Life of a Summer Intern

What do you want?

2010-08-29T11:25:00.002-04:00

Well it's come again. Recruiting season. I've been surprised how many students have reached out to me this year, wanting to get advice and hear about where I work. It's a good thing though - the more that reach out, the better chance we have of finding the best new analysts!

I've noticed more and more how easy it is to tell the difference between somebody who has prepared and somebody who hasn't. And the difference is obvious within three minutes of talking with a person. This is why when you interview, the interviewer usually makes a decision by the time you've told your story - the rest of the interview is spent confirming that decision, whether to ding you or to pass you on.

I thought it might be helpful to write down one of the ways I prepared which I feel really helped me perform in interviews.

So a little background. I had just finished up my internship at a bulge bracket bank, and was thinking about what to do next. I felt like it would be a good idea to interview around, and I reached out to people I had met in the lead-up to internship interviews. Luckily, I had a great summer and was able to have some substance to my resume as I was sending it out. At the places where I didn't know anybody, I simply sent my resume to the websites of those companies. I didn't think it would lead to anything, but when you don't have anything to lose, why not? It turns out that I ended up taking a job at one of the places that found my resume through the website.

As interviews progressed, I was fortunate enough to get a few offers. At this point, I realized that I was going to have to make some decisions about what I wanted to do for the two years following college. I had a lot of questions, like, "Bulge bracket or boutique?" and "Investment banking for a career or private equity after banking?"

I decided that to really be able to figure out where I wanted to be, I needed to decide what I want out of my two-year analyst experience. I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and began writing out what I really wanted as an analyst.

My thoughts focused around three broad categories: (1) Finance / technical experience, (2) Culture / lifestyle and (3) Career / Exit opportunities.

Finance / Technical
Within this section, I included the following:
-Deal team size (10-15+ at bulge bracket, 4-5 at boutique)
-Generalist vs. product/industry group
-Modeling (templates vs. building from scratch)
-Analyst responsibility (double-staffed with other analysts or sole analyst on deal teams from day one? Run the model or share with associate? etc.)
-Mentoring (assigned or just part of the culture? Interaction with senior people daily or never? Chain of command or flat culture?)

It turns out that the things most important to me were to get a lot of responsibility and experience modeling from the get-go. I also wanted to be a generalist and focus on M&A, because I had decided that my long-term goal was to go to private equity.

Culture / Lifestyle
-"Face time" policy
-My view of the culture (basically I just used adjectives to describe how I viewed each bank's culture based on my interactions with people from the banks)
-Salary (not that important, but still a data point)

This section was important to me, but it wasn't what really swayed me one way or another. I still view investment banking as an investment in the future, and if you have to deal with a rough culture for two years, you can do it. But, if you can go to a top-tier bank and be in a great culture, even better.

Exit Opportunities
-Firm's view on interviewing for private equity (fire you vs. help you)
-Firm's view on promoting internally
-How well have analysts done in the past in recruiting at this bank? (this was all based on hearsay and research I did on my own just looking at various websites of the PE shops)

Although this isn't something you can bring up as a positive point in an interview about why you would want to work at a specific bank, it was very important to me. In the group where I spent the summer, the analysts who were interviewing literally had to lie about what they were doing and sneak out to interviews. I really didn't want to be put in a position where I felt that I needed to be dishonest just to do what I wanted. Because this was a priority, I ended up choosing a bank where people are very willing to help you prepare for and do well in private equity interviews. Luckily, my analyst class did amazingly well in private equity recruiting, and I think it's largely because of the way the firm views recruiting.

This exercise took quite a while to think through and fill out, but once I had gone through the page and ranked the various banks at which I had an offer or was likely to receive an offer, it became very clear to me that based on the criteria I had prioritized, I needed to go to one bank in particular. I knew what I was giving up, and I knew full well what I was getting. At that point I didn't even have an offer from this bank yet, but I had final rounds scheduled.

When the time came for interviews and I was asked, "Why do you want to work here?", I began to explain how I had thought about that question quite a bit. In essence, I said something like this:

"I've thought about this in great detail, and the way I have approached it is to think about what things I really want to experience as an analyst. I know that the criteria that are important to me are [list off the things I just wrote about above]. As I've considered the various banks, yours absolutely fits those criteria the best. I would love to be here, and have no doubt in my mind that I could thrive here."

I would go on to list of specific things about the bank, such as their views on analysts, modeling, mentoring, culture, deal teams / experience, etc. It was clear to every person with which I interviewed that I had given this question substantial thought. The great thing is, I was talking about all the same reasons that they loved working at this bank, and my answers resonated strongly with the interviewers.

I received the offer and have had an absolutely fantastic first year. My point in writing all of this is to encourage those of you with interviews coming up to really put thought into what is important to you in your analyst experience and to convince yourself of the best place for you. Then, when you interview there, it will come across clearly that you have thought it through, and that you are a great fit for the job.

Summer

2010-08-20T23:42:00.002-04:00

Thank goodness for first year analysts. It's still hard to believe that a year has gone by since I got out of training. It's been awesome to have the new first year analysts around to share the load.

July was definitely the worst month of my life. Because the analysts in the class above me left to go to private equity and the new analysts in the class below me were in training, my class of analysts basically had to carry the load for the month of July. In a span of a week I went from being on two live deals to being on six live deals. I'm still not sure how that's even possible, but I, along with the other analysts from my year, basically didn't sleep for a month and just cranked 24/7.

But now...now it's so much better. Even though I'm still on four live deals, just having first years around to take on new pitches and other work makes a huge difference.

Another good thing about the end of summer is that we're heading into recruiting season. This is one of my favorite times of year because I really enjoy seeing students step up and perform under pressure. Now that I'm involved in the recruiting for our firm, I feel like I have a much better idea of what is important / what works than I did when I was actually recruiting. I still can't believe that I actually got a job at my firm by sending my resume to the firm website, especially since now I'm the guy receiving the resumes from the website and I know how hard it is to really give people a good look when it's 3am and you've been working all week. But I really try to screen the resumes well because I feel like I owe it to future generations of students trying to break in the same way I did.

I'd forgotten how cathardic it is for me to write a blog of what's going on in my banking life, and I think I'm going to start writing again. Who knows if people still read this, but regardless I figure it will be good for me to have a record kept of my years in New York.

Because it's recruiting season, I'll probably be writing a lot about what made me successful in interviews, and what I feel like the best candidates do to stand out.

It's good to be writing again!

The Real Deal

2009-09-06T22:23:00.003-04:00

Well it's 4:23am on a Tuesday morning and it's been at least 65 days since I had a day off. I guess this is banking. Since I last wrote I moved to New York, went through training, and started real work, did some deals, got a job in private equity, and am just starting into my second year.

I have to say that these are really interesting times to be doing investment banking. It seems like the M&A markets are starting to come back, and there's a lot of talk about IPOs making a comeback as well. It's by no means time to say that we're free and clear of all the mess we've been in (just look at the commercial mortgage markets!), but finally it seems like deals are starting to get done again.

I haven't written in so long simply because I've been too busy for it, but writing about my experiences is actually pretty enjoyable for me, and it's a good way to keep a record of what it's like in banking. It's pretty strange to think of all that's happened in the last few years since I started really getting serious about getting into the world of corporate finance.

Just today I was reflecting on everything I went through over the past three years to get here. It's amazing to think that I actually pulled it off, and it's clear that a lot of it wasn't at all because of my own abilities but just a factor of putting myself out there and being in the right place at the right time. I have noticed, though, that the harder you work, the more "luck" you seem to have.

Winner!

2009-04-22T19:11:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the long break in posting. It's been a busy semester, but lots of good stuff has been going on. A team of my friends and I won the school's Private Equity Case Competition. Teams had to pick a company, propose an LBO of the company, then create a presentation and present to judges about the deal.

Of course there might be mistakes and errors - feel free to point them out if/when you find any. It's the first time any of us had built a three-statement LBO model, as well as a dividend recap, so it was a great learning experience. Check out our presentation and model below!

Coach Final Coach Final The Analyst

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Brochures & Catalogs Other leadership spirituality

COH_Model_v.7 COH_Model_v.7 The Analyst

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work business model

My Story

2009-03-21T11:34:00.003-04:00

Hey all - it's been a while again since my last post. This is a crazy year, and I seriously can't believe what is happening in Washington and on Wall Street. I'll be posting more about this stuff soon.

I thought it might be helpful to post "my story" to give you all some background into how I got to where I am today. Here it is:

I go to a non-target school and decided that I wanted to do banking near the end of my sophomore year. During the following summer, I began reaching out to the few alumni from my school that work at banks both in New York and San Francisco. I sent out many, many emails and called tons of people all under the premise of simply wanting to learn more about the world of investment banking.

While making all of these calls, I got a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and started reading that every day. As per the suggestion of a returning summer intern at my school, I read the Vault Guide to Investment Banking and Vault Guide to Finance Interviews. I also read as many books about investment banking as I could, reading everything from the entertaining stuff (Liar’s Poker / Monkey Business / Barbarians at the Gate) to recruiting stuff (Never Eat Alone / Running of the Bulls) to more technical stuff (Accounting & Valuation books).

I flew myself out to New York four times and to San Francisco once, meeting with everybody from analyst to MD over the course of the next six months. Some of those trips were in groups but most were on my own. In preparation for my trips I took every single summer analyst from my school that had done an internship on Wall Street out to lunch. These one-on-one meetings were really helpful to me because I would just ask them how they got their internships, what they did to be successful, and what types of things I could ask in informational interviews.

I called people working on the Street that I had contacted over the summer to let them know I was coming out, then set up 10-15 visits over the course of a few days. Those visits were informational in nature, but usually led to more introductions and an expansion of my network. I usually started by meeting with analysts, making a good impression, then having them introduce me to more senior people or the rest of their group.

The first time I ever went to New York, I had a layover in Minneapolis. While waiting at my gate to go to New York, I saw a guy standing there holding a Credit Suisse bag. At this point I was just barely starting to grasp what investment banking even was, but I knew that I had to take every opportunity I could to meet investment bankers. I started talking to him and, although it was only five minutes, managed to learn that he was an SVP working in the Consumer group at CS.

We got on the plane (he sat in first class, I sat in the back), and I failed to get his card. I knew that if I was coming out to New York, I needed to meet people, so when we got to JFK, I literally ran through the airport to catch up to him. I finally caught him while he was waiting to be picked up in a black car, and I asked him for his card. He must have thought I was crazy, but I told him my story and that I was just doing everything I can to get a job. It impressed him enough to meet with me later in the week, and I ended up getting interviews at Credit Suisse in New York because of that guy.

In many of the informational interviews I had, I was asked typical questions like, “Why do you want to do banking?” and “What do you know about this bank?” Some people asked me about what groups / industries I was interested in. A few of the interviews actually got into technical issues, such as one Goldman VP who had me tell him all the factors affecting IRR on an LBO.

Especially as time got closer to interviewing season, the informational interviews became more and more like real interviews. Around November people really started asking me tougher questions about leadership / experience / technical stuff. This turned out to be great preparation for actual interviews.

By December I had managed to meet people at every major bank on the Street. I felt like I could really speak freely about why I wanted to do I-banking, what an analyst does, and why one bank differs from another. I was taking finance classes in school, reading the WSJ every day, and reading blogs online like Mergers & Inquisitions (though I didn’t find it until I already started interviews), LSO, Wall Street Oasis, and others. These sites gave me a better feel for what it’s really like in banking, as opposed to the more academic look at finance I had been getting from other books.

When it came time for SA interviews, I called up all of my various contacts at different banks and had them submit my resume. By this time, many of the analysts I had met with and really trusted had already seen multiple iterations of my resume, so I was confident that more senior people would be comfortable passing it on to HR since my analyst friends had given their blessing.

The interviews started coming. My first interviews were in early January, and they went on through February and even into March for some firms. I had done numerous mock interviews with analysts and even some associates and a VP at different banks in preparation for interviews, so I felt very confident going into the interviews. At every bank that I interviewed at, I received an offer to come on as an intern.

While a handful of firms actually do recruit at my school (almost exclusively for the West-coast offices), I only interviewed on-campus for Credit Suisse LA (and got an offer), but really wanted to start in New York. I accepted an offer with a BB bank in New York and had a great time there this summer.

I started this blog over the summer because I wanted a source for people looking to understand banking on a day-to-day basis. There are a lot of “Week in the life” posts around the internet and in the Vault Guide, but I wanted to give people a look at my entire internship. It's been fun to write it all down and hear from people all over the world who are reading the blog. I plan on continuing as I go full-time to let people know what it's like now with so many things changing.

I did very well in my internship, was rated highly, and received an offer to return full-time. Although I had a great experience, I decided to interview around. At this point for the first time I looked at boutique banks instead of only focusing on the bulge brackets. The problem was that there wasn’t a single alumnus from my school at any boutique on the Street, so all the contact I had with these banks was cold calling.

Because I had spent significant time on my resume (I'm still doing resume reviews if you're interested!), I felt confident in sending my resume out to other banks. I put together my cover letters and resume, then just sent my resume out to various boutiques. I was specifically interested in restructuring.

Similarly, I used LinkedIn and other online databases to get names of people at firms, and I found a way to make a connection enough that I could call them or send them my resume. It was awkward at first, but I had the attitude of, “I already have a good offer, so what do I have to lose? If they turn me down, it’s no problem.” I think having confidence really made a difference for me.

From some of the boutiques, I got an email back saying they would be reviewing my resume. Others directly called me back and invited me to come in and meet some people. At one boutique in particular, I went in the day after I got a call and met with their head of recruiting, head of M&A, and the analyst/associate staffer. Because I was able to do well in those interviews, they invited me back for final rounds “whenever I could make it back to New York.” I just let them know when I could come, and they set up six more interviews for me.

Because I was out early talking to firms, it seemed like all of my interviews were very unorthodox. Literally all of my first-round interviews with boutiques were kind of on-the-fly and not official in any way. People would just email a colleague, ask if they could talk with me for 15 minutes, and away we would go. Final rounds were more structured, but I was still interviewing in August before all of the official on-campus recruiting started.

I’ve come to see now that it was vital for me to get out there early. Many of the firms now are only looking at people from target schools. I know this because a lot of my friends who are just as qualified couldn’t get interviews with the same firms I met with in August.

Through efforts like these, I was able to get interviews and some offers from many top boutiques (Lazard, HLHZ, Greenhill, Miller Buckfire, Audax Group). I reached out to contacts that I had made over the past year at many other BB firms, and was able to get offers at two different BBs as well. I feel extremely blessed to have options in a year like this, and I directly attribute it to the work I put in over the past year to not only build a network, but also to study my brains out so that when I meet new people I can speak to things that they are interested in.

One interesting side note – about a year ago now I met a guy working at Morgan Stanley. Right after I met him, he was asked to come down to Treasury to work on mortgages and housing markets. Well it turned out that he needed an intern for the fall semester. I had stayed in touch with him, and heard about the internship spot. I applied and got the internship.

So because I met this guy at Morgan Stanley, I worked at Treasury for four months. He is running part of this $700B bailout and I worked directly for him on the team. It was an amazing experience and just another testament to the power of networking and doing your homework.

So that's my story. I'll be heading back to NYC in June to start it all over again full-time.

Accepting the Offer

2009-02-16T19:32:00.003-05:00

One of you asked, "In one of my interviews I was asked:"If I give you an offer now, will you take it?" How would you answer this question?"

The answer, like pretty much everything else in the world, is that it depends. When I was interviewing, even though I sold myself to every bank as if they were my top choice, I clearly had my top choice in mind. In fact, I ranked all the banks based on my own measures of "culture", "prestige", "exit opportunities", "analyst experience", "group / industry opportunities", etc.

I'm sure everybody has their top choice, so if you are interviewing with this bank, and they ask you the question, it's not a lie to go ahead and say that you would accept. BUT, you want to be cautious in how you answer. If you say that you would accept, take it as another chance to show that you've done your homework and understand exactly what you would be accepting.

I would say something like, "You know, I would be glad to accept that offer for a few reasons. First of all, I've taken time to meet with people at pretty much every bank on the street, and I feel like the people here not only care about the analyst experience, but they are very intelligent and will challenge me to be better. Second, it's important to me to be able to contribute a lot, and your bank is known for giving analysts lots of responsibility. I know this is a great challenge, but it's one I would gladly take on. Third, I feel like your bank is the best positioned to take advantage of the current market situation, due in large part to [XYZ]."

But, because you might get offers from banks other than your top choice, you want to be very careful not to pin yourself in a corner. Don't commit to accepting an offer just so you can get the offer. If you say you'll accept, get the offer, and then reject it, that not only reflects poorly on you, but also reflects poorly on your school, and could lead to big problems you don't want to face. In short, it would be unethical to lie, so don't do it!

If I'm not sure I'm going to accept, I would answer by saying something like this:
"You know, if I were lucky enough to receive an offer from you, I would treat it like I do any important decision [or you could say, any investment I've made or whatever] in my life. I would take some time to think about what is important to me, what the costs/benefits will be of either choice, and then I'll sleep on it. As it stands right now, I don't see any reason why I wouldn't accept, and surely interviewing with many people here today has helped me get a much better understanding for the "feel" of the firm."

If they give you the offer and press you to accept it or lose it (another variation is when they say that there are three spots and five candidates, and the first three to accept get a spot), I might reply like this:
"Frankly I would like to work for a bank that hires me because I fit the qualifications of the job and am the best person for the position, not because of my willingness to accept on the spot. Like I said, I think your bank is great and am honored to have an offer. I'd just like to think it through before I make a decision that will have a potentially huge impact on my life and career going forward."

Take this all with a grain of salt - it's all just my opinion. I think it is very unwise to accept anything on the spot unless you have already thought through the implications of taking the offer. If it's a take-it-or-leave-it deal, then I'll leave it 99% of the time unless I can think it through first. I hope this helps!

Phone Interviews

2009-02-12T16:50:00.003-05:00

One of you asked about phone interviews, so here are a few quick thoughts.

Phone interviews are usually a candidates first official interviews with a bank, and are usually conducted by people in HR. Occasionally they will be conducted by analysts or associates who are usually alumni of the school. Interview questions are just about the same on the phone as they are in person for a first round interview, so make sure you can answer the big three:

(1) Walk me through your resume / tell me your story.
(2) Why banking?
(3) Why [insert name of bank conducting interview]?

