Looking for some general advice. I had a first round interview with a buyside firm for a level entry position and during the interview the question came up what macros ( VBA) have you done at work? My firm where I am at does none. However, I told them I am willing to learn VBA. They made it seem like VBA is essential. (This is an updating financial model role and less of presenting investment ideas role.)
When I send my thank you letter should I send them a file where I have done VBA extracting financials or ratios from online sources. I am learning VBA right now and have been for the majority of the day. If I sent them the file I would show it as my committment and dedication to get the job.
If your program is impressive and you have major concerns about the outcome of the interview, I don’t think it would hurt… Also, if you have experience with other languages, they might overlook the lack of VBA experience, since almost anyone with programming experience can learn VBA on the job.
I guess the file can’t hurt. Besides VBA, did it go well? Did it seem like they liked you? If there is another factor that made them love you then maybe they’ll accept the fact that there will be a learning curve to VBA. If VBA is the job, then probably not. It is not something learned overnight and is best learned through real world examples…that being said, it is not hard to write functioning macros either. However, you’re macros will probably lack uniformity and optimization until you get some more experience. I would ask them to send you a piece of the code to see if it is just script that is repeating small tasks or if it includes back-end database connections and SQL. Don’t know if they’ll be cool with sending even just a piece of code to a proprietary model though but just a thought.