The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Morgan Stanley in Dec 2011
Interview
Applied online, and got couple of email notifications about scheduling interviews, also got a call directly from an interviewer to schedule an interview. First round interviews are phone interviews, then superday in NY office (but not MS's main office, which is weird).
1. HR call of around 20 minutes for general basic questions: availability, why MS, why Budapest, what is M&A...
2. Technical Interview with London employee: very intense and many typical IB questions; both theoretical (types of debt, explain valuation methods with detail and reasoning of them...) and practical (pen and paper for calculations).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Why MS, why Budapest, types of debt, valuation methods...
1) HireVue 2) First phone interview with basic questions: walk me through your resume/tell me about yourself, what are the different valuation methods and rank, what does a coffee shop have to think about day to day. 3) superday is3 interviews back to back: 1 behavioural, 1 technical, 1 market/M&A.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
walk me through your resume, what is a merger or an acquisition you would do, go through the three financial statements
It was standard from the guides, if you have the 400 question guide you will be totally fine, its nothing really beyond that at the interviews. You don't need to fundamentally understand banking.