You might get a few technical questions, but especially if it's somebody from HR, you probably won't get anything too deep, so just know the basic Vault Guide stuff and you'll be fine. The big focus will be fit.

Phone interviews present unique challenges and benefits to you as the person being interviewed. For one thing, it's a lot harder to get your personality across over the phone. You have to try extra hard to be animated without sounding like a cartoon. On the phone, though, it is easy to sound like a robot so be conscious of your tone and vary it as you describe different things.

Another challenge is that you can't see your interviewer, so you don't know how they are responding to what you're saying other than how they inflect their voice. It's still a good idea to use humor and be easy going, but pay more attention than normal to how they are responding to you.

One of the benefits of a phone interview is that you can have all of your information right there in front of you. You should never be stumped by a question on a phone interview. Usually before an interview, I'll get out my phone interview resume. This is my normal resume, but with examples of different stories or qualities that are related to every bullet. It's actually about three pages long, but I never have to scramble to come up with a story to tell about X experience because I have it right there in front of me.

I'll also have all of the information about the company, including awards they've won, their stock price, recent deal information, and my reasons for wanting to work at that bank. I have a calculator there, a blank page with a pen, and the name of my interviewer all right in front of me (side note - if you use the calculator, make sure to do it quietly - you don't want them thinking you're not paying attention. Same goes with using a computer - don't type while you're on the phone because it's distracting and they can hear it.

Normal principles of good interviewing still apply. I even will wear my suit for the phone interview because it helps me to remember to be professional and not too casual. Make sure you have a reliable number for them to call, and don't have a stupid voice mail message, just in case you miss their call.

Good luck with the interviews!

"The Best We've Ever Seen"

2009-02-11T09:17:00.004-05:00

Hey all - I'm back. The two months have been crazy for sure, but it's been fun. I've been mostly focused on helping students at my own school, doing homework for my classes, and practicing building LBO models, but I figure that a two-month sabbatical is enough.

This time last year I was just getting into final rounds with most of the banks I was interviewing with. I thought it was a rough year last year, and now I think it's even harder to get a job. With that in mind, I wanted to write a few thoughts on interviewing - specifically final rounds.

As a disclaimer, I'm not by any means an expert on interviewing. All I have is my own experience and the experiences of my friends. I can say, though, that I feel confident in my own abilities to interview, and I hope to share some of the things that work for me. Over the last year I've interviewed with many firms, and every single place that I've interviewed at has given me an offer (except for the firms that I cut off the process with after accepting my internship or full-time offer, but even with those firms I had made it to final rounds and am confident that I could have received an offer if I would have kept interviewing). I don't share that to be boastful, but just to point out that there are some tangible things you can do to be ready for interviews, many of which will come off as impressive.

A lot of my success in interviewing is due to good old preparation. My end goal was to go in, totally destroy every answer, and leave having the interviewer thinking, "That was the best candidate I've ever interviewed. We have to get this guy to come back." You don't want to leave any doubt in their mind that you are the right person for the job.

Analyzing the Competition
When I am preparing for an interview, I'll do a few things to get ready. First of all, I think about who else will be interviewing that day. Often for final rounds, the firm will fly you out the day before interviews, and many times you'll get to meet other people you're interviewing for. If you don't meet them the day before, you'll meet them in some sort of pre-interview meeting for all the people attending the Super Day.

I come from a non-target school, so I needed to know how to tell my story to come across in the best way. If the other people interviewing were from target schools (usually the case), I would really focus in my interviews on how hard I worked to get the interview and the fact that absolutely no one they could hire would out-work me over the summer. I would usually not dwell on my school too much - I let my GPA and test scores speak for my academic background. Instead I would focus on my work experiences and show that I already was a great analyst.

If the people I was interviewing with were either from my school or from other non-target schools, then I would focus a bit more on my school work and what I had accomplished. Because I would assume that everyone had worked hard to get there from a non-target school, I would focus on my experiences that made me unique, whether it was talking about interning at Treasury during TARP, living in Eastern Europe, or working with regional private equity firms to manage their portfolio companies.

Technical Powerhouse
In addition to tailoring your interview based on who you are interviewing against, it goes without saying that you need to know your finance. I really believe that the technical stuff is nothing more than a hurdle you have to get over (fit is way more important than if you really know accretion/dilution because they expect you don't know anything anyway). If you can absolutely crush the technical stuff, they'll not only check the box, but they'll remember that you knew more than the average interviewee. There are plenty of places around the internet that will prepare you for technical questions (I've covered a few, and www.ibankingfaq.com is my favorite site for quick refreshers on corp fin). Just be ready for anything and show them that you can think on your feet.

Make 'em Laugh
One of the best things I did in interviews was to incorporate my personality in the interview. I would often try to make funny (but appropriate - not childish or vulgar) comments during the interview, and the feedback I got was usually that the interviewers thought I was a funny, nice guy.

One example comes from my final round interviews with Lehman Brothers (Barclays) last year. When I got off the elevator on the 24th floor, I noticed a big sign saying that they were having fire drills throughout the day, and they listed the various times that each floor would need to be evacuated. In many of my interviews, when the interviewer would ask me how things were going, I would usually say something like, "Oh fine. You probably noticed this morning when I pulled the fire alarm though..." It was a little thing, but the interviewer usually laughed a little and then we carried on. Using humor to endear yourself to the interviewer is one of the best ways I can think of to come across as "somebody they'd want to spend 8 hours in the airport with."

Final Thoughts
Before you go into the interview, you should quickly check the stock price of the company (assuming they're a public company), read the WSJ one time quickly, and go to the company website to see a few reasons why they are great. I usually knew of 4-5 awards the company had recently won for being a good employer, being kind to working mothers, or whatever it was they wanted to brag about on their website.

When they ask, "Why do you want to work here?" You tell them personal reasons you like their bank, then you say, "And plus you guys were named one of the 50 best places to launch a career, Forbe's said you were the M&A house of the year last year, you are one of Working Mother's top 25 firms, and your CEO was just named CEO of the month in Investment Banking Weekly." They're not expecting you to know all that, but listing off random facts shows that you took a little more time than the average candidate to prepare for the interivew.

I could go on for a long time about all the ways I prepared for interviews, but it basically came down to preparation. Knowing the company and what they stand for, knowing the qualities they were looking for and telling stories specifically to show I had those qualities, and using some humor or good manners to impress them enough to remember me.

Good luck to all of you who are out there interviewing. I'll be back in a more normal schedule of writing, so you'll hear more from me about interviewing in the coming days/weeks.

The Path to Treasury

2008-12-18T17:01:00.002-05:00

I've been asked by email and your comments about how I got to be an intern at Treasury. I think it's an interesting story and one which demonstrates the value of networking.

More than a year ago in August, I flew out to New York for the first time to meet investment bankers. I was part of a larger group flying out, and the guy hosting all of us students was a vice president at Morgan Stanley. I only talked with him once over the three-day period, and he probably wouldn't have been able to pick me out of a lineup.

In October, I went back to New York and this time met with my Morgan Stanley friend one-on-one. He only had time for a five-minute chat and a bagel, but it was better than nothing. I went to New York two more times (one trip alone and one with a group), and both times I stayed in touch with this guy. I never asked him for anything, and just enjoyed learning from him and hearing stories about his work.

I interviewed at various banks and worked at a bulge bracket over the summer. It was while I was in New York again that I heard that my friend had been asked to go to Treasury to head up the housing and mortgage markets team. It seemed like a really cool role given the turmoil in the housing markets.

About a week after my internship ended, I heard through the grapevine that the intern currently at Treasury (an HBS first-year) was just finishing up and going back to school, and my friend was looking for another intern for the fall. I sent him my resume and told him I'd like to be considered for the spot. I believe that because he knew me and had kind of watched me progress and learn over the past year, he felt good about giving me a shot. I interviewed with him and another guy at Treasury, and a week later got the call that I had been chosen to be the intern!

At first I was solely focused on housing and mortgage markets, but when Fannie/Freddie/Lehman/Merrill Lynch/AIG/etc happened and TARP popped up, my friend, another guy on our team, and I all hopped on the TARP team and I spent the rest of my time at Treasury working on TARP.

I had an absolutely amazing experience. I met with over 65 CEOs of various companies of all size, did work directly for Neel Kashkari, went to industry conferences, and sat in meetings with Paulson, Bernanke, Kashkari et al. I learned a TON about the housing markets and the economy in general.

I feel like I have been very lucky to have done an internship like this. Because of the fact that I took classes during one summer while doing a local internship, I was able to skip classes during this fall semester and go out to Treasury. It's not a requirement for my school, but more just a great opportunity that I was able to take. For three months I was the only intern working on TARP (for the last few weeks another intern at Treasury did some work on the Capital Purchase Program).

It was an amazing semester, and I loved being in DC during the election. It was awesome to work in the actual Treasury building, right next to the White House. Every night I would walk out past the statue of Alexander Hamilton and look back to see the view on a $10 bill.

Being at Treasury has really got me interested in policy, and I won't be surprised if I end up working for the government again someday.

Trainwreck

2008-12-12T09:47:00.004-05:00

Well Friday was my final day at Treasury. What an amazing run it's been! Below I'm posting a time line put together by our Markets Room that shows the events that have got us to where we are. The amazing thing is that every event after the second week of August is something I was here for.

I just had my picture taken with Neel Kashkari (Treasury's way of saying, "Thanks for working 14 hours a day, six days a week for free for the last four and a half months!") and it was pretty cool. The best part was that after the photo I got to just sit there in his office for a while and talk about things. He asked about my future plans (and he likes the bank I'm going to work for - good news), talked about life, and talked about what it feels like to run $700 B. I've been in plenty of meetings with Neel before, but this was the first time I got to just talk with him one-on-one.

I thanked him for his leadership and told him I was impressed with his composure on the Hill two days ago when so many irate congressmen and women took pot shots at him. He responded by saying that it has long been his nature to fight back when people attack him, but that he's had to work hard to acquire the ability to sit there and listen without being hostile back to hostile attackers. Much respect for Neel Kashkari.

I'm putting together a post of things I heard/experienced while at Treasury this past semester. I guess one way I can describe my experience here is like that of someone watching a train wreck in slow motion: it's incredibly interesting and intriguing, and at the same time horrifying.

LINK TO THE TIME LINE

The Perfect Book

2008-12-08T09:37:00.005-05:00

Hey all - a few posts ago I mentioned that I had another doc to post here about how to make a perfect pitch book. One of my friends forwarded me this email, which was apparently sent out from a VP to a few Associates in some bank. Some of the suggestions here are a little extreme (ex: hand calc everything in the book???) but during the summer this was a God-send.

Many many times I was the one who was turning books and putting in the last-minute changes, and I was often tempted to just turn in the book as fast as I could. The times when I would take five extra minutes to run through this checklist (even when the VP was yelling at me and sending me emails asking me when it would be done), the books I produced were always error-free and I got a reputation for at least not making stupid/careless mistakes. Enjoy, and let me know if you have any other suggestions to add to the list here.

"Too Busy"

2008-12-04T09:22:00.011-05:00

Sorry for the dearth of posts over the last week and a half. I'm back at Treasury after a nice break and things are crazier than ever. I was told when I first started that by mid-October there wouldn't be anything to do. Then TARP came along. Then everybody said that after the election everything would start to wind down in the "lame duck" Treasury. Well it's been nearly as busy as when we first started working on TARP, so I'm happy about that.

In that spirit, and also in the spirit of my last few posts, here is one more thing I posted on my wall to remind me to work hard. It's pretty funny, and hails from the glory days of DLJ, which became UBS LA. They were known for being more hard-core than anybody else, and you can see why. My favorite part is the calculation under the picture by the guy figuring out just how many hours he's going to be working now. (If you click on the picture below it will bring you to a site where you can download this for yourself as a pdf - I don't know how to get a pdf up here on blogger)

Some Inspirational Quotes

2008-11-23T08:59:00.002-05:00

Like I said in an earlier post, this summer I put up quotes around my desk to remind me to work hard and to have a good attitude for those nights when I never left the office. Here are a few to think about:

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."
-Steve Prefontaine

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time. Pre was an amazing runner and this quote always motivates me to work harder.

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the thing changes but our ability to do so increases."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another classic that helps when you are just starting out with something you've never done before. Think of it as getting ready to interview. You may struggle now, but with practice and persistence, you ability will increase.

"The heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night."
-Thomas S. Monson

This quote really fit well with investment banking. I liked to think that while I was putting up all the extra hours and effort and "toiling...in the night" I was actually achieving great things and learning valuable skills. Of course, most of the time when you are working in the middle of the night you're doing things that are annoying and mostly useless, but hey - the quote helped.

There are some other things I had up on my wall, many of which I'll post in the coming week. I had a guide on how to make a perfect pitch book (VERY helpful), some "rules for being a great intern" that I gleaned from the analysts over the summer, and a few other things.

Hope

2008-11-22T10:31:00.004-05:00

Dennis left a comment on the last post that is, I think, especially important:

"I've been doing all those things, but I think you still need to keep some hope. If you don't some hope that your hard will will come into fruition, then there is no point of the hard work."

Thanks for that Dennis - you're absolutely right. While the point of my last post was to remind everybody the importance of not feeling a sense of entitlement, or sitting back and waiting for everything to come to you, it is vital to believe that your hard work will pay off.

I think having a belief, even if it's against all the odds, is what really helped me and many others to get where we are now. Coming from a non-target school (and frankly any school these days), it's easy to feel like there's no point to hard work, that there's no chance for an opportunity. Granted, nobody knows the future and where investment banking will be come next summer, but you just have to believe that if you do all the right things, you will have that chance. If you study, read, network, learn, prove yourself, and prepare, that hope grows into confidence.

There comes a time when you don't have to just hope it will happen - you will be confident that it will actually happen. That's how you want to feel when you go into those interviews - so confident that you know they would be crazy not to give you a job. You know that nobody has prepared more than you for this interview. You know that, if given the chance, you would work harder and smarter than anybody else they can find out there.

Thanks Dennis for the great reminder - we have to hope. In times like these, we have to believe there will be chances for us to do what we really want to do. And that hope can grow into a confidence that will help you to stand out when you actually do get your chance to shine.

My Investment Strategy

2008-11-22T00:06:00.003-05:00

In meeting with various people this week at the Treasury, I learned some pretty good lessons and thought I would share one with you all. While describing the investors out there saying that we should all buy bank stock right now, based on the fact that they think things will rebound and turn around in the financial sector (and I'm not saying whether I agree or not) one visitor said, "Hope is not an investment strategy."

That is a great thing to think about as you are preparing for interviews and trying to get a job or an internship in the coming months. Hope will not get you there, especially this year.

It's not enough to hope that you'll be ready to answer the "big three" questions in the interview:

Tell me about yourself...
Why do you want to do investment banking?
Why do you want to work for [insert name]?

If you're not ready by the time you call people for an informational interview, it's too late.

It's not enough to hope that you won't be asked to walk somebody through a DCF valuation. You have to know that sucker backwards and forwards, inside and out. You have to take the time to pick a random company and build a DCF yourself so you make sure that you know it.

It's not enough to hope that you'll get interviews on campus when the banks come (if they do). You need to be SURE that you'll get an interview by networking with bankers and having them confirm that they'll go to bat for you. You need to be visiting every bank getting interviews everywhere because you just don't know which banks will even be around by next summer. You need to know by January 15th that you'll have interviews at multiple places.

It's not enough to hope that you'll be able to explain in a real general sense what's going on in the economy. You need to be talking with people in the markets, reading blogs and news articles and the WSJ, and making sure that you can tell people why we got where we are and what we need to do about it.

You see, hope is great and it's actually a really healthy thing to be optimistic and hope for the best in these times. But these are days to take action. These are days to be proactive. To rely on your own hard work to really make things happen.

In the immortal words of William Henley's Invictus:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance,
My head is bloodied, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll.
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

One of the things that I did over the summer was to put up inspirational quotes around my desk that motivated me to work hard, continue learning, and do the best I could. I'll post in the next day or two some of those quotes that you all can read and get fired up and ready to get those internships and jobs.

Blog freaking out?

2008-11-13T10:01:00.002-05:00

Is anyone else seeing that all of my posts are suddenly double-posted? Please comment...

Professional Modeling

2008-11-05T15:27:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts on learning to build models. Keep in mind that I still have a ton to learn on my own, but these are some ideas that have helped me to get where I am today.

I. Financial Knowledge

If you are going to build a financial model, it just makes sense that you need to have some basic knowledge of finance in order for it to be a functioning model. The goal of a good model is to be fully integrated and dynamic, meaning that changes flow through the entire model and everything still balances. Models also need to be flexible enough to test different scenarios and to make changes according to management projections and the projections of your associates who sometimes like to "massage" the numbers.

If you just want to build a basic DCF model, then read the Vault Guide and you will be ready to go. If you're going to be interviewing, you should be able to "walk somebody through a DCF" anyway, since you WILL get this question in most interviews you will have.

For more complex models, you might need to study up on accretion/dilution, purchase accounting, and other more in-depth accounting and finance issues in order to conceptually understand what is going on in your model. There are a ton of good valuation books out there, so grab one and learn something!

II. Start with somebody else's model

Before you just start from a blank screen, get a hold of another model (preferably a simple model so it's easier to follow) and begin by working your way through. Go line-by-line and make sure you understand not only how the model works, but why the functions are set up the way they are, and what happens when you change inputs.

You need to understand the "flow" of a model before you can build one. As you go through a model, try to see how the different financial statements link and fit together. Notice how changes on one statement flow through the model and affect your outputs.

Once you've gone through the entire model and feel like you understand what is going on, it's time for the hard(er) work to begin.

III. Re-build the model

At this point it's good to either pull the 10-K and 10-Qs from the company of the model you've already worked through, or you can just copy the numbers out of the original model. I think it's better to pull the SEC docs because that's how it is when you make your own model.

Work through building a model that's just like the one you already looked at. You are basically just rebuilding the exact model that you are familiar with so that you can say you've done it yourself. Hopefully as you go through this you will start to learn better how to use Excel and how to save time using shortcuts.

