Investment Banking Behavioral Questions 2026: Banks Say Less

What banks publish about investment banking behavioral questions

JPMorganChase publishes a how we hire page with four named stages: Explore, Apply, Interview, Decision. The interview stage gets one declarative sentence and a hint: "The interview process will differ for each position." The next sentence says you can expect to meet several people across multiple rounds; it carries an em dash in the original, so we report it rather than quote it.

The helpful hints are where the content is. Under Explore: "Consider your past experiences, your future goals and your motivation. What do you enjoy doing?" Under Apply: "Let us know what you're passionate about and what you've accomplished, using measurable data when applicable." Under Interview: "During your interviews, remember to be yourself. That's one of the best way to make a strong impression." The grammatical slip is the bank's own and a quote keeps it.

That middle instruction is the single most actionable line in the whole banking file, and notice where it sits. The demand for measurable data is filed under the resume rather than under the interview. No bank page we read asks for a number in an answer.

Bank of America publishes a hiring process page with four stages of its own, and it says more about the interview than JPMorganChase does: "While candidate experiences vary, you can expect the interview process to include a mix of phone calls, in-person conversations and video interviews with HR team members, business managers and possible peers." Then the sentence that matters most: "You may also be asked to complete exercises and assessments to measure key aptitudes and values."

And the stated purpose: "We'll be looking to discern how you would fit into our culture and help us deliver even better results for our clients." A preceding sentence says the bank wants to learn about your aspirations, character and values and how they align with its own; it carries an em dash, so it is reported here rather than quoted.

Thirteen published behavioral interview questions, zero from banks

Put the two sectors side by side and the difference is not a matter of tone.

Count the second column: four plus three plus six is thirteen published questions or openings across three consulting firms. The banks we read publish zero.

Do not over-read that. It does not mean banking interviews are easier, or that banks care less about the answer. It means the published record is empty, so three things follow for a candidate.

1. Any list sold as the questions a named bank asks has an unnamed source. The bank did not publish it, and neither did anyone who will put a name to it.
2. Preparation cannot be indexed to wording here, so it has to be indexed to evidence: a bank of experiences, each with a decision and a consequence.
3. The two banks that do publish something both point at the same object, which is values and culture fit, and neither defines it.

Aptitudes and values, and the exercise nobody names

Bank of America's line about exercises and assessments that "measure key aptitudes and values" is worth sitting with, because it describes two different instruments in one clause.

Aptitude measurement is familiar: reasoning under time pressure, scored against a norm. Values measurement is a different thing, and where other employers use it, it typically takes the form of a questionnaire about preferences or a set of workplace scenarios to rank. PwC publishes exactly such an instrument and describes it as questions about work style and tendencies. Deloitte UK publishes one and calls part of it a "Behavioural Assessment". Those are other employers, named so you can see what the category looks like, and neither is evidence about Bank of America.

What the bank does not publish: the name of the exercise, its vendor, its length, whether it is timed, whether it is scored, whether a result is shared with you, and which roles receive it. Every one of those is published by at least one consulting firm and by neither bank.

The practical response is narrow and worth doing anyway. If an assessment measuring values arrives, it is asking what you would do rather than what you did, so a story bank does not answer it. What answers it is consistency: the same answer to the same underlying question across forty items, which is what these instruments detect and what a candidate trying to guess a preferred profile fails.

JPMorganChase's own page carries the nearest thing to a values list in the banking file, and it sits inside a video transcript rather than in guidance. The transcript names five: "We are tenacious.", "We are critical thinkers.", and "We are collaborative, we are compelling, we are high performers". That is a marketing script the bank chose to publish rather than a competency framework, and it remains the only vocabulary the bank puts on the record.

What we could not read, and the program lengths

Three large employers in this sector could not be read for this page, and naming them is more honest than a silent omission.

The Goldman Sachs students page answers with HTTP 200 and renders its body in JavaScript, so an extraction returns navigation and nothing else. The paths for a how-we-hire page and an interview preparation page both return 404. The Morgan Stanley students and graduates page behaves the same way, and its interview tips path returns 404. On Citi's careers site, the early careers path linked from its own homepage menu returns 404 to our agent, as do two obvious variants.

So we make no claim about what those three publish. They may publish more than the two banks above; they may publish less. A page that told you Goldman Sachs publishes nothing would be making the mistake this site has made before, which is presenting a failure to access as a finding.

One more limit belongs here. The web search allowance for this session was already spent when this page was written, so no search engine was used to find further pages. Every URL above was reached by direct request, guessing paths from the menus of the career sites themselves. That is a real constraint on coverage and it is recorded rather than hidden.

What the two readable banks do publish about their programs is useful for a motivation answer. JPMorganChase's students page puts summer internships at "from 10 to 12 weeks" for undergraduates in their next-to-last year, which is 50 to 60 working days at five a week, and full-time programs at "from 24 to 36 months, depending on the role", which is two to three years. Bank of America's students page names three program families and describes the interview phase in a single sentence of fourteen words, which is shorter than the description the same bank gives experienced candidates.

One answer built without a published behavioral interview grid

The example below is ours. With no published criteria to write against, it is built against the only two things both banks name: a decision you owned and a consequence somebody could check. It is a demonstration rather than an answer to reuse.

The answer. "I was on the committee of a student investment fund with about 62,000 dollars across eighteen positions. I argued for cutting to eleven. The top eleven held about 48,400 dollars, roughly 78 percent of the fund, and the other seven averaged about 1,940 each, which was too small to research properly and too small to matter if we were right. Exiting seven positions cost about 63 dollars in commission at 9 dollars a trade. Two people opposed it because the small positions were the ones members had pitched themselves. One of the positions we sold rose about 22 percent the following term, and I said so at the next meeting rather than waiting to be asked. What I changed afterwards was the rule rather than the outcome: anything under 2 percent of the fund, which is about 1,240 dollars, now needs a written defense instead of being cut automatically."

Recompute: 48,400 divided by 62,000 is 0.781, so about 78 percent. 62,000 minus 48,400 is 13,600, and 13,600 divided by 7 is about 1,943. Seven trades at 9 dollars is 63. Two percent of 62,000 is 1,240.

Read what that does against the two published lines. It uses measurable data, which is what JPMorganChase asks for on the resume and nobody forbids in an answer. And it shows character under a bad outcome, which is the object Bank of America names, by volunteering the loss rather than being caught with it.

The rest of the process, and how we score it

Neither readable bank publishes a round count, a duration, a question, a criterion, or a threshold. Neither names the format the market calls a superday. Bank of America's own two pages even order the interview channels differently, phone then in-person then video on one and phone then video then in-person on the other, which is a small sign that these lists describe rather than prescribe.

The weights below are ours, applied by our own grader and read from the code that scores. No employer in this sector publishes a marking scheme for a behavioral answer, and in banking the absence extends to the criteria as well.