teacher - $3,200
Graduate Officer at Monetary Authority of Singapore - $4,000-$4,500

The above list of starting pay is only based on what I know and might not be 100% accurate. However, I think it should be at least 80% correct as the salary figures are told by my friends/schoolmates who have done an internship with the organization or existing employees at recruitment events.

The application process is quite tedious and an online application form will take me approximately 30 mins to an hour as there is usually a section where I have to answer questions such as "Why did you apply to our organization" or "How is our bank different from others?" The most tedious one was the MAS application where I have to answer 8 questions. I can still remember the last question was something like "How will you spend/invest a million dollars?" Also, some applications require a pattern test or numerical reasoning test where I have to do some math questions in a short period of time.

From today onwards, I will complete 2 applications per day and hopefully my cellphone will start ringing soon. Also, I have always been curious about how much people earn and what they do. If you would like to share information regarding the salary of any position (including middle or top management) in any industry, please comment on this post :)