As a side note, most firms have some kind of coloring system in their models. I like to make inputs (numbers that I get from 10-Ks and -Qs) blue and calculated numbers black. I've also seen people putting numbers pulled from other tabs/sheets in green and negative numbers in red, but whatever is easiest for you.

Once you've completed the model, making sure that everything works just as well as the original, then do it a few more times! Each time try to rely less and less on the original and more and more on your own intuition and understanding.

IV. Build your own model

Now that you feel comfortable re-building a model, pick a company that you would like to model out. Go to http://www.sec.gov/ and find their 10-K and most recent 10-Q. Build a model with their numbers, reflecting all of the nuances of a different company. You can still refer to the original model if you get stuck, but hopefully by now you are figuring out how to build a basic operational model with all three statements (and a debt schedule and depreciation schedule if you're getting a lot better).

Building models for various companies is good practice and really causes you to learn the more nuanced parts of a model.

The final test will be to see if you can open Excel, pull some SEC docs, and build a dynamic operational model. Once you have mastered the operational model, you can move on to more complex models like LBO models or merger models. They all require the basic understanding of how financial statements fit together and how changes in one place flow through the rest of the model.

There are lots of training programs out there that can teach you modeling skills. I personally think the best learning comes when you just figure things out on your own, especially since you will get formal training when you start at a bank. But I can also see great benefits in learning things the correct way the first time, instead of teaching yourself incorrectly.

Like I said at the beginning, this is just a BASIC overview of a process, and there are a lot more things I could have mentioned about modeling. I'll probably continue to post about modeling as I get farther along in the model I'm building, just because that's what's on my mind these days.

As a personal goal, I want to be able to build solid LBO and merger models before I start. I figure that if I build a model a week, I'll get there by next summer. Who wouldn't want an analyst to come in already feeling comfortable building models. From the various types of models I saw over the summer, it's obvious that no matter what preparation I do there will still be tons to learn, but I figure the more I can come up the learning curve on my own, the faster I'll be able to take in the more advanced stuff on a real deal.

Good luck, and good modeling!

And congrats to President Obama.

Learning to build models

2008-11-04T20:52:00.008-05:00

Hey all,

I'm working on a post about modeling, and wanted to share some thoughts about learning how to build a model. I'm building one right now based on another model, as you can see below. Stay tuned for some info on learning how to build models and learn excel.

Vote!

2008-11-04T09:13:00.003-05:00

Hey all -

Don't forget to vote today! I woke up early and stood in line for two hours, but still voted and made it to work on time. My personal thoughts on who to vote for are largely based on the economy and a desire to be able to be the one to decide where my money goes instead of letting the government do it for me. But however you decide to vote, just get out and do it!

Good luck -

The Analyst

Short-lived idea

2008-11-01T14:49:00.001-04:00

So the ring-management tool already exists. But not yet on my blackberry, and apparently not on the phone of that CEO...

Invention Idea

2008-11-01T12:29:00.002-04:00

As I was sitting in a meeting the other day with the CEO of a major investment bank, and the head management teams of two other major financial services firms (thankfully none of them asked what I was doing in the room!), I was surprised that three times cell phones went off in the middle of the meeting. I guess it doesn't just happen in high school and college classes.

Then an idea came to me. Why not make your Outlook calendar or Google Calendar have the capability of synching with your black berry to adjust the ring setting on your phone based on what you have on the calendar? It seems like most of the time, people just forget to put their phone on "Silent" before they go to class/a meeting. If your phone did it for you, you wouldn't have to worry at all.

As you put in new events into your week, there could just be one more option asking you to choose the ring setting on your phone for that time. You could have an option on your phone to turn on or off "Calendar Ring Mode" in which the ring settings automatically follow the calendar. No more embarassing ringing in class/meetings/church/movies.

We already have phones that will ring differently depending on who is calling, so it can't be that hard to just set a ring schedule based on your Outlook calendar. Maybe this already exists, but I haven't seen it anywhere. Can someone make an iPhone app that does this and let me know about it?

Resources

2008-10-29T11:25:00.003-04:00

I thought it might be helpful to list some of the resources I used over the past while to get up to speed on investment banking, the economy, and different banks.

Books:

Liar's Poker
Monkey Business
Barbarians at the Gate
The Accidental Investment Banker
A Demon of our Own Design
The World is Flat / Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Tipping Point
Financial Shock: A 360º Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion (great summary of what's happened, even though he published before all the real crazy stuff happened)
Valut Guide for Investment Banking / Vault Guide for Finance Interviews
Running of the Bulls (about Wharton - I read it to see what the competition is like :)
Never Eat Alone (book about networking)
Goldman Sachs: Culture of Success / House of Morgan / other books on specific firms
When Genious Failed

There are tons of other books but these are just a few that I've read in the past year.

Websites:

Again, there are tons of websites out there with good information, but these are some of the sites I look at frequently (some obviously for fun and some for information).

In addition to all of this, as I was getting ready for interviews I found lists of I-banking interview questions and would go through the lists, making sure I had a good answer for every single question. I probably did this for hundreds of questions, but I didn't want to get caught off-guard. It worked well; I never had an interview question that I hadn't heard before (or at least something very similar to it, to which I could easily tailor my pre-determined answer). I'm working on putting together some materials such as a model, interview questions, and other stuff that will be helpful. I'm short on time these days but it will be coming.

Other:

Wall Street Journal (read it every day!)
Financial Times
New York Times
Business Week (usually just skim through the copy in the business school)
The Economist (also just read the copy in the business school)

There are obviously way more sources of information that you can possibly take in, but I've just made it a habit of always having something to read. I'll walk to class and read on the way. I read when I wake up, get home, whatever. A thirst for knowledge is vital to understanding what's going on in the world and being ready for investment banking, where the learning curve is steep.

I'm sure you all have other resources that are helpful - post a comment to share what is helpful to you!

Late Nights

2008-10-28T01:57:00.003-04:00

Hey all -

Sorry for the infrequent posts. Next time I get put on a team managing $700 billion I'll have done this before so I'll know how to handle the pressure and time commitments better :). Things are crazy and stressful, but I feel confident that we're moving in the right direction with what we have to work with. I'm learning a ton and am having a blast out here.

Anyway, I wanted to write a post about what it's like to work for 100 hours a week. This is one of those things that you hear a lot about, but it's hard to know what it's like until you've done it. That said, I'll take a shot at describing it. Current bankers can add comments to correct/augment anything I say.

When I first started banking this summer I was so excited and motivated to perform well that I actually looked forward to my first really late night. It came on a Thursday if I remember right. It was about 9:40 PM and I was reading through some primer on the Oil and Gas industry. An associate came over to my desk to see what I was up to and then asked me if I would "help him go through a few things." That translated into going through spreadsheets filled with data and checking all the numbers in them to make sure they were consistent throughout a 100-page pitch book.

Because I was so "gunner" I was excited to "jam" for a few hours. I finished up around 2am and felt great. I was a real banker - working late into the night, coming out onto the street and grabbing a black car as some random tourists watched.

Well this whole attitude soon left after it happened six days in a row. I began to see that it wasn't an anomaly to stay until 2am, but it was normal. When you start to work 100 hours a week or more, things inside you start to change. I could literally feel my brain slowing down toward the end of the week. After a few days/weeks you start to lose track of what day it is. The only way to tell is by what clothes people wear. When you see a VP wearing flip flops you know you are in the weekend (but you won't know if it's Saturday or Sunday).

It's just a strange feeling that comes over you. Your whole life is suddenly regimented. You don't do anything except work. You wake up, take a shower, find some clothes and a new tie, then head to work. You work all day long, get yelled at and build models till the middle of the morning, then you head home. You get home, fall in bed, then wake up and do it all over again. It's a weird cycle to be in because you start to feel like there's nothing else in your life. I guess it's true, but it's just a weird feeling to experience it.

I thought it would be really hard to work that much, but it's not that bad. Physically your body just makes the adjustment and you keep going. You're usually always kind of tired, but I was surprisingly less tired than I expected that I would be. I would imagine that after two years your body wouldn't "handle it" as well as mine did during the internship, but it wasn't too bad.

The hard parts are mental. You have to force yourself to work really hard for many many hours every week. Plus, you never know when you'll be able to leave and do something else besides banking. It's the uncertainty that's hard, not the long hours. You can't plan things in advance very well because when you do the associate will dump stuff on your desk again.

Now that my hours at Treasury are trending back towards the banking summer hours, I'm starting to remember the feeling. It's 2:15 am right now and I'm going strong. When the time comes for you all to get into banking, don't be afraid of the long hours. It's helpful to remember that while you are working the equivalent of two jobs, you are also learning a ton more than your friends who are working 40-50 hours a week.

Sorry if this is rambling and not helpful. If it sucked, just blame the long hours!

Time to go to New York

2008-10-20T09:11:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year again.

Things are starting to get cold, full-time recruiting is slowing down, and college football is in full swing. It's about time to get to New York.

One of the key steps for me in getting an internship and a job on Wall Street was actually going there and meeting face-to-face with professionals at the different banks. In the fall of my junior year, I flew myself to New York four times before interviews started, each time meeting with new people and cultivating relationships that eventually led to interviews and lasting friendships.

To have a successful New York trip (and this applies to San Francisco as well), there are a few things you need to do in preparation:

First of all, you need to contact people at banks. Hopefully you've been doing this since the summer time, but if not, it's ok. You're still ahead of the game as far as internships go. A good way to find people to contact is through your alumni network. Probably the best way would be to go through previous interns, because they obviously know multiple people at the bank. The tricky part there is that you have to make sure the intern that you ask for contacts is willing to "go to bat" for you. Because they don't have much leverage, if they recommed you and you screw it up, they will look terrible.

So in contacting people working on the street, usually what I would do is send a SHORT introductory email telling them who I am and asking if there's a time that we could talk. When it got to be a little closer to interview season and I felt confident about my resume, I might also send my resume along so they could "get a better idea of my background." When asking for a time to call, I basically would leave things wide open. I figured that if I need to miss part of a class then it would be worth it if I could have a solid call with somebody at Goldman or Credit Suisse.

Once the phone call is scheduled, there are a lot of things you need to do to prepare for the call. It's like a first date - you have to impress this person enough to want to meet you again. So what you do is spend a ton of time preparing and you leave them completely impressed with how much a junior in college knows already. Leave no doubts in their mind about your abilities, desire, or intelligence.

You can prepare in a number of ways. Here are some of the things I did: Google the person I'm going to call to find out everything I can about them on the internet; talk with people who know them and/or have worked with them to find out what group they're in, what deals they've done, and what interests they have; read the entire website for their firm, and come up with specific reasons why I would want to work there as opposed to any other bank; research any big deals that their bank has done and have a few questions about the deals; read the WSJ every day so that I can talk about current events; make sure I can answer (1) Why do you want to do banking? (2) Why do you want to work at this firm? and especially (3) Tell me about yourself / Walk me through your resume.

With enough preparation (focusing not so much on the technical stuff and a lot more on the fit / general knowledge stuff), you will come off as somebody who really cares about all this stuff.

Assuming the call goes really well, I would have already planned a date in late October / early November / late November / early December / late December / early January (pick any combination of these, but especially the later part of the year if you can only go once). As I wrap up the call I would say something like, "Hey Bryan it's been great talking with you and I've learned a lot. I wanted to let you know that I'll be in New York from November 4 through November 8 to meet with people at various banks. Obviously I'm extremely interested in your bank. Do you think you could pencil in a few minutes for me to take you out for a coffee sometime in there?"

Do this 15x and you'll have a solid trip. The one thing you have to be careful of is over-booking yourself. During my second trip to New York, I had a tight schedule where I was supposed to go from one bank to another with only about a half hour inbetween when the first visit ended and the next began. The banks weren't far apart, but what I didn't account for was after my first interview, the analyst wanted to introduce me to the other analysts in his group and some senior people on the floor. Of course it was great to meet other people, and it showed that the analyst had enough confidence in me to introduce me around, but it meant that I was late for my next appointment. The worst thign you can do is set up an appointment and then not show up. Key takeaway: always plan enough time to meet new people after an interview.

Make sure you get as many business cards as you can, because when you meet these people you are going to want to stay in touch. You don't want to be annoying, but maybe a monthly or bi-weekly update would be good. Think of some reason to get in touch and then reach out with a short email and a quick question. If something great happens like you find out you got a scholarship or the football team you know this analyst loves goes to a bowl game, send them a quick email. The personal stuff is especially good because it connects you on a different level than desperate college kid wishing for a job.

After a while I started having a tough time keeping up with all the contacts. I put together a spreadsheet dedicated solely to managing my contacts. Each row had name, number, firm, position, how we met, last interaction date, last interaction (what happened) and "Next Steps." The last column was important because every time I talked to somebody I would update and plan for the next interaction. Using this saved me many times and I had to check every day to see who was due for an email.

I usually sent a few emails a day and made maybe 4-5 calls a week for a good three months straight. When the time came for interviews, it was easy to reach out and get these people to pass my resume along.

Good luck as you go out and meet people this fall!

p.s. I know that last year I really wanted to look at models that people have made and am wondering if anyone is still interested in seeing models that bankers use. Post a comment if you're interested and maybe I'll put a link up. Quick thought though - the most important thing going into my internship wasn't my ability to build a DCF model, it was understanding finance and knowing ALL the Excel shortcuts!

Treasury Update

2008-10-05T20:43:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody -

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. As you all can imagine, things at Treasury have been absolutely crazy (and, for those of you that think I should have said "at THE Treasury," for some reason people just say "at Treasury").

These are amazing times and the list of superlatives keeps on growing:
Largest ever bankruptcy
Largest ever bank failure
Largest ever drop in the DOW (points, not percentage)
Largest ever government intervention

It's crazy to think that in the short time I've been at Treasury so much has changed in the world of finance. I've had the chance to be working on the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) team and it has been incredibly interesting. Obviously I can't post too much about what I've been working on, but needless to say it's amazing to be here. One thing I can say is that there are incredibly smart people working on this right now, and Americans can have confidence that the best people in the country are working on this huge problem. Well, the best and smartest...and me! Don't worry too much - I'm not involved enough to mess it up anyway :).

I try to read the criticisms out there to know what concerns people are having with this problem. For the vast majority of criticisms, I'm pleased to say that we have already discussed them and worked out solutions. Most of this stuff just isn't public knowledge yet, so I can't elaborate, but I'm confident that as time goes by America will see that this isn't just haphazardly thrown together, but it's a plan that has been thought through to extreme detail. I'm glad that it finally seems like people are at least understanding that this isn't just a "Wall Street Bailout" but is, in fact, a stabilization of the economy and will help people both on Main Street and Wall Street.

The link below is an article published in the New York Times back in 1999. It's about Fanni Mae and is very interesting because the author predicted exactly what was going to happen. I guess foresight in this case is 20/20.

New York Times Article

Valuation Methods

2008-09-23T21:31:00.002-04:00

Here's a common question:

"How do you value a company?"

There are a ton of ways to answer this. I'll just list a few ways to do it:

1. Discounted Cash Flow
2. Comparable Transactions
3. Comparable Companies
4. LBO valuation
5. Sum-of-the-parts
6. Liquidation value

There are even more but usually if you list five or six that is enough to sound smarter than the average American (one of many things that you could say to sound smarter than the average American I guess).

More interview questions to come...

Bulge Bracket vs. Boutique

2008-09-22T13:22:00.003-04:00

In general my full-time interviews were actually less technical than my internship interviews. I think the type of interview you get (technical vs. fit) is very dependant on the interviewer and what type of mood they are in. In pretty much every place I've interviewed I've had a mix of interviews where some were very technical and some were not. As a general rule, the more senior you go, the less technical the interview will be. My toughest technical interviews were all with analysts or associates.

I want to make a quick comment about the whole boutique vs. bulge bracket issue. I've interviewed with and received offers from bulge brackets and top boutiques, and I think it would be helpful to look at the pros and cons of each.

Bulge Bracket Banks
Obviously the past week has drastically changed the landscape for bulge bracket banks. The positives of working for one of the uber-bulges is that most banks (and, based on this weekend, even Morgan Stanley and Goldman) will have a capital base to support their actions that is more steady than it has historically been. In other words, it's good to work for a place like JP Morgan because they have such a huge balance sheet that they can be a part of any deal, regardless of the size.

Bulge brackets are generally well-established and have very structured training programs and procedures in place. Everything is already planned out for your next two years. You'll be one of many thousands of employees, and the bank has learned how to best teach you the ropes.

Your bulge bracket experience will give you the opportunity to try out many different products (be it M&A, debt/equity offerings, IPOs, etc) and you will generally get a very broad experience. One downside to all of this is that you might feel like another cog in the machine. It can be hard to feel like you are making a significant impact when you have 14 people on a deal team. Sometimes your deals will involve people from many different groups across the bank. One deal I worked on this summer involved our industry coverage group, the M&A team, and the lev fin team. Each team played a part, and we all had to collaborate a lot to get the book across the finish line.

At a bulge bracket you are part of an analyst class that likely contains over 100 analysts. You build a huge network and if you are proactive you can make connections across the firm. You won't have a lot of "senior exposure" (although I think it's kind of overrated anyway) because there are so many levels between you and then MDs. This summer I don't even think I spoke to any MDs more than three times, let alone working closely with them on a deal. As an analyst you will work extensively with associates and some with vice presidents.

Boutiques
Boutiques are a different story. Most boutiques are relatively new (Lazard, if it qualifies as a boutique, being a notable exception). They don't have lending or trading platforms but focus solely on advisory work. Many of the top boutiques focus specifically on M&A and Restructuring. So you won't get a chance to model out a debt offering or an IPO, but if you are looking to go into Private Equity, it's M&A experience that will get you the job anyway.

The training programs at boutiques will typically not be as structured or long as the BBs. You will still receive training but will be required to learn more on the job than in the classroom. This is why many boutiques tend to favor analyst coming in with some kind of finance background or experience.

Deal teams at a boutique will usually be 3-4 people. There will typically be an analyst, associate, VP, and MD. There might be a few more people, but not usually. The analyst will typically "own the model," meaning that the analyst builds the model and makes any changes along the way. At the boutiques I talked to, the analysts told me that they build models from scratch, whereas bulge brackets tend to be more prone to using templates.

