Sources checked 2026-08-12
Publishes what its own senior interviewers look for rather than a stage list, and the message is blunt: know the deals the firm has done recently, and be able to defend every line of your resume without reading it. Its technicals lean harder on markets and macro than any of its bulge-bracket peers.
3 of 5 stages you can practise here
Apply to a specific program through Morgan Stanley careers. The firm frames the path in three parts, explore, apply and interview, and points candidates at its own interview preparation guidance before the first conversation.
The one-way screen: the standard questions, asked cold, on a timer
Live interviews with analysts, associates and VPs. Morgan Stanley says plainly that every interview is different and that interviews could be competency, strengths based, skills based or technical, so the same candidate can get a pure fit conversation in one seat and an accounting drill in the next. Expect a resume walk, why banking and why Morgan Stanley, and analyst-level technicals.
2 rounds you can practise
The live fit seat, where knowing the firm and its deals is the actual test
Analyst technicals with an unusually heavy markets and macro component
The senior seat: multi-part statement chains, merger math and a running sector case
Decisions follow quickly after the final round, and the summer analyst class is the main feeder into full-time seats.
Built from what Morgan Stanley publishes about its own process and from real interview data. No leaked question lists. The questions you get are generated against your own resume, so they are not from anyone else's interview.
What Morgan Stanley says it is reading for and the shapes its interviews take: interviews could be competency, strengths based, skills based or technical; the firm does not always expect the right answer and is interested in how you work through a scenario; candidates are told to know their resume without reading from it and to have a compelling reason for the industry, the firm and the division.
The published three-part path (explore, apply, interview). Morgan Stanley does not publish a stage-by-stage interview loop, which is why the video round and the superday below are described as the reported shape rather than a firm-published one.
Morgan Stanley senior interviewers naming the questions they always ask (tell me about yourself, why our firm, why this position), the Investment Banking specific expectation to know what deals the firm has done recently, that everything on the resume is fair game, and that they will always ask whether you have questions.
Vice Chairwoman Carla Harris on the subtext of the standard questions: what tell me about yourself, biggest weakness, why should we hire you and describe a time you failed are actually testing.
Analyst compensation and level context. No interview-process content.
Sources last checked . Hiring loops change, so this date is the honest limit on everything above.