Risk Management interview preparation

Questions

100

Traced to a firm

37

Firms

12

Updated

September 2026

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All firmsUBS14MSCI7BLBlackRock5FTFranklin Templeton3Oaktree Capital Management2Scotiabank2Jane Street1Moody's1Neuberger Berman1PIMCO1SSState Street1TSTruist Securities1

Topic

All topicsMarket risk and VaR14Tail risk and stress testing5Greeks and sensitivities5Credit risk11Counterparty risk and CVA6Operational risk5Model risk and validation6Regulatory capital7Liquidity risk and ALM6Statistics and quant foundations7Indian regulation7Risk governance and appetite4Markets and macro9Fit and career8

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1. 090Pitch me a stock.Markets and macroIntermediatetechnicalFTFranklin TempletonRisk Management · San Mateo · 2017

   Say this

   Lead with the recommendation, the target and the timeframe in one sentence, then give two or three reasons the market is wrong, then the risks and what would kill the thesis. For a risk role, the risk section is the part you're actually being marked on.

   Then walk it

   1. Structure: recommendation and price target, the variant view, two or three supporting arguments, valuation, the risks with a falsifier, and position sizing. Ninety seconds spoken, then answer questions.
   2. The variant view is the whole pitch. Why is this mispriced, and what do you believe that consensus doesn't? 'Good company, growing fast' isn't a pitch, because the market knows that and has priced it. Name the specific disagreement: a margin assumption, a market size, a capital allocation change, a cyclical trough being read as structural.
   3. Valuation has to be explicit and cross-checked. A multiple against the company's own history and against peers, plus a rough cash flow view, plus what's implied at the current price. Say what has to be true for the target to be right.
   4. Now the risk section, which is where a risk interviewer stops listening to the bull case. What kills the thesis, what's the downside in that case, how correlated is it to the rest of a portfolio, how liquid is the position, and what's the position size given the downside. That's the part most candidates skip entirely.
   5. Give a real falsifier with a date: 'if gross margin doesn't recover above 38 percent by the second quarter, the thesis is wrong and I'd exit'. Not 'if the macro deteriorates', which is unfalsifiable.
   6. Pick something you genuinely know, with a liquid, followable name, and be ready for three levels of follow-up: the business model, the numbers, and the bear case. Being unable to state the bear case well is the most common way this question fails.
   7. Practical preparation: have two long ideas and one short, one of them Indian if you're interviewing in India, and know each one's last two reported quarters. And be honest about what you don't know, because they will find the edge of your knowledge and how you behave there is the actual test.

   Where candidates lose it

   Pitching a famous company with a consensus story and no variant view. And skipping the risk section, which for a risk role is the part being assessed. If you can't state the bear case as well as a bear would, you haven't done the work and it shows in the first follow-up.

   Expect next

   • What's the bear case, argued properly?
   • What would make you exit?
   • How large a position would you take, and why that size?

   Reported by candidates at Franklin Templeton (Risk Management, San Mateo, 2017). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.