Boutiques have an analyst class of 10-25 analysts. Analysts are given significant responsibility on deals. The risk of boutiques is that deal flow is determined by your MDs more than the name of your bank, whereas at a bulge bracket like Goldman Sachs, sometimes you win deals based on your name and not so much on the MD.

Exit opportunities at the very top boutiques are generally very good (comparable to Goldman or MS). While at a bulge bracket you would generally need to be the top analyst in your group to get interviews at the top PE shops (unless you work in Goldman TMT or Morgan Stanley M&A), if you perform well at a top boutique you can get those same interviews.

So in the end there are risks/rewards with every decision. At a bulge bracket you have a large capital base and do deals with many products, while at a boutique you are focused exclusively on advisory work. Bulge brackets have large analyst classes and well-structured training programs, while boutiques have small classes and lean deal teams, forcing you to "learn as you go." Exit opportunities are similar, but are probably a little easier to come by if you can get into a top boutique as compared to a relatively strong group at a bulge bracket.

How the Financial Statements are Related

2008-09-20T10:24:00.004-04:00

Here is the pdf file I was talking about which shows how the three financial statements are connected. You'll probably never have an interview that covers every single connection, but it's good to know and understand anyway. Enjoy.

How the Financial Statements are Related

How to be Remembered

2008-09-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

Around this time of year, the investment banks start coming on campus to give presentations and meet potential employees. One of my friends working at Citi told me about a recruiting trip he recently went on to a well-known school. I asked him if he met anyone interesting, and he said that he was actually really not impressed with the students at the school.

"I was asked some uber-generic questions all night long, and felt like nobody really wanted to know anything about me or my job, they just wanted to go through the motions of talking to the recruiter."

I actually remember the days of being at those recruiting socials and I definitely am guilty of asking some lame questions to recruiters. Luckily, I'm working this semester so I won't even be attending a single one of those events. But in order to try and help you all out a little, I wanted to make a few suggestions about these types of events.

First of all, try to think about things from the recruiter's point of view. You're going to a school where you may or may not have attended, but either way you probably don't know more than a handful of people. You've been working for the past 70 hours straight and know that the work is just piling up while you're talking to some kid about "work/life balance." In the end you will have to sit down with your team and talk about anyone that stood out in your mind, and you'll probably have to go through a mountain of resumes before it's all over. What you're really looking for is to meet somebody unique that you can tell really wants to do banking, and also that you would feel fine recommending for further interviews.

Now, when thinking of things like this, you can easily make a few goals for yourself. First of all, you want to be prepared so that there's no question in the mind of the recruiter whether you know your stuff or not. Second, you want to ask smart questions that don't sound like you got them out of the Vault Guide. The recruiter has probably been asked, "So tell me what kinds of deals you've been working on" more times than he/she would want to repeat. Third, you want to have a really great resume to hand the recruiter so that when they take a look as you're talking to them, they'll be impressed enough to listen.

Last October, I brought my resume to a recruiter from Credit Suisse. He was actually just standing there taking resumes and critiquing them, telling students, "Change this. Take this off. You have a few mistakes here or there. If you ever turn in a resume like this you won't get a job on Wall Street..." I was a little nervous but had spent significant time getting my resume prepared for that night. When he took a look at my resume, he scanned it over and said, "Now this is a resume that I like to see. It's perfect."

My resume wasn't actually that great, but I had just prepared it in a way that it would look good. The recruiter told me that very night that he would get me interviews for an internship, which he did. I ended up getting an offer from CS.

One hard thing for me was knowing what kind of questions to ask. I think more important than having a list of questions already written down that you want to ask is just being able to carry on an interesting conversation with somebody. Instead of asking them, "Why do you like Goldman?" you could say something like, "I know that Goldman has a very collaborative culture. What kind of experiences have you had working across divisions to get a deal done?"

The point is that when you ask a question, you show that you have done a little more homework than everybody else. Most firms like to tell the world about about all of their accomplishments, so go to their website and take a few notes about what makes this bank unique.

You might ask about what the bank's relative strengths are compared to its peers. For example, "When you, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and UBS come to a bake-off, what is it about Citi that will win the deal? What does Citi bring to the table that is unique?"

I don't think I need to make a list of questions you can ask, but just point out that if you just spend some time thinking a little before you go and talk, you can make a great impression.

Question about depreciation

2008-09-18T04:58:00.001-04:00

Another classic question that I've gotten a few times is something like this:

"Imagine that you have a company and suddenly you find out that you reported your depreciation expense incorrectly. You now have an additional $10 million in depreciation. How would this change be reflected in all three financial statements?"

I've actually received some form of this question about six times as I've interviewed. As always, you want to keep things simple and just go through everything methodically. Here's how I might go about answering this:

"I'll start with the income statement. Your depreciation expense will increase by $10 million, which will decrease your operating income by $10 million. Assuming (to make life easier) that you have a 40% tax rate, then your net income will decrease by $6 million after accounting for the tax shield you get from added depreciation expense.

"This net income will flow onto the statement of cash flows, so the net income will be decreased by $6 million. But, you will add back the $10 mm in depreciation so your net change in operating cash flows will be a positive $4 million.

"On the balance sheet, your accumulated depreciation increases by $10mm, so your net PP&E will decrease by $10mm. The cash balance increases by $4 million (from the cash flow statement), so the asset side of the balance sheet nets to a negative $6mm. No cash is actually paid out, but in essence your tax shield increases by $4mm so your cash position increases. On the liability/equity side, your net income, which decreased by $6mm, flows into retained earnings and therefore balances with your assets."

One time at Lazard I was asked, "You have been depreciating your assets using a double-declining method, but you now change to a straight-line method. What does this do to the financial statements?"

This question is similar but there's just one more little caveat. Can you think of it?

I've got a pretty cool pdf file that shows how all of the financial statements are connected. I'll post it on here soon.

What a week

2008-09-17T16:58:00.005-04:00

The past week has been one for the ages. We will probably never see another span of carnage on Wall Street like we have seen for the past 10 days. With Fannie and Freddie going under, followed by Lehman, Merrill, and now AIG, the entire finance world is changing. And with Morgan Stanley and Goldman down well over 20% today, who knows if they will even outlast this crazy time.

With all of this turmoil, it becomes even more necessary to have a great resume and be ready for interviews. A quick update - my kidney stone is no longer in my body, but the effects of the little rock are still being felt today. Kidney stones suck!! Also, I got some offers - one at another bulge bracket bank and one from a top boutique. So that was GREAT news given the other things going on this week. Now the tough part is deciding where to go. I am definitely blessed to have options this year.

So I thought I would write about some of the other interview questions I've faced over the past few months, as well as some of the ways I've answered these questions. Keep in mind that I'm not an expert and could very well miss some things. That said, I've received an offer from every firm with which I've interviewed, both for internships or full-time, so I feel like I can at least take a crack at some of these questions.

The most common technical question I've gotten at every bank I've interviewed with is "walk me through a DCF." I think everybody knows in their mind what a discounted cash flow model does, but what I've found is that there's a certain way to answer this question that makes your life easier. When I first started interviewing I really wanted to show people that I know what I'm talking about, and I went into great detail about every part of a DCF calc. What happened though was that I would get bogged down in the details and end up not sounding very smart.

Now when I answer this question, I like to begin with a very simple answer and allow the interviewer to drill down however he/she would like to. For example I might say something like this:

"The goal of a DCF model is to derive the enterprise value of the firm. I do this by calculating the unlevered free cash flows of the firm, then project them forward for about five years (or whatever time horizon you are looking at). I then calculate a terminal value (TV), and discount the TV and the FCFs back to the present value at the cost of capital to get my enterprise value."

Done. At this point, the interviewer knows that I understand the DCF, and they are free to ask me deeper questions. Some interviewers I've had will stop me as I go along to ask questions, but most let me go to this point and then say something like, "Ok great. Can you tell me how you would calculate the free cash flow of a company?"

"Sure. Starting with EBITDA, you subtract D&A, then multiply by (1-tax rate) to get rid of the tax cash, then add back D&A, take out CAPEX and the change in net working capital, and you have free cash flows."

"And what is net working capital?"

"Current assets less current liabilities."

"Great. How do you calculate a terminal value?"

"Well it depends on the deal. If it's a strategic deal, you'll probably use a perpetuity model since they want the asset for the long term. If it's a financial deal the sponsor will want to sell in the terminal year and you'll use a multiple, like EV/EBITDA."

You get the picture. I just give the answers in a way that shows that I know what I'm saying but I don't try to tell it all at once. They might ask you about how to calculate a discount rate (use WACC), how to calculate WACC, how to get CAPM, and even how to unlever/relever beta. Whatever it is, just be ready for it, but start basic and work your way into the nitty gritty.

One more question about accretion/dilution that I got this summer was something like this: "If you own a company and want to do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of acc/dil, how would you do it given a particular target? In other words, what information would you need to do a quick calc?"

"Well a P/E ratio would be great."

"That's right. So lets say your company has a P/E of 18 and the target's P/E is 21. Will the deal be accretive or dilutive? Why?"

"Dilutive because their P/E is higher than mine. In essence I would have to pay more per dollar of earnings than my own company is worth, so the EPS would decline."

Here are a few more random interview questions:

"What's the square root of 2,025?" (The answer doesn't have to be right on - it's 45 - but you just have to be close. They want to see how you can out loud reason through some mental math)

"What is 2/3 + 3/4?" (Just take a deep breath and think back to seventh grade - you can do this!)

"So you worked a little in a fund. Pitch me a stock." (On this one I pretty much always go with my favorite stock that I've bought - PARL - because it's an interesting company to talk about. I would suggest that you are ready to talk about a few investment ideas, and also that you pick companies that the interviewers have never heard of. You don't want to say "GM" and then find out that you're talking to the MD on that account)

"If you had $1 Billion to invest for your school, how would you do it?" (Again you can pretty much say whatever you want, but don't be stupid and say 'Short Goldman with the whole fund because I don't believe in the pure play model!' Just be rational with how you answer most questions and you'll be fine)

I'll be posting more questions/answers in the next little while. Sorry again for the long delay. I'm working at Treasury so you can all imagine what a week it's been around here with Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, Merrill, and AIG all blowing up. Anyway, keep the comments coming about the types of posts you'd like to see.

The Resume

2008-09-09T17:13:00.001-04:00

Alright. So here are a few thoughts about resumes. As any person can quickly find out through some Google searches, there are plenty of sites with tons of advice about how to write a great resume for investment banking. I'm debating about posting various versions of my own resume up here (with the names taken off of course) so people can see how my resume has evolved over the past year and a half.

I think the important thing with resumes is that you spend the time NOW to get it into shape. No matter if you're a senior or a junior, this is VITAL to getting interviews and jobs. In addition, when you go to visit people already in banking, they will almost always ask to see your resume at some point. If your resume isn't already "bankified" then you're in trouble. On the other hand, if you're a junior and you can send somebody a resume that looks ready and it's only September - you are in a great position.

I know that for juniors especially it seems almost unnecessary to spend so much time on your resume when you won't even have to turn it in for a few more months, but it is well worth it. Plus, you'll constantly be updating your resume as you gain new experience or think of better ways to describe what you've already done. I'm still changing mine all the time to better reflect who I am and what I've done. The key is that your resume, no matter how little experience or leadership you have, meets the basic banker standard.

Last June I thought that my resume was solid. I had spent a while working it over and I was sure it was awesome. I had read all of those sites on the internet and really tried to follow the advice there. Then the President of the Investment Banking Club sent me his resume as an example, and I was embarrassed that he had ever seen my resume. Just the format of his resume made mine look very basic. I totally remade my resume based off of his format, and my resume continues to resemble that format today.

A quick word about using other people's resumes to make your own. Obviously it's a STUPID idea to just copy what other people have written. Think about it - when you get into an interview anything on there is fair game. If you've embellished or exaggerated or even just flat out put down stuff that you haven't done, the interviewer will be able to tell right away and you immediately lose any chance you might have had. It's also just dishonest. That said, I don't see any problem with getting ideas from other resumes. Like I said - the current format of my resume is based on a resume I saw over a year ago. There are certain styles of describing things that I have imitated from other resumes. You have to make it your own, but there's nothing wrong with getting ideas from other people. Just NEVER copy and be totally honest, and you'll be fine.

I took a class when I first got into the business school about writing and we did a section on resumes. The teacher talked about the importance of having lots of white space and even drew a "golden triangle" on a resume to show the concept. This could not be farther from the truth on a banking resume. You basically have only one sheet of paper to define your entire life. You should use every possible bit of space you can. Of course, it has to be clean and aesthetically pleasing, but you really have to pack things in from top to bottom.

Here are some key ideas when you write a resume. Like I said, you can find this stuff all over the place, but it's worth another mention.

First of all, Bankers like results. One of the big mistakes that I've seen on a lot of resumes is that people just list bullet points of what they did (I've definitely been guilty of this as well). Not only do you need to list what you've done, but you need to tell what the result of your work is. You need to show that because of you, things got better. Banks want to hire people that add value and make a difference, so be sure that as much as you can you talk about results, not just experiences. When you spread those comps this summer, what was the point? When you built that DCF, was it used in the presentation? Did the client go through with the deal? Results matter.

Another thing is that bankers love to quantify things. As often as you can, add numbers to your experiences. This relates to the results part. Talk about how much more efficient your company is now that you're there. Talk about how many security systems you sold last summer, and how much more that was above the average. List what percentile your ACT score was. Just do whatever you can to quantify and add context to the words you put on the paper.

Unless you have a really great and relevant experience, I wouldn't put anything more than 4-5 bullets for any one job/experience. The exception to this would be under your "Personal" or "Interests" or whatever kind of section at the bottom of the resume. Here you just kind of list all of the random accomplishments and interests that you have, including languages you speak, awards/certifications/skills you have attained, and (if you want) interests you have. I tend not to put my interests on the resume. I figure putting down what sports team I like or what I do in my spare time isn't what's going to get me a job. I've heard stories about how interviewers see something on the resume that they totally relate with, but in the end I believe that they will take somebody with solid experience and great qualifications over someone who likes the same TV show as they do. It can be a good way to start conversations though, and pretty much all of my friends have an "Interests" bullet on their resume.

When I was really trying to get my resume up to snuff, I read all of the suggestions online and tried to do everything they said. But, like I wrote above, this still wasn't enough. It took me actually seeing and talking to somebody who had already gone through the process of getting an internship and full-time job for me to realize what my resume needed to look like. I'm still changing and updating things on my resume, but I feel confident that whenever I send someone my resume, they will give it a good look. It's important that you don't just turn in your resume for a job without getting some outside feedback. The best thing is to get somebody that knows about banking to look at your resume. If the person don't know what it means to do a sum-of-the-parts valuation, then they might not give you the best feedback.

So here's the deal. I've been getting some requests from people to look at their resume. I've seen tons of resumes (including reviewing resumes this summer for full-time candidates) and can give solid advice on what bankers are looking for. There are various online resume review services that are all very expensive. Mergers and Inquisitions has a good one but it's $200. If anybody wants an independent, line-by-line look at their resume, send it my way. I can make suggestions, give you some ideas, and help you get your resume looking great. And instead of charging $200 or more, it'll only cost $30.

The reason I'm charging for it is obvious - time is precious and we all have to support ourselves! That said, I want to offer a high-quality review for much less than what is available today. Here's how it would work:

You get your resume prepared. You can take your personal info off if you want. A lot more important than your address is what your resume actually says!

When you're ready, you pay the $30 through PayPal and then send me your resume. I'll go through it line-by-line and return specific comments, suggestions, and ideas that will help your resume get noticed. If you have questions, need clarification, or want me to help you change anything, just send it back and we'll do that as many times as you want until the resume is pristine and ready to be sent to any bank on the street. Often you might not know anyone at a bank, so your resume is the only chance you have of getting an interview.

If you have further questions or are ready to send me your resume, email me here.

Regardless of whether you have me look at your resume or not, make sure that before you send it to a bank, you feel totally confident that they would want to interview after they have seen your resume.

I will continue to write posts about interview questions, networking, lifestyle, a little about my current job at the US Treasury, and anything else I feel is relevant. As always, keep commenting and let me know what you'd like to hear more about. The next post will be more about interview questions I've had and some ideas on how to go about answering them.

Resume post to come...

2008-09-07T12:29:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody. Turns out that this whole kidney stone thing is more painful than I originally thought. I've written most of the resume post but near the end felt like taking a knife and cutting out my kidney to stop the pain. Needless to say, I didn't finish the post. It'll be coming...

Ouch

2008-09-06T15:19:00.003-04:00

Well as if things couldn't get any weirder, check this out.

And, by the way, I'll be posting later on today about resumes. Sorry for the long breaks between posts.

So on Thursday night I took a bus from DC to New York because I had final rounds at a bank. I stayed with a good friend who just started at a bulge bracket bank and has been working like crazy. He didn't even get home till after 3am and that has been par for the course for him since he's started. I guess that's what you have to expect. The amazing thing is that in addition to all the work he's doing, he's made time to build some sweet models in preparation for private equity interviews coming in a few months. Props to him!

So I had the final rounds on Friday. It was pretty standard - there were six interviews of about a half an hour each. Three of them were with managing directors, one with a principal, and two with associates. Like other places, the associates and the principal gave me pretty technical interviews, and the managing directors just wanted to hear about my life, talk about their past experiences, and answer questions about the firm.

The technical stuff was actually pretty challenging - probably the toughest I've ever had. They based a lot of the questions off of what's on my resume, so one of the first things an associate asked me about was accretion/dilution. This girl was sharp - she worked at Miller Buckfire doing restructuring, then went to Goldman's sponsers group for two years, then went to McKinsey for two years advising on corporate finance, then finally went to Harvard Business School and on to her current job. Nice background. She had me walk her through different scenarios such as 100% cash, 50/50, and 100% stock, and asked me to talk about what would make the deal accretive or dilutive in each scenario. The only thing I needed her help on was remembering how assets are written up or down in a purchase and how that can affect accretion or dilution.

