100 Investment Banking Career Tips 

Think like you were the Founder, what would you do? How would you approach this problem?

Always think about: what else could we do for our client? Our job is to make people love us

No task is to small. Even your MDs do administrative tasks occasionally. “Managing Analysts” do not succeed

Under-promise and over-deliver, especially around deadlines

Always flag hardest tasks and do them first, this way you can ask questions immediately if anything is unclear before seniors log off around 10-11 pm. Easy tasks can be done at 2 am without additional instructions and without a fully functioning brain 

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Forward your desk phone when you’re OOO and learn how to use the conferencing feature on your office phone or cell phone

Set up the same signature line (format/size) on your cell phone and laptop. It will make it less obvious if you respond from a gym or from a dinner party

When you get staffed to a new client, start pulling together a very draft shell immediately with a lot of TBU/placeholder slides to move the project along and you can immediately ask questions and show that you are proactive

Don’t delay process. Act confidently even if you are not, make decision even if only 90% sure unless you are sending it directly to the client

Have a sense of urgency, act immediately when you get a task from supervisor

Don't be afraid to speak up, you’re paid to have an opinion -> Always have an opinion and defend by a reason or story (you can change your mind later), don't look ambivalent as it will make you look weak

Take good notes and always bring your notebook and calculator with you to VP / MDs’ offices

Don t answer your phone on speaker to external callers.

Always print and leave physical copies of decks on VP / MDs’ desks after you turn comments

If a senior banker asks to leave a printout copy in their office, leave it on their chair, not desk

Make comprehensive list of questions to efficiently make use of senior bankers’ time

Know how to negotiate an NDA

Organize your thoughts before leaving a voicemail. Be concise. Speak slowly and clearly and repeat your telephone number twice

Be patient with yourself. It takes time to come up to speed. You are not supposed to understand what’s going on in your first 6 months

Always use spell check

Request vacation in advance and send reminders 2-week and 1-week in advance. Send a to-do list and timeline to your team about project status on your last day before vacation

Don’t take on too much and don’t over-commit. Remember everything will take longer than expected

Create folder and subfolders in your inbox. Check with your team for best practices

Communicate if a task is taking longer than expected

If you know you will not be able to deliver work on time contact your staffer or manager immediately

When you work with other groups, make sure you are viewed as a partner

Spend time researching the Company – as juniors you can add a lot of value here when meeting with senior bankers, and it will be noticed

For public companies, equity research (especially initiating coverage), earnings transcripts, investor presentations and S-1 filings are a great place to start

Couriering books to a senior banker: Make sure books are in an opaque envelope for confidentiality + Leverage assistants to find out where a banker is staying (if traveling); don’t wait till late at night for this

When there is a question to CEO try to answer yourself how I would answer and pay attention how the CEO answered the smaller the gap is the more ready you are

If you are an associate, review every turn, don’t let analyst cut you out and send it to VP or above directly

If you are an associate, don’t let VP cut you out, you need to be visible to directors and MDs

Most important thing is to move along the processes and client interaction timely (HR and admin emails can always wait) and prioritize MDs emails

Set your voicemail announcing yourself, otherwise the client will not leave you message

This is one of the most important steps in our clients live. Treat it as such

Treat the firm like an owner

Treat your clients like they hired YOU specifically

Treat banking like it is your long-term career even if it isn't. I promise you'll have more fun (in addition, recognize that it is the long-term career for some and be mindful of that)

Once you have at least 1 year investment banking experience it is pretty easy to find a position at a bigger bank where you most likely get paid more and have a chance for a PE exit. See www.wallstreetconnector.com to start the process

The more time you can save for your supervisor, the better rating you’ll get. Always think, how you can save time for them. If you do, they will want to work with you

Quality over speed. Yes, you need to be fast, but there is nothing that would slow down the process more than turning comments 3-4 times instead of once or twice

If it takes you 60 minutes to save 30 minutes to your VP, do it

Do a few little things they don’t except you: e.g., add a few bullet points / suggestion to a slide they told you just leave blank; that’s how you will stand out

Don’t just ask what you should do. Describe what the issue is, tell them what you tried to do. Tell them 1-2 proposed solutions. It shows that you think ahead and do some homework

Don’t just pull the research reports they asked you to do, but skim through and highlight sections

They will often get back to you on which public comps to include in the valuation analysis, but you could just send your thoughts and they will appreciate it even if they ignore most of it

When sending work, flag anything you are not 100% sure so they know where they should spend more time when reviewing

Always repeat to-do at the end of the meeting to ensure your understanding is correct

Keep a status report organized, thorough and up to date at all times

Your goal should be that people request you on their projects

There is not a "master plan" to manage your career. You are responsible for managing it. What projects are your getting on? Are you being exposed to different sectors? Have you mastered every type of typical financial analysis? Have you worked on multiple products? Are you gaining increased responsibility?

