Yeah actually I did, despite how stupid I may have sounded. The interviewer said what tipped the scales for me was that in the phone conversations and interview, my enthusiasm was 'second to none' about getting a shot. He said in his expirience, succeeding w/ them depends simply on single minded determination to make it...putting everything aside aside for perhaps two years. I said I'm your guy.
Sorry, I think that you misunderstood my statement. The point I was trying to make was that, given the choice between candidate #1, who was an "A+" kind of person but with personality issues or candidate #2, an "A-" person with excellent interpersonal skills, a can do attitude, and a desire to get along, I'd go with #2 every time unless I could put candidate #1 in a box somewhere and never need them to interact with anyone. And just for the record - asking me if I belonged to the "best and the brightest" - is a question that serves no purpose to answer. Its irrelevant fluff at best, and like asking how much is in an acquaintance's bank account, makes poor dinner conversation.
Morgan Stanley put a STUPID full service Broker in charge of Online, and he knew nothing about trading or Online, all he knew was coming from the Full Service side. But instead of leaving the Discount side by itself, which it should have been fine, they had to try and integrate it into the full service side. Idiots!