She then asked me about a DCF model I built over the summer. Usually I've just been asked how to walk through a DCF, which I did for her. But along the way she would ask me things like, "So on this deal, what were the COGS? What were the revenue drivers? What kind of operating expenses were there? When talking about discounting, she wanted to know what discount rate I used and why/how I got to that rate. She asked if we discounted at beginning/end of year or if we used the mid-year convention. I said mid-year because cash flows don't all come at the beginning or end of the year, so mid-year tends to smooth it out. She said that was right and said, "What about the terminal value?" I answered, "Well that one you discount from the end of year because you want to discount the full last year before you sell." She responded, "Exactly right - that's a very common mistake so good job." Whew!

The other associate I interviewed with gave me a case study. He said something like, "Assume you have a company that owns 15 coal refineries in North America, the rights to build more refineries in 10 other places, and then you own an electrical power plant in South Africa where the price of electricity swings 1000% percent a day. How would you value this company?"

I said I would do a sum-of-the-parts, which was correct, but then he wanted to know how I would value each piece. The coal refineries are pretty solid so I said I would use a traditional DCF with steady-state assumptions. The rights to build were dependent on how rare they are, so I said I would have to use some comps and decide what the real estate was worth, as well as finding out how feasible it would be to build. Lastly, the South African asset could be valued using a DCF, but you would have to use a really high discount rate to account for the swings in value. I also said you could use comps to see what other people are discounting similar assets at.

He seemed to be ok with my answers, and I took another deep breath. Thank goodness!

Overall the rest of the time I was just asked to walk through my resume. One guy asked me what my two greatest strengths are as an analyst. I said my initiative and ability to learn quickly. I wasn't really asked anything else other than things specific to my resume. Luckily I have enough varied financial experience that it usually provides plenty to talk about over a half an hour and the interviewers don't have the time to get crazy with thier questions.

This firm is pretty selective so they were only interviewing one other guy with me. They sent the two of us along with four analysts out to lunch after our interviews. That was a cool experience because we just got to shoot the breeze with the analysts and ask them what it was "really" like working there. From what I can tell it sounds like an awesome place.

So sorry if you aren't all interested in what a final round interview is like, but I thought I would share some of the questions that were covered. I was hoping for some brain teasers but I didn't get any.

Anyway, the crazy stuff happened after I left the interview. I got back on the bus to go down to DC, and immediately my lower abdomen on the right side started to hurt. My back was also sore, but I figured that it was the horrible seats on the bus more than anything else. The girl I was sitting next to could tell that I was in a lot of pain and kept asking me if I was alright.

A few times I went in the bathroom stall at the back of the bus and just sat there because it was more comfortable than my reclined seat. I was in the worst pain I've ever felt - it was excruciating. And there was nothing I could do to alleviate it - no matter how I stood or sat the pain was still almost unbearable. I didn't know what to do - I couldn't go anywhere and I was on a bus going down a highway. Finally after three hours we stopped to drop some people off in Baltimore. I grabbed my stuff and just got off the bus. I ran to a taxi near the bus stop and said, "Take me to the hospital!" I think it kind of startled the taxi driver because he drove like a maniac on the way over - I guess he didn't want me to die in the back of his cab.

I got to the hospital and there were probably 80 people waiting in front of me. Some of them had already been there for eight hours. I signed in and told the nurse that I was in terrible pain. She put me at the top of the priority list, but I knew that even at the top of that list I would still be waiting for a while. I got some blood drawn and gave a urine sample, then just sat and waited to be called. About four hours later they called me back. After sitting there waiting for another hour in the hospital bed, they finally came in and gave me some medicine to ease the pain. Wow - that was the worst 5-6 hours of my life by far. Nothing I've ever felt compares with that pain.

I got a CT scan and it turns out that I have a kidney stone! I thought those only appeared in older people, but apparently somehow I got a kidney stone. I've heard it said that the pain is comparable to giving birth, so to all of you women out there, I bow down and thank you for that wonderful service you provide to humanity. You are amazing to handle that multiple times!

I finally was released at about 3:30 am and was wondering how I was going to get back to DC. When I ran off the bus I wasn't really thinking ahead about the fact that after I left the hospital I would still be an hour away from DC. Luckily, my dad had made a few calls in the meantime and some guys from my church, whom I had never met before, just showed up and took me all the way home. People in the Church are just like that - willing to help a total stranger. It's amazing.

So now I'm at home with some narcotics and things are better than yesterday. The stone is still inside of me somewhere but the doctor said that the worst pain comes when the stone moves from your kidney to your bladder, so hopefully the worst part is over for me.

This isn't really what I expected to do during over the weekend, but I've also learned to expect crazy stuff to come up all the time.

Let me know if you like hearing about interviews and I'll post some more questions from various interviews I've had over the past few months.

The Ultimate Day

2008-08-24T11:17:00.002-04:00

Saturday was pretty fun. I met one of my (seven?) roommates and he is pretty cool. He's doing a PhD at Georgetown in Economics so he will probably be giving me advice this semester on how to fix the economy :). We went to a park near to where we live and met up with about 10 other people and played ultimate Frisbee. I'm amazed how seriously people take this game on the east coast. I had never played until I went to college, but people out here are really good at it. They can throw a Frisbee in ways I didn't even know were possible. A few of the guys on my team were extremely good so I usually just threw them a pass and then ran for the endzone. They could pretty much always get it to me.

Washington DC is so different from New York. It's quiet and pretty. I think it would be a cool place to live if you're 30 and have a family.

So someone asked how I'm able to do this internship and still graduate from school. It just turned out that I only have one semester worth of classes left to graduate, so leaving school for a semester won't be a problem. I was planning on taking really fun classes like golf, skiing, cooking, Shakespeare, and stuff like that in my final semester, but now I'll just have to take the required business classes. I figured it would be worth it to spend a semester at Treasury at a time like this.

I am kind of sad when I think about what I'll miss this semester. We're supposed to have a really good football team, so I'll have to watch all the games on the TV instead of actually being there. All of the recruiting events where firms show up and bring free pizza and tell you why you should work for them - I love those things. I'll pretty much miss them all as well. Last year as a junior I went to pretty much every banking and consulting info session I could because it is a great way to network and meet people for when you want to interview for an internship. The same people come back to interview you, so if you can get them to remember you then you're in great shape.

Last year I met a guy from one of the bulge-bracket banks that came on campus who was out hiring for full-time in October. I talked with him a lot and gave him my resume. He called me back the next day and told me he wanted to interview me! It turned out that he thought I was graduating in 2008 (even though I told him I was a junior and my resume said "Graduation 2009"), but you can bet that when internship season rolled around, he actually called me and asked if I would be at the info session because he wanted to catch up and help me get ready for interviews with his bank.

Another guy I met in October took a look at my resume, liked it, and then told me that he would get me an interview with his bank. He then proceeded to threaten me that if I screwed up the interview he would basically kill me, but I promised him that I would destroy the interview. In the winter, he did in fact get me an interview, and I did in fact destroy it - I got an offer from that bank. I didn't end up taking the offer, but it's just another example of how important it is to meet people when they come on campus for the full-time hiring. Even if they say that only seniors are allowed in the info sessions (which is extremely rare, usually anyone can come), if you can just get some one-on-one time and hand them your resume, you will be in a great position.

This all assumes that your resume looks good. I'm going to write a post soon about resumes, but at this time last year was when I was making some major revisions to my resume. It went from having Chuck E. Cheese (my first high school job) on it to looking like a banker-worthy document. I've put over 100 hours into that resume, and I continue to update it constantly. It's one of those things that you need to get up to a certain quality level as soon as possible.

Resume post to come...

History repeats itself

2008-08-22T21:43:00.003-04:00

I don't know what it is about starting internships, but for some reason I always end up spending my first night on the ground. I flew out to Washington DC today and this morning the guy that just moved out of the place I'm moving into called me and said that he took the bed that was there and that there won't be a bed for me. Great. Apparently he's going to help me find a bed, but it's already 9:45 PM and I'm sitting on the floor of an empty bedroom. Oh well, at least I'm inside the house instead of out on the street like in New York. I guess the last internship turned out pretty well so hopefully this is a good sign that things are going to work out.

It's a bit different being in Washington DC because I've never been here before. I know maybe 3 people in the whole city, and not even that well. when I was in New York I had been there multiple times before and knew 30-40 people. I actually just want to get to work here because I think that will help me get over feeling alone out here.

I've been reading primers and news articles on the housing markets and it looks like it's going to be a very busy time for me out here. I'm still not exactly sure what I'll be doing on a day-to-day basis, but whatever it is it will be interesting stuff.

So as far as the job search goes, I haven't accepted my offer yet and am talking to other places just to see what else is out there. It's amazing to me how different it is when you contact people and you can say, "I have a full-time offer at XX bank and this fall I'm going to do an internship at the Treasury." Whereas before they would give me some excuse about why they couldn't help me out, suddenly all these people are interested in talking to me. That's great with me, but it's interesting to see how things change when people think you might add value to their firm. It's been WAY easier to contact different banks and get opportunities to meet with people, even at firms that were not even an option before.

Well I'm going to go create a place to sleep, but the internship is getting started!

Back of a $10 bill

2008-08-07T10:42:00.002-04:00

Hello everybody -

Just a quick note to let you know that I'll be continuing my blog! I got an internship for the fall semester working at the US Treasury in Washington DC. While I probably won't talk a lot about what I'm doing there day-to-day, I'll keep you all filled in on recruiting season and how things turn out with accepting offers and things like that. Once again, if you have questions then post a comment!

I'm going to work on the back of the $10 bill!

Home sweet home

2008-07-19T17:50:00.000-04:00

Well I'm home. What a weird/peaceful feeling. Provo, Utah is about as different from New York City as you can get. I was actually kind of sad as I rode in a cab at 3:45AM this morning heading out to JFK. I rode past Columbus Circle, through midtown, and over the East River and on towards JFK. It's sad to leave the City, and I've absolutely loved living in New York for the past two months. It's a fast-paced, energetic place and everybody is so driven to be successful. It's motivating just being in the City. I'm really glad that I have an offer to come back because I think that two years (at least) in the City will be an amazing experience.

So over the past few days I've been meeting with various people at different banks. At each place the message was basically the same: This is the worst year in the past decade or so for trying to get a job on Wall Street, and you should be very happy that you have an offer to go back to your bank.

They usually then talk to me about my experience and I share about some of the deals that I worked on this summer. At a few of the places, the people told me to send them my resume but were careful not to promise anything other than HR taking a look. That's all I'm asking for anyway. I'm confident that no matter where I end up, especially if it's back where I summered, it will turn out to be a great experience.

It's important that if you have an offer you are aware how much time you have before you need to make a decision. You don't want to put off your decision just to put it off, because the longer you wait for no reason the more chance you have of losing confidence from the people you worked with. My bank told me that I have as much time as I need, but that probably means that they would like to hear back in the next month or two. I don't actually have the specific terms of my offer, so I would like to wait to see those before I sign anything.

In the meantime, I'm back home! It's been so nice to just rest and take it easy. I have plenty to do here at home and am already getting work to do from the job that I have out here, but it's been nice to relax a little and not have to worry about getting staffed on a deal at 11:00PM on a Friday night.

These next few weeks will be very interesting as I try to figure out what I want to do with the offer and where I'll end up next year. I'll keep you all posted!

Crossing the Finish Line

2008-07-09T01:31:00.001-04:00

Well it's over. Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote. The last week of the internship was the longest and best for me. Every single day I was at the office getting slammed. The funny thing was that the other interns really didn't have much to do. All week long I was working like crazy and they were kind of playing around and just coasting to the end. I think what happened was in the last three weeks, people in my group started to see that I was there to work and that I could do the job well, so they started depending on me to help them when they needed something to get done.

This was a very good thing to happen. I didn't come to New York to play around and to leave the office at 7:00. I came to get a job offer and to learn as much as possible, so if that meant staying until the early hours of the morning then I was happy to do it.

In the past week I put together a pitch book by myself. That was pretty exciting. Well I wasn't totally alone, but I was basically the analyst on the book working with a summer associate and a full-time associate to make sure I did it right. It was 90+ pages so there were lots of slides I put together, but it was all things I had done before so it went pretty well. We were looking pretty closely at three companies, so for each one I did a detailed profile with financial information, various valuations (dcf, comps - transaction & trading, acc/dil, etc), shareholder information, defense profiles (what kind of policies they had in place to fight against a takeover), and other industry-specific stuff. It was a good experience.

This entire week the interns everywhere in the firm have been going nuts trying to figure out who will get offers and who won't. It was (almost) funny to watch how paranoid people are and how they would read into every situation. One summer told me, "Dude I just walked by the staffer's office and he wouldn't look me in the eye when I went by. I don't think I'm getting an offer." My bank typically accepts a high percentage of the intern class to come back, but since markets are so difficult this year, they are cutting back.

One cool project that I worked on this week came in my last two days of the internship. The star analyst of our group pulled me aside and told me that he needed me to help him in building an integrated model for a company. We actually had to build a model for three companies, so he wanted me to do one and he would do the other two. I've worked a lot with this analyst and he really trusts my work, but I was surprised that he would be willing to just let me build the entire model on my own. Of course he checked it and we went through it together, but I built it out from scratch.

The model was integrated in the sense that it had the three financial statements and they were all connected. So one change of the model on one statement flows through all three financial statements. I built a debt paydown section and a revenue build-up section. The revenue buildup was basically just a separate part of the model where we break down all the incoming revenues and allow for different variables to determine the revenue levels. It's important when you build a model to be able to adjust certain variables and have them flow through the entire model.

So I spent my last two days working on that model. On Thursday night, the entire intern class had a big party at a club near the bank. It was an open bar and they had the top floor of the club sectioned off for people from the bank. I only got to go for the last 10 minutes because the rest of the time I was jammin on the model. I didn't mind though, because it was a great experience and I can always go to a club in two weeks when I'm not trying to get an offer.

On Thursday they told us the schedule of our final reviews. For some reason I was slotted to go first, even though alphabetically either by first or last name I shouldn't have been first. The order of the reviews caused even more speculation among the interns. It turns out that the last two people to go didn't get offers, so speculation was actually correct for once.

On Thursday after the intern event I came back to the office (at about midnight) and helped an analyst finish up some work she was trying to get done. One thing I've learned is that if you can do anything to help people get home earlier they will love you. That's a question I asked a lot this summer - "Hey what can I do to get you home earlier tonight?" The analysts LOVE when you ask that because they can tell that you "get it." You understand that your role as an intern is to make their life easier, whether you do that by making copies of stuff or actually building a model. It doesn't matter what you do, it's more the attitude you have and the willingness you have to get any job done.

One reason that some people from Ivy League schools didn't get offers this summer is because they had too much of a sense of entitlement. They felt like since they go to the "best" school they should of course get an offer. I think it was for sure an advantage to me to have come from a non-target school because I always felt like I needed to prove that I was still just as good (if not better) than the Ivy League kids.

After helping the analyst finish up I went over to my desk and started to clear it out. It was kind of a sad thing to do. One thing that my group always says about me is, "Man this kid LOVES banking. We've never met anybody that loved to bank like you do." What better comment could someone say? The reason I got the reputation that I did is because I really do love it. When I got asked to work on a model for the first time, I had a smile so big the analysts made fun of me for the rest of the day. They thought it was hilarious that I was so excited, but deep down they also really liked the fact that I cared that much. You want to come away from your internship with the group feeling like you absolutely love this stuff. And it helps if it's true.

Like I said - it was sad clearing out my desk because I really have loved this internship. It's been so amazing to be working on Wall Street and actually doing the work that I've wanted to do for so long. The people in my group were fantastic and I learned SO much. I even asked my staffer if I could stay for the rest of the summer and work for free. He said no because of obvious reasons, but again the message I was sending out was that I wanted to be here and I loved to bank.

I stayed up until 3AM writing a thank-you card to every person in my group that I had worked with. I wrote a card to every intern, every analyst, every associate, and most of the VPs. I didn't write to any of the MDs except for my mentor. It took a long time, but you would not believe how well that went over the next day. Every single person in the group came in the morning to find a Thank-you card sitting on their keyboard. So many people came over to my desk just to say how much they appreciated the card.

I treated each card like I do emails: if you're going to write a bunch of people, take the time to write each person an individualized letter instead of spamming out the same message to everybody. I tried to be personal and specific with each person, and the results were amazing. Many of the analysts pinned up my card on their wall and thanked me numerous times. It's amazing how just saying "Thanks" can be so effective. And the greatest thing is that I really was grateful for how much they taught me and helped me get through the summer. It's hard saying goodbye to people that you've spent about 80-120 hours a week with for the last 8 weeks.

So on Friday morning I came in wearing my favorite tie. I didn't really talk to anybody; I just went to my desk and thought about the summer. At 9:45 I had my review so I went up to the conference room where my staffer and an HR girl were sitting. I walked in and the first thing the staffer said was, "Well you've done a great job this summer and we'd like to extend an offer for you to come back full-time next year." I was floored! I expected that they would talk about my strengths and weaknesses, then at the end tell me the decision.

So for the rest of the time in there they just asked me about what they could do to get me to sign the offer. They told me that there will be a "Sell day" where they fly everybody back to NYC and basically wine and dine you and try to get you to sign the offer. I told them I would think about it and let them know soon what I was going to do.

In the mid-summer review, they read many specific comments that my reviewers had made about things I had done well, but in this review they didn't even tell me any of the comments. Well I take that back. I was told that one of the questions on the review sheet was something like, "This person performed at the level of: 1) Below summer intern 2) Summer intern 3)First-year analyst 4)Second-year analyst" They told me that every one of my reviewers put me as either a first- or second-year level. It was funny to hear that because I am so obviously below all of the first and second years, but that's how people saw it I guess.

The told me some other good and flattering things about how I had done really well relative to my peers, but all that didn't really matter. The most important thing to me was that I had an offer! In these markets, which are the toughest to get a job in in the last 10-15 years, it is HUGE to have an offer.

I'm staying in New York for a few more days to meet with people at other banks and to just kind of feel out some other options, but it is a tough market and some banks aren't really even looking to bring anyone else on. Not that I'm too concerned because my group that I would go back to is top on the street at what they do, but it's always good to play it safe and just find out if there are other opportunities.