Be aggressive: staffing, work product, coffee chats, meetings, questions, etc. Don’t wait for things to come to you

Take calls from the senior banker’s office to increase presence and interaction

Invite yourself to pitches, negotiations, client calls. Simply tell your Vice President (VP) that you would like to join the client meeting to learn and whether it is OK (most of the times it is OK)

Say yes to opportunities

Be a leader in the office. Organize events. Contribute. Mentor. Volunteer. Give presentations

Share initiatives / your opinion with influencers

Stay on top of industry news and what’s happening in the markets

Seek feedback at the end of every project, don’t wait till year end to get development point feedback. You obviously get better rating if you can show that you already started to make steps to improve in certain areas

Every Sunday set up reminder and ask yourself: What can I do for my client especially something they don't expect us to do?

When do I talk to CEO / My contact 1:1?

What work process should be prepared during the week? Think about random things we could do for our clients

Become a trusted partner by the client, understand the numbers and be insightful of your industry

Demonstrate professionalism

Be able to give big picture guidance on process and analytics

Set up alerts with your client names

Follow them on LinkedIn and Twitter

Send news articles, congratulations, industry pieces to your client contact that might be relevant to them

Triple check emails before hitting send especially sent to and subject line. No grammatical errors, typos and don’t forget the (right) attachment. This happens more often than you think and can have devastating consequences

Always open and check every attachment before sending your email

Respond to Client MDs emails/calls within 5-10 minutes, acknowledge task immediately even if no time currently (don't worry about wordings of quick internal emails)

External emails: assume it will be forwarded, proofread subject, body of email and email chain below, make sure you copy the right people

If you are an analyst, give your associate 15-30 minutes to respond (you don’t want them to think you try to cut them off), but if they don’t you should go ahead and acknowledge receipt directly with an email so Client/MD is not wondering too long if it is on our radar

If you are an associate, same thing, give your VP 15-30 minutes to respond first so they don’t feel like you try to cut them off

Communicate. Keep the right people informed

Don't communicate to people who don't need to know (i.e., some processes are confidential even internally)

Attention to detail, no formatting error is too small to fix!, spell check, correct font, quality is more important than speed most of the time

A typo in presentation is similar to a typo on your resume. It ruins our credibility

Print everything out -> It Is easier to see mistakes with tangible version -> alternatively print it in a PDF and double check

Don't do the same mistake twice, make a list of things you had to correct previously (and keep it on your desk for reference)

Use Ctrl + H to find and replace double spaces

Pay even closer attention to “sensitive” parts of the analysis such as: Are the client’s numbers correct? Are the names of the management team spelled correctly?

[TBU] use brackets for sentences to be updated. Bankers will search for “[“ in a presentation to see what is still outstanding

Use [bracket] for any word, fact, you are not 100% correct, so it can be easily found / searched for in presentation

When repurposing existing documents: check headers, master slides, check/delete named cells, check footnotes and references

Make 5 minutes break and reopen documents to get a new perspective if you work on it for a long time

Understand big picture, why we do this. It is often very obvious if someone doesn’t get the context

Footnote everything, but never have a footnote on the title of a page

Understand every number and how to calculate it, Check consistency in numbers (does the LTM revenue on one-page matches to the number one page later? Are we showing $ signs in a table for all numbers or just the first one and the total?

Once you send a document to review you took ownership of the whole deliverable even if you were not the one who prepared the calculation. You need to be able to explain all numbers

Don't pass work to reviewer until you think it is client ready. You’d be surprised how rarely this happens

If you are stuck. Ask for help. Spend 15-30 minutes to figure out a problem, but never more as you will slow down the project

Know how to hand check a work product

Become an expert in building and manipulating financial models. Do not skip this step. This applies to Associates.

Do models and analyses in parallel with your mentor and compare what you did to what they did and reconcile

Get in the weeds. It'll help you later.

Don't develop holes in your arsenal: flow of funds, stock options, working capital analyses, overlaying financing options on top of an m&a model, etc.

Reviewing live is much faster than reviewing alone and writing long review notes

Positioning: think of talk track how you would connect the slides, be creative. Attempt to come up with something that no one else has thought of regarding how to position a company. This can actually impact whether we win business