How to Prepare for a Technical Finance Interview in Two Weeks

Two weeks is enough time to actually get good at this, not just familiar with it. Here's a day-by-day plan for what to memorize, what to drill under a timer, and what to deliberately skip.

Most candidates waste their two weeks. Not through laziness — through reading.

Reading gets you to “I recognize this.” That's not the same as “I can explain this cleanly while someone times me.”

So here's the split: week one builds recognition. Week two is speed, out loud, under a clock. Because that's the actual format of the interview — not a quiet afternoon with a textbook.

Week one: build the foundation

Days 1–3: accounting and the core formulas

Start here even if you're mainly being interviewed on valuation or LBOs — almost every technical question eventually touches the three statements. Make sure you can do all of the following from memory, not from notes:

• Walk through how a single transaction (a depreciation change, a working capital change, an asset purchase) flows through all three statements.
• Write the WACC formula and explain what each input represents, including why the cost of debt is tax-adjusted.
• Write the enterprise-value-to-equity-value bridge from memory, in both directions.

If any of these feel shaky, fix it now. Everything later in the plan assumes these are automatic.

Days 4–6: valuation

Build one full DCF by hand, on paper, from a small set of made-up numbers — five years of projected free cash flow, a WACC, and a terminal growth rate. Actually compute it, don't just outline the steps. Then do the same exercise for a basic trading comps analysis: pick two or three “comparable” companies (real or invented), calculate EV/EBITDA, and apply the multiple to value a target.

By day six, “walk me through a DCF” should have zero hesitation in the structure — even if the numbers you plug in are made up on the spot.

Days 7–9: LBOs and cap tables

Walk through a basic LBO twice from memory: sources and uses, debt paydown from the company's own free cash flow, MOIC and IRR at exit. Interviewing for anything with a VC or growth-equity component? Add a day on pre-money vs. post-money math, dilution, and liquidation preferences. It gets asked constantly and almost nobody drills it as hard as LBO mechanics.

Week two: drill it under a clock

Days 10–11: full mock interviews, out loud

This is the part most people skip. It's also the part that matters most.

Set a timer. Get five or six real questions — from a friend, a bank, anywhere but your own head — and answer them out loud with no notes. The gap between “I understand this” and “I can say this clearly in under a minute while someone watches me” is bigger than it feels. You won't believe it until you do it.

Day 12: weak-topic day

Everything you fumbled on days 10 and 11 — drill only that. Nothing else. This is the highest-leverage day in the whole plan: you already know exactly where the gaps are, so there's no excuse to spend it on material you've already got.

Day 13: one more timed pass, mixed topics

Mix every category — accounting, valuation, LBO, cap tables — back to back under a real clock, the way an actual interview jumps between them. No new material at this point. Just speed and consistency.

Day 14: the day before

Light review only. Skim your own notes. Don't learn anything new, and don't run a full mock — cramming the night before just crowds out what's already solid.

Prep two or three genuine questions to ask. Confirm the logistics. Get real sleep. A tired brain loses more points on easy questions than an under-prepared one loses on hard ones.

What to deliberately skip

Two weeks isn't enough time for everything. Trying to cover everything is exactly how people end up shallow on the stuff that actually gets asked.

Skip deep GAAP edge cases (rare lease treatments, obscure consolidation rules). Skip esoteric LBO structures no junior interviewer is asking about. Skip anything your specific target role genuinely won't touch — a public-markets research interview and a private equity interview don't share a syllabus. Tailor the two weeks to the seat you're actually interviewing for, not a generic one.