Well this has been a long post and I'm sorry it's been a while since I last wrote. I did it! The internship is over and I have an offer. Of course there are many things that I could have done better but I feel like I learned a ton and I came away a better person. In the next few days I'll keep posting about how things are going with meeting other banks and how I'm going about that process, since if you want to get a job next year you'll probably have to do something very similar this coming fall/winter. I'll also be posting some of the lessons I've learned and other things like that.

On Friday after I got the offer I just kind of hung out the rest of the day. Well, I also did some random jobs for associates that were still working, but for the most part I just printed out different presentations that I wanted to keep and packed up all my stuff. I ended up staying in the office until 8:00PM even though the other interns left long before that. It was just sad to leave and I knew I was going to miss it. All the analyst came together when I said I was going to leave and we kind of just talked about some of the fun stuff we had done this summer. I told them all what I had really appreciated about each one of them, then hugged everybody and walked away. It was weird leaving, but I'm happy. I'm going to have lunch with the second-term interns and the analysts from my group this coming Wednesday, so I will get to see them all again.

On Saturday I slept in until 1PM. It was amazing. I've never slept that much in my entire life, but it felt so good to not do anything all day long. My body is worn out but now I have the rest of the summer to just relax.

So the internship is over. I hope this blog has been helpful in some way to get a look at what it's like to be an intern. Like I said I'll keep posting and if you have any other questions about my experience, just post a comment and I'll respond. Thanks for reading!

Long Night's Work

2008-07-08T14:19:00.002-04:00

For the past three days I have been getting killed on this book. One analyst described what we were going through as "the gutter of investment banking." On Saturday it started. We basically just started creating a book for a meeting on Tuesday. We worked on it for a few hours Saturday and made plans to keep going through the weekend.

On Sunday I went to church and then had to come straight to work. I was there from about 11:00 am to 10:00 pm. All we were doing was aggregating information. We had to do about 10 different company profiles, accretion/dilution scenarios, shareholder information sheets, and financial data sheets. I was working with a new associate to the group. It was his first book so he was extra sensative to everything. He would have us check, re-check, then re-check again every single calculation we put into the book. Then he would have us recalculate it by hand.

Monday came along and we just went through the process: make changes, print out book, find new things to update/change/add/delete, make changes, print, etc. ad infinitum. Throw in there an occasional print off and delivery to the VP. After the VP looks things over he decides he wants to add another company in the mix, so we pull the financials, build the models, get the data, and put it in the book.

Then the VP looks again and decides that he wants to change the order that the comps are in. So you have to go back and re-format and arrange the entire book so that company #8 is now company #2 and things like that. It's just a tedious process. It wouldn't have been so bad, but the associate was constantly breathing down my neck and was really paranoid that one of the numbers wouldn't tie. We literally flipped the book over 20 times. That is about 5x more than I have EVER flipped a book. I've made books that were well over 90 pages long and this far and away exceeded anything I've done before. This guy was just excessive.

We basically built the book three times because when we were done (this was at about 11:00 at this point) he said, "Ok we're doing well. Now I want you to read every single page of the book to check for errors, grammatical changes, or anything else you might notice. I want you to have an opinion about this book when you're through." The crazy thing was that we had already flipped the entire book together multiple times and hadn't found anything. To "flip" a book just means to go through page by page looking for errors and correcting marks that someone else has made.

We continued to change little things, re-calculate numbers, and re-read slides until finally at 3:45 AM I told him that if we didn't send off the books to production we wouldn't have them printed in time for the meeting in the morning. We sent them off and I was getting ready to go home and sleep for a few hours when he said, "Ok I need you to stay here until you have flipped the printed books." So I stayed at the firm with another analyst and just waited until 6:30 when the books were finished. We finally got the books, flipped them, and put them on his desk. He had asked us to come in at 8:30 this morning to flip the books with him one last time (this is about flip #24 or 25 looking at EVERY page). I got home at 7:15, ironed my shirt and took a 15 minute nap, then came to work.

Needless to say it was a long night. In the end it wasn't so bad. It felt pretty inefficient the way we did things, but at least I can say with 300% surity that every single number in that book ties and is correct. It's kind of sad that I know the order of all 93 pages.

I guess if I had to pick a way to go out my last week this would be it. I'm not trying to complain about working long. I didn't mind that. I just didn't understand why we had to do things the way we did. But, as an intern, you don't ask those questions. You just do it with a good attitude and pretend like you couldn't be happier if you just won the lotto. The analyst I was with was really cool, and we had some good conversations while we waited for the books. It was a pretty good night.

2008-07-06T21:38:00.002-04:00

So for the Fourth of July I worked for a few hours in the morning and afternoon. An associate that just came into our group from another group in the bank is on his first deal. He is really paranoid about his first book because he wants to make a good impression on the senior people in the group, so he basically has been hand-checking every calculation in the book.

It's been crazy because for every number I put in he wants to know where it came from, how it was calculated, and why I did it that way. It makes for a solid book, but when you're the lowest guy on the wrung and the associate wants more and more work done, you end up working a LONG time just checking and re-checking the numbers. Today is Sunday and I put another 8 hours in on this book before we sent it off to the Vice President.

One of the things that I worked on today was company profiles. This is something I've done a lot of as an intern. Basically you put together a profile of the business segments, put historical and other financial data together with projections, pull shareholder info (basically find out who the top 10 shareholders are and how much they hold), and make a few charts with historical price data. It's about three or four slides per company, with six or seven companies in the book. You use it as a backup for your comps.

One of the hard things about scrubbing the numbers in a book is that you pull numbers from a lot of different sources, but they all have to be the same throughout the book. It makes sense that if you look on page 25 and see that estimated EBITDA for 2008 is $435, that on page 68 the EBITDA number should also be $435. The problem is that on the first page you calculated it yourself using 10-Ks and Qs and projections based on historical trends, then on the other page you take it from research reports. Basically it's tough because you have to figure out what the research analyst did to get his number and then reconcile that with your own numbers. It's a time-consuming project but it has to be done to make it perfect.

The 4th of July was great because I got to see a really good fireworks show. It rained a little, but it didn't matter. I met up with my other intern friend out here and we went down to the water. We watched the fireworks then went out with some other guys that he works with to hang out. We don't drink, but the other guys do so we went to a bar and just talked about our different experiences at different banks. It was really interesting to hear the similarities and differences between the different banks.

Yesterday I actually got tickets to see Wicked. I didn't win the lottery that they have going there, but some girl that won ended up giving me her ticket because she couldn't use it. It was awesome - I was on the front row in the middle and could see everything just fine. It was cool to see the faces of the actors and catch the nuances on stage that you miss from the back row.

Well it was a good weekend and now I'm going into my last week. Weird. Wish me luck!

Secret Sauce

2008-07-04T01:27:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was a good day for me. One of the four guys from my school that are at Lehman Brothers working full-time called me up and asked me to have lunch with him. He said that HR had called him and said that my reviews were really great, that he had $50 dollars, and that he should take me out to lunch and "sell the firm." Sounds good to me!

We went to an awesome Chinese restaurant and just talked about a lot of different things. He gave me a lot of great advice and answered a lot of "off the record" questions I had about the firm and what to do if/when I got an offer.

Later on last night, we had a meeting with all of the summer interns. They had us sit five or six to a table, with two or three empty chairs as well. Then they had two or three people from every industry (coverage) group just spend about 8 minutes at each table to tell us about their group and why it was the best at the firm. It was a lot like I imagine speed dating to be. I really liked hearing about different groups in the firm. I was really interested in the private equity groups, as well as real estate and retail/consumer. In the end though, I'm really glad that I ended up in the natural resources group.

At the end of the meeting they told us that instead of waiting until the end of the summer, they will tell us if we have an offer or not in our final interview next Friday! That was a big surprise, but it was also a relief. I don't want to have to wait all summer to find out. So on my last day I'll get my final review, then find out if I have an offer to come back. It's pretty much an open offer without a specific time frame, which is also really nice. The offer won't be for a specific group, but just to come back to IBD.

In the fall the incoming analysts will visit different groups for about a week trying to figure out what group they want to be in. Then, similar to how you get a group as an intern, you put your top choices. The group also lists their top choices, and then HR does the match making. Obviously if you were in a group as an intern and you did well, you have a very good chance of getting back in. If I come back, I will most definitely be in this group again. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

So the past few days I have been really busy with a few projects. I feel like I'm really "getting" it now. The analysts and associates I work for don't have to walk me through everything any more. They just fill me in on what's going on, give me an assignment, and expect me to go get it done. It's cool to feel like I'm adding value and am putting out good work without having to be walked through it. If we need to spread 10 comps, I can do it. If we need to put together some valuations for a football field, I can do it. Of course I have a TON to learn and pick up, but it just feels good to actually know what's going on in a small way and to be able to contribute instead of always being a liability to the group.

Today was a lot of wait, then jam, then wait kind of stuff. We had to wait for markets to close because we wanted our book to be as of today's stock prices. So as soon as markets closed we started to update the book. Because a lot of things in the book depend on stock prices, it took a really long time to make sure that all the numbers in the entire book "footed" and that multiples were the same on page 10 as they were on 85. We worked through the process and fixed things that a summer associate had screwed up, and finally we got it done. One of the analysts took me to Starbucks to thank me for doing a good job this summer. It's weird for everybody to be saying goodbye when we still have a week left.

One last cool thing I did today. I went out and got my shoes shined. If you've never done it, try it! You walk away feeling like you are an MD. It's crazy how much a $2.50 shoe shine can do for your confidence. I should have done that in week 1 so that I would have just killed the internship from the start. Seriously before my next interview I'm getting a shoe shine. It's my new secret sauce.

Comps

2008-07-01T21:07:00.002-04:00

So today my junior mentor took me out to lunch at a really nice restaurant. It was extremely good - I couldn't believe food could taste like that. For the two of us it cost about $150, all paid by the firm. Nice little present to the summer intern.

Today I spread comps for the deal that I'm working on. It actually took a long time because these companies get really complicated with the way they handle certain kinds of debt. Also, they are MLPs which means that they have a strange corporate structure that has to be handled differently than normal companies. I had to spread about 20 companies, so it took me a really long time.

When I would start on a new company, I would basically pull the 10-K and most recent 10-Q. Then I go through the financials, filling in all the information. The reason you need the K and the Q is because there's an LTM (latest twelve months) section. You basically take the 10-K number, add the 1Q 10-Q number, then subtract the previous year 1Q 10-Q number. This leaves with you with the previous 12 months' number.

I also had to calculate EBITDA and about 10 other metrics like leverage ratios and solvency ratios. For each company I had to also pull research reports to find analyst estimates for 2009-2011. A lot of what you do as an intern is finding numbers and plugging them into Excel. After pulling all the data I aggregated the comparable metrics into one place and put it into presentation format. It felt good to finish up a project in one day. Right as I was finishing, I got more work to do. I decided to take a break to write in this since it's been a few days.

It's really strange that I only have two weeks left. I decided that I was not going to waste a second of the next two weeks. I'm going to rebuild a merger model and an LBO model just so I'll be familiar with it. I don't usually have spare time, but I figure that if I stay an hour or two more every day I can get it done.

It's crunch time.

Kicked out of . . . McDonald's?

2008-06-29T03:51:00.002-04:00

Today was a good day. I sold my furniture in the morning. It actually was a pretty big pain because I had to dismember my loft bed before the guy came over to get the furniture. Then, when he was here, as we were taking the last parts of the bed down, one of the metal pieces of the bed slipped and flew right into the wall. It broke a hole in the wall about 2 inches in diameter. SO now I'll probably have to pay for that.

I ended up offering to ride out to Queens with the guy to help him unload the stuff since it was a pain to load it up. Do a good turn daily, right? It made for a long morning, but at least I got rid of my furniture and I don't have to worry about that any more. It also means I'm sleeping on the hardwood floor tonight. Oh well, it's only one night and only the second time of my internship that I'll have to sleep on the ground.

At work today I got staffed on a buy side deal that is really interesting. It's looking that I'll be working in the model so that is cool too. The two analysts on the deal told me they wanted me on it because they knew I was "the most capable intern" to be on this deal. Always good to hear when the internship is winding down.

In the evening I met up with a good friend who is out here visiting for the weekend. We had some great Indian food, then went to McDonald's for some ice cream. This guy that I was with is probably the smartest kid as far as investing goes that I've ever met. He just knows TONS of stuff about all sorts of different things, so it's always really interesting to sit down and talk with him. We talked about everything from pair trades and double short ETFs to the investment banking club at school and how we want to help out rising juniors next year.

After a while of talking a security guard came over and said, "We have a table limit here, and since you've been here for like an hour and a half, we're going to have to ask you to leave in about 10 minutes." We looked at him like, "Is this a joke?" But he was serious. It was just so weird because there were tons of empty tables around, so it wasn't like he needed to clear some space for customers. He just said that we had been there long enough unless we wanted to buy some more food. Since when does McDonald's have a table limit? He came back a few minutes later and told us we needed to leave. I was still just shocked at this, but it was actually pretty funny. So yes, I have been kicked out of McDonald's by a security guard because I was there too long after ordering my food. Awesome.

We went and met up with another friend and went downtown to hang out. At about 1:30 I decided to head home because I have to move tomorrow and I'm tired. I got on the subway and started heading back to Harlem. After a few stops, I thought it would be good to switch to an express train. Bad move. I waited 30 minutes for the next train to come. Then, when it finally came, I kind of fell asleep. I woke up and suddenly forgot which train I was on and, thinking I was still on the first train, got off at 96th street because the 2 train doesn't go to where I need to go. Well right as the train pulled away I realized that I had in fact been on the A train, which would have taken me right to where I needed to be. So I had to wait another considerable amount of time before the next A train came to get me home. It was a LONG ride home.

So it's been fun in Harlem. I never really saw any crazy stuff, but I saw today that it has the highest crime rate in New York. But even though it's a tough neighborhood, how many people in Harlem can say they are so crazy and "hard" that they had to be escorted out of McDonald's by a security guard? That's right Harlem. Eat your heart out.

P.S. Can you tell it's four in the morning and I'm not thinking quite right.

Bonus Time

2008-06-27T17:05:00.002-04:00

So it's bonus season for the first year analysts. It's pretty much all they talk/think/dream about these days. I think the analysts here actually made out pretty well, especially in my group. Needless to say everyone has been in a GREAT mood today. I would be happy too if I made well over $100K my first year out of college.

The second- and third-year analysts finished today. It is really weird that they are gone now. Since our group isn't huge it's like half of the analysts in the group are gone. I'm pretty sad actually - these were some great people. I was thinking today about how much I've learned from these analysts in 6 weeks. It's crazy how much you can take in just by being around smart people. We went out to lunch as a group and I felt like I did when I graduated from high school. It was weird to think that I'll probably never see a lot of these people again.

I'm not sure how this is going to affect my work. On one hand it seems like we would have more work to do since there are fewer analysts, but on the other hand it might be harder to get a lot of work because now there are more summers per analyst. Hopefully it will be the first and I'll just be slammed for these last three weeks. It's crazy to think that the internship is coming to an end! Luckily I still have a lot of time to learn and get work done.

Well it's going to be a light weekend. The group has been busy and now it's time to do the presentations. Last night I was here until 4:30am because I had two projects that had to be done by this morning. I picked up 12 books at 3:00 am, flipped them, then sent them in a car to a VP's house so he could get them before leaving tomorrow. In the meantime I was scouring through SEC filings and research reports trying to figure out what adjustments I needed to make to 9 different companies' EBITDA and EV to reflect the purchase of new vessels. Exciting stuff to be doing at 2AM.

After many hours of pulling data together and putting it into one place, we finally got it all together and the analyst I was working with told me to go home. When I got home I had to take out the garbage because it only comes on certain days, so by the time I actually got into bed it was already starting to get light outside again. I got up at 8:30 and went straight back into the office. I guess this is what it means to really be "living the dream."

Good morning

2008-06-27T04:51:00.002-04:00

Well it's 5:00 am and I just got home. It was a long night tonight. Too bad. The other analysts and interns went out to say goodbye to the leaving second-years, but I had to stay and work until 4:30. I'll write more about it tomorrow, but for now I'm going to bed!

Day in review

2008-06-25T22:46:00.003-04:00

Maybe I'm feeling guilty for not posting every day, so I'm going to post three today. This is just an update of my day today, because I don't want to lost sight of the reason I started this blog - to give a look at what interns actually do every day.

Today was SLOW. All of the books got finished up last night, and today the teams are out around the country making pitches, doing road shows, and generating revenue for the firm. I, on the other hand, was back in New York with not much to do for once. So I got a hair cut. Man it was nice. This really old lady gave me a scalp massage before she cut my hair and it was amazing. Kinda weird, but really nice for relieving stress.

This afternoon I helped one of the second-year analysts pack up his stuff. He's leaving to go to Private Equity next week and is pretty much checking out. I also made some updates on a book that's due next week. It wasn't much, just creating graphs of the historical stock price for the past three years and adding in annotations of important events that have happened in that time frame. I also worked on adjusting Revenue and EBITDA numbers for a shipping company to reflect the fact that they bought ships partway through the year but were accounting for the debt as if they had held the ships since January 1. It was kind of complicated because they are not a US company, but at least it gave me something to do for a few hours.

The interns mobilized and got lunch for everybody today. It was a big ordeal to get 30 lunch orders correct, but we pulled it off. One of the associates still owes me $8.50, but he is kinda crazy so I'll give it a day before I bring it up with him.

Tonight I talked with two of the analysts about recruiting and what they are planning on doing after they are done with their two years. They both have offers to stay for a third year, but they aren't sure if they'll stay or go to PE or a hedge fund.

I spent some time reading research reports and catching up on the general news of the nation. Lots of interesting stuff happening these days. That was about it. The intern that sits next to me who is from Trinidad & Tobago taught me how to play cricket using a baseball bat (a cool deal toy if I ever saw one - it's a real bat!) and a rubber ball we found. I left at 9:45 and came home.

I'm getting kicked out of my apartment on June 30th so I'm trying to sell my furniture before I leave. It's a stressful thing to do mid-internship. I would definitely recommend that you make sure you can stay in whatever apartment you are in for the summer for the ENTIRE time you need it instead of having to worry about getting another place to stay right in the middle of your internship. Live and learn, right?

Well things are going well, and now that it's 11:00pm I'm going to go drop off my laundry around the corner. Peace out.

