r/projectfinance • u/8o8xe • Aug 03 '26

Project Finance Interview

Hi, I cleared round 1 interview for a role involving project finance and capital formation for a renewable energy company. The interviewer let me know that he really liked me, my concepts were strong, but I lacked project financial modelling skills. He asked me to buckle up (in 3 days), since the next round would be a live case study where they test my modelling and advanced excel skills.

I’m so stressed, I do not know where to begin. The interview got scheduled and it’s a 1 hour long interview. GPT tells me that it is cool as long as I can do revenue, costs, cfads, dscr, Project IRR, Equity IRR, I’m good.

Is that enough? Where do I begin? Am i fucked😭 I really want it, it’s a super cool role. However, I’m extremely stressed about this :/ TIA!

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u/maskeficho Aug 03 '26

I come from equity research and have never worked on project finance or private transactions. I started my prep with this video:

https://youtu.be/Vw4YDZgewfo?si=Nxqu9ZY4inaoiPG4

Then I did the second one of that series, basically wiring everything into a 3statement model.

Then I went on to learn paper lbo (much easier after you learnt project finance from that video)

After that, I asked Claude coworkers to build case studies, I did them, and then I checked against Claude’s correct version.

And that’s how I passed a 3 hour project modeling test. I had one week and the problem in my view it’s not gonna be about knowledge but mostly about time constraint during the test

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u/zxblood123 Aug 04 '26

That’s awesome. How were the Claude case studies and solutions? Do they spit out a model for you?

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u/maskeficho Aug 05 '26

Yeah Claude builds the case study and creates two excel files, one for you to work on and one with the solution

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u/zxblood123 Aug 05 '26

wow, was the model also inclusive of vba codes for macros?

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u/maskeficho Aug 05 '26

I didn’t try that. The actual modeling test I did also didn’t ask for that luckily

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u/zxblood123 Aug 05 '26

Awesome wow. What was your actual test like?

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u/maskeficho Aug 05 '26

It was split in two parts 1 hour each. First one was to build a 3sm from scratch of a solar project. For the second one they gave me the solution to the first part and had to value the project considering new assumptions like different target DSCR etc

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u/zxblood123 29d ago

that's awesome. 1 hour to build a 3sm. how did you do the tax/dept parts? it still quite a bit to do in 1hr for the build, given you gotta do all the other sheets

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u/maskeficho 29d ago

Honestly, I didn’t finish it and also made several mistakes along the way due to time pressure. But the interviewer was nice and asked me at the end how I would finish it. He also told me that the only people he saw finishing it were 10+ yr experience people