Technical practice
How would you prioritize AI opportunities across deal sourcing, execution, monitoring, and LP relations?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Compare potential value, workflow readiness, data quality, and the consequences of an incorrect output. Explain how you would seek input from investment, operations, and firm leaders before choosing where to start.
How would you map a transaction from sourcing through close into an AI-ready workflow?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Identify the information, handoffs, and decisions at each stage, then separate repeatable tasks from judgments that belong with deal professionals. Explain where you would check that the mapped process reflects the firm's actual practices rather than an assumed standard.
How would you configure Celeste agents and playbooks around a firm's investment methodology?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Describe how you would elicit the firm's criteria, terminology, data standards, and risk framework before configuring a workflow. Discuss how you would test whether its outputs reflect those choices and revise the configuration when they do not.
How would you design an AI workflow for market analysis or deal screening?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Walk through the inputs, prompts, agent steps, and expected output for one of these use cases. Explain how you would make assumptions visible and keep the result useful for a professional making the decision.
Where can LLMs help with underwriting, diligence, or investment memo drafting, and where should they not decide?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Distinguish organizing and summarizing evidence from validating assumptions or reaching an investment conclusion. Discuss the accuracy and transaction risks that would warrant source checks and human review.
How would you assess an AI-assisted portfolio-monitoring workflow?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Describe what information a portfolio team would need, what changes an agent might surface, and how a professional would verify them. Consider the trade-off between faster review and the risk of missed or misleading signals.
How would you approach AI support for LP reporting and fund-performance work?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Explain which drafting or information-gathering tasks might be repeatable and which figures or statements need careful validation. Address consistency with firm data standards and review before information reaches LPs.
An agent produces a plausible but inaccurate deal summary; how would you diagnose and address it?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Trace the source material, firm context, prompt or workflow instructions, and output to locate the error. Explain how you would test a revision against deal-professional expectations rather than relying on a more fluent answer.
How would you handle sensitive deal information when deploying an agentic workflow?
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Discuss proprietary knowledge, access controls, the firm's governance framework, and applicable regulatory requirements as deployment considerations named on the page. Explain how you would check that an agent uses appropriate context without exposing information to the wrong users.
Behavioural practice
Tell me about a time you earned the trust of a senior stakeholder who was skeptical of a proposed approach.
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Use a real situation, your actions to understand the stakeholder's concerns and explain the trade-offs, and the result. Focus on how you communicated with investment professionals or other decision-makers rather than claiming that skepticism disappeared.
Tell me about a time you helped different groups adopt a new workflow.
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Describe the situation, how you tailored walkthroughs or hands-on support to each group's work, and the result. Distinguish what you did for practitioners from what you did for operational stakeholders.
Tell me about a time you had to exercise judgment in an open-ended, client-facing situation.
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Give the situation, the uncertainty or risk you faced, the action you took, and the result. Explain what you verified before offering advice and where you sought input instead of making an unsupported assumption.
Tell me about a time you translated frontline workflow insights into a product or process improvement.
What to coverPreparation suggestion: State the situation, how you gathered and communicated the insight to collaborators, what action followed, and the result. Emphasize the practical workflow problem rather than assuming every suggestion became a product feature.
Tell me about a time stakeholders disagreed about what to automate or how much review to retain.
What to coverPreparation suggestion: Use a real situation, your actions to surface each group's priorities and the risks, and the result. Explain how you balanced efficiency with the need for professional judgment.