More Q&A

2008-06-25T22:34:00.003-04:00

I like when you ask questions! Here are a few more:

"How many non-native speakers are there in your department? Which kind of expectations lie upon them, in comparison to the other interns?"

In my group there are quite a few non=native speakers. I work closely with a guy from Quebec whose native language is French. There are quite a few people in my group who are from South America and either speak Portuguese or Spanish. I also work with three people whose native language is Russian. So I have a pretty diverse group. I think that actually they have the same expectations that all of us do to perform and to get work done. They are expected to be able to read/write just like the rest of us. It's not like we have to produce huge documents or anything, but you need to be able to describe things in bullet point form and put your ideas onto a slide.

For Cally, you can email me at lifeofasummerintern@gmail.com, or just post your questions in the comments and I'll respond.

Lastly:
"I'm curious whether having a finance background is directly advantageous for performing well during the internship/full time."

Having a finance background is by no means necessary for the job. Probably more than half the people I work with don't have a finance background. BUT, having a finance background is of course directly advantageous in this job, because that's what you're doing. I feel like I am ahead of a lot of the other interns because I know a lot about finance and I don't get lost when we start talking about deferred taxes and merger arbitrage.

I've taken two introductory accounting classes and a financial accounting class, two financial management classes, an investments class, an asset management class, and a class about investment banking. I've also taken an econ class and a few other business-related classes. I think that the more accounting classes you can take (not tax accounting, but more like corporate finance-related stuff) the better for this job, since all you do is deal with financial statements.

The non-core school

2008-06-25T22:32:00.001-04:00

I just want to make a few comments about what it’s like coming from a “non-core” school. All of the investment banks have certain target schools that they always actively recruit from. They go on campus and make presentations, then come and interview on campus for spots in the internship. I did not come from a core school, so I want to talk a little about what it was like to get an internship.

If you are not on the core list, it means that you will have to work pretty hard to get a spot at a bank. You have to somehow prove to them that even though you don’t go to a school in the Ivy League, you are still a smart kid with lots of desire and skills to be an investment banker. I think the biggest disadvantage besides not having interviews on campus is just the fact that you have to overcome a stigma that many people have of not being from a well-known business school. But, if you are really smart and know what you’re talking about, you can impress people and still end up in a good spot.

I flew out to New York on my own dime four times in the year leading up to interviews just so I could meet people at different banks and figure out what it is that investment bankers do. I called tons of bankers and sent hundreds of emails. And it wasn’t just me. Everyone from my school who got an internship at an investment bank flew out to New York at least once before interviews started just to network and meet people. If they don’t come to you, you have to go to them.

This really did make a difference and I feel like it proved to people in New York that I was meeting with that I really was serious about this job and I really want it. Plus, it helped me a lot to understand how banks are set up, what analysts do, and how you get from Lehman Brothers in mid-town to Goldman Sachs downtown and back to Morgan Stanley without going the wrong direction on a subway train.

Some banks are pretty closed to outside recruiting, especially in tough markets. Others seem to really emphasize finding the best people regardless of what school they come from. No matter what though, you just have to get your name out there, make sure your resume is perfect, and make sure you can sell yourself and tell your story in 5 minutes or less.

I work with quite a few people who didn’t go to “core” schools, but honestly most of the people I work with went to the Ivy League. Summer Associates just joined my group last week and they are from the following schools: two from Penn (Wharton), one from Harvard Business School, one from Duke, and two from NYU (Stearn). So even with the MBA students it’s mostly just people from the top-10 B-schools. It’s possible to get in from a non-core school, but it’s a lot of work and time to get in the door.

Demographics

2008-06-23T00:23:00.002-04:00

Question from Megan:

As a girl, I'm curious--roughly what proportion of your colleagues are female? Do you know any female bankers who are married and/or have families?

Also: what's the dress code in your group?

Answer:
Actually I was pretty surprised how diverse it is out here. There are the same number of female interns in my group as male interns. Full-time, there is probably about a 2-to-1 ratio of guys to girls. So yeah - probably 33% are girls. The other thing is that the more senior you go, the fewer girls there are. I don't know any female bankers that are married or have families. I'm sure they exist, but I've never met or even heard of a female banker with a family.

Dress code pretty much depends on the bank. When I interviewed at all the different banks this is something that I noticed. Where I work it's business formal every day except Fridays (during the summer), and I like it that way. It helps me to remember that I'm supposed to be getting work done and not messing around. I know other banks are a lot more casual too, so it just depends on where you are.

Long Walk

2008-06-22T23:48:00.002-04:00

So tonight when I left the office I didn't feel like taking a subway home so I decided to start walking. I walked for a really long time and got to Central Park. I decided it would be cool to see how long the park really is, so I walked all the way along the park. That's from 59th street to 110th street. It was actually really nice to walk up there. You can tell that the apartments on the west side of the park are occupied by really rich people.

So it was really crazy because as soon as I crossed 110th street at the top of the park, it was like walking into a totally different world. Everything was dirty and run down and I was a minority. It was crazy how quickly things changed.

All in all I walked about 100 blocks. I didn't make it all the way to 142nd where I live, because after a while things got really sketchy and a guy started following me so I just got on the subway at 112th street. It was like 11:30 at night and I didn't want to take any chances.

The lease on my apartment is up June 30th so that means I'll have to be leaving and going to a new apartment. I think it will be kind of a pain to have to move right in the middle of my internship, but since I'm only paying $350 a month in rent, I can't complain.

Back in Action

2008-06-20T16:05:00.002-04:00

Well sorry it's been so long. It's been a good week. A few good friends from BYU were out here this week for training before starting at a different office. It was really great to see somebody familiar out here. We had a good time talking about how to excel in our internships and I think they're both going to be really good. One of them started a blog similar to this one and you can check it out at ibdwestcoastintern.blogspot.com. Good stuff.

So today we had a (mandatory) volunteer service project. It was really fun actually. We went out to the Bronx to a school and taught kids about malaria and other diseases around the world. They made flags, posters, and played basketball. For each shot they made, the bank donated a certain amount of money to help fight disease. It was cool to interact with hundreds of 7th and 8th graders from the area. They were really energetic and lively, and it was very fun to be out of the bank and doing good for other people.

The other thing that everybody talks about right now is compensation. This is the time of year when the analysts find out their bonuses, and when somebody from JP Morgan in London sent out an email telling what their bonuses were for the first-third years, it was immediately forwarded all over the street. I got this email from three different people, and the email chain had people from JP Morgan, UBS, Lehman, Credit Suisse, Goldman, Lazard, and other places. I of course perpetuated the chain and forwarded it on to another bank. Pretty crazy how interconnected the Street is. Most first-year analysts have about a $60-65K base with anywhere from a $35-80K bonus depending on where you are and how you do. It's a lot of money for your first year out of college.

Well I'm going to get back into the day-to-day flow of things and the posting will be daily again. Sorry for the hiatus. Back to banking!

One more question...

2008-06-15T18:23:00.002-04:00

Another question:

What I would like to ask you is, how often you encounter people with no educational background in business/finance? Did you meet any career changers so far?

I think it is fairly common for non-business majors to end up in I-banking. Generally they are very smart people and learn the finance quickly after starting here. Actually most of my group did not study business in college, but they are all extremely bright and know a ton about how companies work.

The first associate I worked with out here used to be in consulting. He worked as a consultant for a major firm for a few years, then went to business school and wanted to switch to banking. It's really common for people to change careers from consulting to banking. I think it's generally harder for somebody like an accountant or engineer to switch over without doing an MBA, but I'm sure it happens.

Attention to Detail

2008-06-14T14:56:00.002-04:00

I just want to comment on what "attention to detail" really means. I thought that I understood it coming in, but that's something that I've actually learned a lot about.

At the start of the internship, and back when I was interviewing, I figured that I had good attention to detail. I could pay attention to things, double-check numbers, and make sure that things looked right. I figured that I was good at getting things right and that I would be just fine.

I guess I just never actually thought about what it means to have attention to detail until I got out here. Watching the other analysts, I've learned what they think it means. For example, every bank has a certain format that they use for everything they do in Excel and PowerPoint. We always have "Total" cells double underlined and single overlined, bold, and the lines are in grey. The first cell in a column of many cells will have a dollar sign, while the others won't. When we are listing multiples, the "sales" multiples will have two decimal places, while the margin multiples will have one. These little things are easy to miss, and I've made many formatting mistakes since I've been here. But these analysts don't miss a thing - they take one look at a slide and immediately see when things aren't in the right format. This is attention to detail.

I was working with an analyst on making a chart and putting it into a presentation. Before the formatting, the analyst checked every cell's formula to make sure the correct cells were referenced. He checked the data in the cells against the data in the 10-K. It was crazy - it was like re-doing the work, just faster. After he had gone through cell by cell to format everything correctly, he put it into Powerpoint, printed it out, then went back through and checked everything again. For some reason when you print out pages and look at them, mistakes pop out a lot quicker than looking at it on the screen. He changed a few things, re-read the slide a few more times, then printed it out again to check it again. When he was satisfied, we put it into an email to send out to everybody.

It took him a minute to write out the email, and then he re-read the email probably 3-4 times to make sure it was ok and nothing was misspelled or out of place. He put the people he was sending it to in order of seniority and alphabetically. After all of this was checked, he attached the slide. He then opened the link to make sure the slide opened ok when it was clicked. Finally he sent off the email.

Before the internship I would probably have just put the slide together, thrown together an email, then sent it off. More than once I've sent emails to my friends before where I am supposed to attach something and I send it without attaching it. This just wouldn't fly out here. That's what it means to have attention to detail.

You don't make those kinds of mistakes because you double and triple-check everything before you pass it off to somebody else. You print it out and look at it to make sure it doesn't print weird. You make sure that if you say on Slide 3 that LTM EBITDA is $245.9, that on the comps page it also says that LTM EBITDA is $245.9.

All of this is vital to doing well as an analyst. You don't get a ton of responsibility on deals, so the parts that you "own" need to be perfect. It's almost like everybody out here has OCD and they are almost paranoid to turn something in that has a "bust" in it. It's funny, but also good to get to that level.

Q&A

2008-06-14T14:36:00.005-04:00

Today I'm going to answer a few questions that I've received about what it's like out here.

1) Do analysts go out together ? If they do, how often ? Where (bar or club) ?

The answer is yes, but I think it really depends on the group that you’re in. Each bank has its own “culture” or “feel” to it. This on a global sense is very true. You can get an overall feel for the different banks by talking to people who work there and visiting the banks. But within each bank there are tons of groups, each with its own sub-culture. Some groups like to “work hard and play hard,” while some emphasize face-time.

My group is definitely one that likes to go out together. We have a family feel in our group and everybody works really well together. Every Friday our group goes out for drinks together to a different bar in the city. I don’t drink, but I go anyway because it’s important to be a part of the group. A few we interns from my group have gone out together to different places in the city. So the answer is yes – I think most groups do go out together.

2) Do you sometimes talk with analysts about non business related topics ? If you do, when do you do it ? (lunch I guess)

We talk all the time about non-business related topics. Definitely at lunch, although a lot of the time at lunch we just talk about people in our group and stories that have happened. During the day you often don’t have time to be telling stories or talking about the NBA finals because you are jammed and have a deadline to meet, but when things slow down all people do is talk about stuff outside of the deals we’re working on. I’ve had conversations about French poetry, Big Brown, traveling in Greece, religion, and tons of other things.

3) What are your relations with the other interns ? You don't seem to talk with them much!

I guess I didn’t realize that I don’t talk about the other interns too much. There are six of us in the group and we all get along really well. The other interns are from east-coast schools and are all pretty sharp. Not all of them have finance backgrounds, but most do. I sit right next to a guy from Trinidad and he is awesome. All of the interns usually eat lunch together every day, and like I said, we’ve gone out as a group of interns a few times.

It doesn’t feel too much like we’re competing for full-time jobs against each other. I think it would be detrimental to have that kind of mindset because you would always be out to get people. Instead we help each other a lot and rely on each other a lot. I feel like if we just do well and work hard, each of us could get an offer to come back. We probably won’t all end up back here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see most of these kids back here a year from now.

4) Do you sometimes work together with another interns on a project ? Or is it always 1 analyst + 1 intern ?

The group size depends on the size of the deal and the amount of time it takes to get through things. Usually it’s just 1 Vice President, 1 Associate, 1 Analyst, and 1 Intern. On all of the projects I’ve worked on it’s just been me and the analyst or me and the associate working on the parts that I’m given. I think there have been deals where more than one intern worked on it, but it’s not how it normally is done.

5) What kind of guy is the typical analyst ? More like a social person, more like a hard-worker who stays focused and doesnt go out ?How about their humor ? Do they often joke ? Can you make jokes or is it not a good idea ?

A typical analyst around here is smart, a quick learner, funny, outgoing, and pretty type-A personality. There are very few people who are introverted and shy – banking is a pretty open lifestyle. People joke around all the time, but I think that also is a function of what is normal for the group you’re in.

So hopefully that adds a little color to the life out here. I'm not doing too much today, just checking some work to make sure the numbers are right. It will be a nice weekend.

More Competition

2008-06-13T19:04:00.002-04:00

Today the Summer Associates arrived. A little more on that later. I came in early this morning to finish a book for an MD. It turned out pretty well beacuse I did the whole book by myself, made some changes, and hand-delivered the book to the MD. He actually remembered my name and we talked for a while. The MD's are all pretty cool guys, they just don't have the time to spend talking with summer interns.

Later this morning that same MD came over to my desk and asked me to come up with a few more slides for him. It was good that he came straight to me instead of going through an analyst. Hopefully this will continue to happen.

All of the analysts (except for one who was slammed) went out to lunch today with us interns. We had to keep it short because everybody is busy, but it was fun to be out in the beautiful weather as a group. It turns out that I just ordered last night from the same place we went to for lunch, but I still liked it.

So the summer associates are here - all of them from major MBA programs. I probably won't be working with them very much. They are going to be depending on the analysts a lot to teach them the ropes because the real associates still have to do their jobs and don't have time to sit around and train all day. The analysts don't have time either, but it doesn't matter - they just make time!

Well tongiht all I need to do is put some slides together for a pitch for next Wednesday, so it's not a high-pressure situation. It should be a pretty light weekend for once!

Mid-Summer Reviews

2008-06-13T01:24:00.003-04:00

Well today I had my half-way point review. I came in and sat down with my staffer and a woman from HR. About a week ago I was asked to submit to HR a list of 5-6 people that I had worked most closely with. It was kind of hard because I've only been here for three weeks, but I just put down all the analysts and associates that I've worked for, and that was it.

So today the staffer went through five areas that I was rated on by each person. It turns out that everybody thinks I'm doing really well. I was pretty surprised at some of the comments. I knew that BYU prepared me well to be here, but the comments were things like, "top of the class in finance/accounting skills" and "very smart - picks up things quickly." It was all good news. Some of the things that they really liked about what I've done are things like not making the same mistake twice (the staffer said this one is HUGE), not asking too many questions, being proactive in seeking out work without being annoying, and having a passion for the work. I was surprised that the analysts saw all that in my work, but I definitely wasn't going to say it wasn't true!

As far as things to work on, the staffer said he didn't have anything for me to work on. He said, "You've set the bar for your second half really high, but I expect you to at least perform as well and hopefully much better than you did in the first half. You still don't really know anything compared to where you could be, so keep asking questions, seeking work, and we'll see you back here full-time!" He warned me not to get complacent just because I did well in the first half. He said, "You still have half the internship to prove yourself, so keep doing what you've been doing and you'll be just fine." I was pretty happy with how it went, and I'm determined to do better for the second half.

I'm feeling a little better after constantly downing Dayquil. I'm pretty sure the problem is lack of sleep, but can't help that much. Tonight I was working on a project and was wrapping things up at about 8:30 when another analyst that I work for a lot asked if I could help him with something. I hesitated, then thought about what the staffer said, and decided I would do it. It ended up being a good thing because he basically asked me to work through a deck on my own. He went to a meeting for three hours and I worked through it. He of course checked all my work when I got back, but it was cool that he trusted me to get the job done on my own. It wasn't anything too hard - just comps and a few charts, but I like the feeling of ownership over my work.

I left the office at about 1:15 and have to be back at 7:30 to finish up a book that the Creative Department is modifying for me tonight. Well, the internship is halfway over already and it's going really fast! I'm looking forward to seeing some of the interns from school and full-timers coming up in the next few weeks at other banks. Good luck everybody!

Sick

2008-06-11T23:54:00.002-04:00

Well this will be quick because I'm sick. My body is rebelling because I won't let it sleep. Tomorrow we have mid-internship reviews. It will be good to hear some feedback on how I've done so far and what kinds of things I can work on. As far as I can tell things will be mostly positive, so I'm not too worried.

I worked through the Accretion / Dilution model today. There was some crazy stuff in there, especially trying to calculate pro forma diluted shares while taking into account convertible notes. Good thing the analyst I was working with knew what he was doing . . . not. We kind of worked through that part together and hoped for the best. It was also too bad that the deal ended up being massively dilutive, but the company doesn't really care since it's a strategic deal.

Today I had lunch with another analyst and a VP. The VP paid for my lunch but not the analyst's. It was pretty funny/awkward. I gave the analyst a hard time later on about it. It pays to be an intern.

HOT

2008-06-11T00:22:00.002-04:00

So today it was over 100 degrees in New York City - pretty much miserable. I left the apartment at 7:45 and was instantly overheating. I can't believe how warm it has been the last three days. I can't sleep at all because I don't have AC or a fan. It's terrible. I guess tomorrow it's supposed to "only" be in the 80s. Thank goodness.

Today I think I finally really saw the fruits of the hard work I've done since I got out here. The analysts are starting to trust me more, and so today I had work all day long. This might sound like a bad thing, but when you're only here for eight weeks and your getting an offer is based upon the work that you do, you want to be working all the time and not just sitting around. I usually have things to work on, but lately the quality of the work has been increasing. Today none of the other interns were staffed (which is very rare), and I was working on two deals at once. It was stressful because both deal teams had deadlines and wanted me to be getting them their stuff right away, but it was also a good experience to work under some pressure and perform well.

I just got staffed on a live deal and was told tonight that I'm in charge of modeling the accretion/dilution. Sweet! Of course it will be checked over by the analyst and then the associate, so there's no chance that what I do will eventually come back to me, but it's cool to be the one building it out. This also came about because I took some initiative last week. I worked on an M&A deal and I asked the analyst I was working with to walk me through the Acc/Dil section of the model. He showed it to me and we talked about how it works, and that was it. Then I stayed late a few nights and re-built the accretion/dilution model from scratch to make sure that I knew how to do it and that I could actually see the moving parts coming together.

So today the analyst that I'm working with told me that he had heard that I rebuilt the acc/dil model and asked me if I felt like I could do it for real on this deal that we're doing. I told him that I knew I could do it (you always have to be confident in yourself even if you don't feel like you know what you're doing). So tomorrow I'll be working on some acc/dil. Cool stuff.

Thursday is my mid-way review. Basically they survey the people that you've worked with and then talk to you about what you've done well and what you can improve. I think that I already know what they'll say. I just need to pay even more attention to detail. I need to think, "What is the analyst going to have to do with this when I give it to him/her?" and then go and do that one-off task.

Well it's late and I have to be in early to get a book to an MD. He's pretty old-school and likes to just draw slides on a paper with a pencil and then say, "Make this happen." So with the crazier slides we usually ship it to the production people and they do it, since I don't have time to build out a multi-variable bubble graph, but the production people do it in their sleep. Anyway, the book is due by 8AM and I told the analyst he could sleep in and that I would take care of it. Sacrifice for the team.

Answering a few questions...

2008-06-09T14:48:00.002-04:00

One of you asked about Excel 2003 vs. 2007. To my knowledge nobody on the Street uses 2007 at all. It would really screw things up around here if we suddenly changed to 2007. Lots of the firms have Excel add-ins that are proprietary to the firms that work through 2003. For example, our firm has lots of custom shortcuts so that you can set cell formats in specific ways with one shortcut. It saves a lot of time and is pretty helpful. I don't think that the banks will be shifting to Excel 2007 any time soon.

As far as things that I wish I would have done more/less of to prepare for the internship, here are some thoughts:

MORE:
I wish that I would have done even more in Excel to learn the shortcuts and just be comfortable working in it. I actually did a lot of work and knew most of the shortcuts that we use here, which has been REALLY helpful and has set me apart from some of the other interns. But you can always do more to prepare. It's just good to know how to do things like group/ungroup columns and rows, navigate around cells/sheets/workbooks, and especially how to audit cells (things like F2, Alt [, Alt TUT, etc).

As far as learning finance and accounting, that's another thing you could never get enough of. They don't expect interns to know anything, but the more you know the easier your life is. If you know how to calculate EBITDA or find the diluted shares outstanding, you'll be able to just bust it out instead of asking an analyst how to do it. Then when they see that you know how to do it, they give you better stuff to work on. The Vault Guide is a good start, but it's only a start. Learn as much finance and accounting as you can and you won't be sorry.

Exercise! Since you work all the time out here, it's pretty hard to get time to go running or work out, so take advantage of that all you can before you come out. Seamless web is great but it's not good for the waistline to eat a $25 meal every night.

LESS:
PowerPoint. Basically everything I do in PowerPoint (which is a lot) is automated by the Firm's software. It wouldn't really help to become a whiz in PPT because you don't have to build the slides yourself anyway. You just do the calcs in Excel, then import it into PPT and use the Firmware to gin it up and make it look nice.

Financial Modeling. I have to be careful here because it is very important to know how a model works and what is behind it, but I'm talking about paying a ton of money to learn to build a simple DCF. It seemed like a really important thing to do before I came out here to learn how to build a DCF model. It's just funny now thinking back to that because you don't really get to just build a model from scratch as an intern unless you're just practicing. If you do work on a model, some analyst or associate has already been working on it for a while and just needs you to work on a specific part of it. I guess I can say that any experience working with financials, looking up 10-Ks and Qs, and then putting it into Excel is good practice. The models out here are way more complex than the ones I built at school, but I guess it was good practice.

Let me know if you have any other specific questions about the internship or life in NYC.

CFA > The Analyst

2008-06-09T14:27:00.002-04:00

Hey everybody. Sorry I haven't posted in a while - I took a day off (from posting - not the internship) for the CFA and then the internet in my apartment wasn't working over the weekend. I'm waiting for the research guys to send me back some information about past deals, so I have a few minutes to give an update of what's been going on for the past few days.

So the CFA Exam was a beast. I was stressed out because I hadn't studied as much as I would have liked to for such a major exam. I went on eBay two weeks ago to buy a calculator that is allowed for the exam, and it was supposed to come in 2-3 days. It never came. I borrowed one from one of the analysts here, but I only had one day to figure out how it works, so that was a little annoying as well.

We took the test in a huge auditorium at some events center down by Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. There must have been 3000-4000 people there all sitting for the Level I exam. Most of the people looked like they were in their 20's, but I saw quite a few peope who had to be over 40. I sat next to an Australian and a Romanian, so there was a good international showing.

So the exam was pretty tough, and I wish I would have studied the statistics stuff more. It seemed like there was a lot of calculating standard deviations and variances. I really have no idea what my overall score would be or if I will pass. I would say that on about 55-60% of the questions I felt confident that I had the right answer. On another 20-25% of the questions, I had it narrowed down to two chioces and I don't know if I chose correctly or not. on the remaining 15-25%, I either couldn't narrow it down to two or I just guessed because I had never heard of what they were asking about.

All in all I think that most people I talked to got nailed on the exam, and we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. After the test I went back to the office for a few hours and worked on some company profiles. It feels good not to have that test hanging over my head, and now I can just use my "free" time to re-build models. I'm working on a simple accretion/dilution model right now.

Late Night Jammin

2008-06-05T01:28:00.002-04:00

So it's 1:30 AM and I'm basically waiting on another analyst to finish one last page of a deck so I can get out of here. Things were pretty slow all day today until about 4PM, when I got staffed on a deal that has to be done tomorrow. I basically just had to profile some companies, gather financial data from 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and research reports (for the forward-looking estimates). The problem is that the formatting is sometimes really tricky to get just right. Little changes mess up the formatting and that's where I spent the majority of my time tonight. It's really frustrating when some Office program won't do what you think it's supposed to be doing.

I thought for a little while that tonight might be my first all-nighter, but it ended up that I got through the second half of pages much faster than the first. Once I figured out where to get the data and how to put it together, things went really fast.

I'm already getting faster at Excel navigation. It seems kind of funny to make a big deal of it, but seriously it saves you so much time not to use the mouse. About six months ago one of my friends and I decided to start only using Excel through the keyboard. That was a great decision. I learned tons of shortcuts that are really helping now. That's one area that I am WAY ahead of the other interns on. Of course, the bank does have its own special shortcuts which are really nice, but if you already know all the other shortcuts then learning a few more is no big deal. It is pretty amazing to watch the second-year analysts getting around in Excel. They go so fast that things just pop up on the screen - you can't even follow what they're doing.

Well I'm tired and I don't have much of anything important to write about, I just thought that since I have a few minutes I could write some things down while I wait. This is the second night in a row where I've been here pretty late. I can't complain though; I would much rather be busy than be sitting around out here. This is exactly what I want to be doing.

Craziness on Wall St.

2008-06-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

So Lehman Brothers has been hitting some hard times and it has made me reflect on how weird it is out here sometimes. When you think about Lehman or Bear Stearns, it's strange because for most of the bank, it's just business as usual. In the IBD nothing changes - you just keep on working and you have no idea that somewhere on some other floor there are traders trying to pull off hedges against your bank's huge mortgage-backed security exposure. You have no idea that your job is on the brink as you sit there and spread comps.

It's just crazy to think that at a place like Bear, all of the analysts felt like things were going well. Everybody looked busy, deals were getting done, pitches were being made. Then all of a sudden you start to hear that some crazy stuff is going on with lenders, hedge funds, short sellers, and everybody else. Before you know it, JP Morgan is there paying $2 per share and you're out of a job.

The traditional investment banking divisions are strong, but they don't bring in nearly as much revenue as the prop desks and trading departments do. Huge trades can bring in a ton of revenue, but they can also cause you to implode.

It's just weird to sit here and read about stuff going on at banks on the Street and realize that at any moment, somewhere in the bank, some trader could cost me my job, no matter how strong my group is or how many deals we're doing. What a crazy place this is!

Seamless Web

2008-06-04T01:14:00.002-04:00

Well it's 1:18 AM and I just got home. I guess tonight before I go to bed I'll write a little about Seamless Web - every analyst's best friend. First though, a quick run-down on the day.

Things for me were pretty slow through the morning. I got in right at about 9:00 AM, which is pretty late for me. I spent most of the morning studying options, swaps, and other derivatives. For lunch I went out with my mentor to a really nice place and got the best steak I've ever had. It was amazing. We talked a lot about college and I realized more than ever how different my college experience has been from the "normal" colleges around the USA. Thank goodness!

In the afternoon I got staffed on a sell-side M&A deal with a short fuse. It was pretty intense because I had to work quickly and not make any mistakes. We got through the book pretty quickly and without too many problems. At about 9:30 the book came back with comments so I made the changes and double-checked everything. That took a while because some of the changes were formatting things that took a while to figure out how to fix up.

Sometimes it seems like the MD's and SVP's think that you can just move everything around on a slide as easily as they can draw it on a piece of paper. It's almost funny the things they have you change. When we were hearing how to fix one slide, I was thinking in my mind, "He probably has no idea that what he just drew on that slide will take about 30 minutes to update."

So anyway, it was a good night. When you have work to do, time flies and you wish you had more time to get things right and triple-check everything before you have to turn it in with your name attached to it.

So about Seamless Web. Every big bank on the street has this system. It's basically the way that you get food every night. It kind of depends on the bank, but generally if you stay in the office after 7:00 or 8:00 PM, you get $25 to spend on dinner. That doesn't mean that you have to wait until 8:00 to eat, it just means that if you get dinner at 6:30 then you better stay until at least 8:00 (but seriously, as an analyst, will you ever NOT be in past 8:00?).

Everything is done online. You have a list of 200+ restaurants in New York that you can choose from. When you pick a restaurant, you see their entire menu and you just add whatever you want. Seamless Web automatically adds a nominal tip for you, plus tax, so you can see a running total of how much it will cost you as you add things. It's awesome! Any kind of food you want is on there. Last night I just got a sandwich and a little tub of pistachios. Tonight I got a wrap, plus a sandwich for lunch tomorrow (so I don't have to spend $10 for lunch). You can basically get any type of food and dessert imaginable, every night of the week. If you work weekends, you get two meals per day.

The more senior analysts and associates will sometimes have the interns order for large groups of people. Because Seamless Web will just split the overall costs with everybody equally, usually it ends up that everybody owes $22 or so. The analysts will then order cases of Life Water or Coke to stock up their mini fridges using the $3 per person that's left over. It's funny how you learn all the tricks of survival out here.

Anyway, that's Seamless Web. Along with late-night car service, it's one of the few perks of staying so late in the office. Well, I just got an email that I'm needed back at the office, so see ya later!

I added the options to receive updates on the blog by email or for you all to subscribe to Atom feeds, so enjoy! Thanks for the comments.

Interns and I-banks

2008-06-02T17:11:00.003-04:00

I had an interesting insight today. Being an intern is like being an investment bank. You want all the (quality) work you can possibly get, and there is competition to get it. I'm up "against" other interns who are all smart, driven, hard-working, and ready to do whatever the analysts ask. All of us interns talk with the analysts a lot, work with them, and are becoming their friends. But, when it comes down to getting work done, that's where you start to work like a bank.

Bankers get business through relationships. What they want is that whenever a client has any type of financing/deal making needs, they are the first bank to come to mind. Bankers want the client to actually feel bad for turning to someone else before them.

In a like manner, you want to be in the front of the analyst's mind. As an intern you want the analysts to think of you right away when they need something to get done right. You want them to know that if they only have 15 minutes to get this done, you will get it done in 13 and you'll refill their coffee with your remaining two minutes.

Although it's hard to distinguish yourself from other interns, especially since we all do basically the same things and we all have about the same relationships with the analysts/staffers/associates, I've started thinking more about how I can move myself up the line. It probably has been on my mind a lot today because none of the interns have really had much to do. I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage because I don't sit by any analysts, so I can't just look across to the opposite cube and ask a question. I actually have to leave my desk and go looking for somebody. But today I went around and asked, "What can I do to get you home earlier tonight?" The analysts really seemed to like that kind of attitude.

It's true though - you are basically here to make the analyst's life better. You want them to be happy and you want them to be successful because they have you working for them.

Anyway, it's an interesting connection. As an analyst I'm doing the very thing that the banks do - getting into the front of the line and trying to get work.

Summer in the City

2008-06-01T22:55:00.000-04:00

Today I saw two friends from school that are out here doing internships with me. It was interesting to compare and contrast our internships so far. It seems like things are generally the same. I've actually worked less than one of my friends and more than the other. I'm guessing that by the end of the summer it will all even out. The workload seems to ebb and flow even on a day to day basis.

Well I'm gearing up for a long week of CFA study and finally the big test on Saturday. I'm nervous because I feel like there's still a lot I don't "own" but I'll do the best I can. It's hard to find time to really study out here, which is why I should have studied more this past semester. Oh well - live and learn, right? Luckily a lot of the stuff on the exam is stuff I've learned before, so it will be a lot of review.

Well good luck with the week everybody!

Rules to Live By

2008-05-31T21:32:00.000-04:00

Today was very humid and stuffy. My apartment is on the top floor of the building so all of the heat rises into our apartment. I need to go buy a fan. Today I took advantage of a free day and did my laundry. I also spent the whole day studying for the CFA, except for when I watched the movie "Juno." It was a pretty good one - I liked the actress who played Juno. Maybe she would make a good trader.

In the afternoon I went into the office to see if anybody there needed help. Nobody did so I just sat at my desk and studied. It's nice being in a quiet place for once. Harlem is pretty loud at all hours of the day and night.

So, in concordance with some other analysts from my group, I've come up with the "10 Rules to Live by for the Summer." It's a list of things to remember as a summer analyst. Here they are:

#1: Always expect the unexpected. You should never be caught off guard and always be prepared with multiple back-up plans.

#2: Under-promise, over-deliver.

#3: If you are on time, you are late.

#4: It is always your fault. Place all successes on the team, all failures on yourself.

#5: Own the numbers.

#6: When responding to an email with your BlackBerry, remember that you have to capitalize the "e" in the "Re:" in the subject line so that it looks like you're sending it from your desktop.

#7: Attention to detail.

#8: If you don't know the answer, ask Google.

#9: If Google doesn't know, reach out to another intern.

#10: You are never "too busy." You must lead a FILO lifestyle.

Well there you have it. Those are some principles that have already been important for me during the internship. The times that I've screwed up are because I wasn't doing something on this list. Hopefully I can learn quickly so this all becomes second-nature.

Causal Friday

2008-05-31T12:12:00.000-04:00

Fridays at the firm are nice because we can wear business casual. Today was kind of weird because I didn't really do anything as far as work goes. I finished up all my projects and started my morning by printing out a few 10-Ks and Qs and marking them up for the numbers I used from yesterday.

So, as per a suggestion from Ashton Grewal, I'm going to start mentioning what time I arrive/leave the office every day. I try to be the first person in and one of the last out (usually there's somebody staying really late, so unless I'm working on the same project as they are I don't worry about staying all night every night). On Friday I got into the office at about 8:35 AM. That's about normal for me - between 8:00 and 8:30 every day. Most of the other interns and analysts show up at about 9:00 so it gives me time to get busy on some work so I'll have questions about things I'm working on when the analysts show up.

I was put in charge of getting lunch at the Shake Shack. The tricky thing about that is that the Shake Shack is so famous that there's a huge line every day for lunch. I took all the orders, and the other interns wanted to come along, so we all left. I told everybody when we would need to leave to beat the rush. We got to the subway right as the train was pulling up, so I went through and was about to get on the train, but the other interns hadn't bought subway passes because they live so close. So we missed three trains while we waited for the other interns. I should have just gone ahead, but I decided to stick with the group.

It took 20 minutes for the next train to come, and when we go to Shake Shack (which, by the way, is across the street from Credit Suisse) there was a huge line. It ended up taking us two hours from when we left to when we got back. It was rediculous. The analysts gave us a lot of crap about it. One of them started a "rules to live by" and gave us advice on how not to screw up again like that. It was too bad because if I was on my own I would have been back in 35 minutes. Oh well - there are worse things to mess up.

I'll post the "Rules to Live By" that I've been compiling. There's some good stuff there. I also put quotes around my desk to keep me working hard. Here are some of the quotes I have up on my desk:

"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." - Steve Prefontaine
"The common denominator for success is work." - John D Rockefeller
"That which we persist in doing becomes easier; not that thing itself becomes easier, but our capacity to do is increased." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't know if those are exact quotes because I'm just writing them off the top of my head, but it's good to have motivational stuff when you're cranking at 2am.

The group went out for drinks again (second night in a row) and I went along. I think it's better to stick with the group than to be a loner, even if I still feel like a loner when I'm there. It's just kind of weird when everybody else is drinking and you're working on a glass of Sprite. Oh well. One thing I'm trying to really work on is being more outgoing. When you're drunk, you lose inhibition and really open up, so I need to be like that without the alcohol.

The female interns in our group get a LOT of attention from the analysts and associates, especially when they wear lower-cut blouses. It's kind of annoying how much the analysts fall over themselves trying to talk and joke with the girls, but oh well. I figure that it will only get the girls so far - in the end they'll want to take somebody who can get the job done. Not that a girl couldn't do the job well, but just that it won't be the final measure of the job whether or not you look good. I think that one of the female interns made a bet with one of the second-year analysts that she could get me to drink before the summer is over. I kind of overheard it and just laughed to myself - that's $20 she'll never see again.

I left after a while to go study for the CFA. Everybody else went out to other clubs, but I needed to study so I went back to the office. I helped an associate for a little while then just stayed at my desk and studied until about 10:00. It felt weird to leave then, but there was literally nothing left to do in the office.

If you stay late you get to take a black car home, which is nice because I live so far away.
Well today I'm just studying (the CFA is next week!). I'll go into the office this afternoon to make sure nobody needs help, and to not feel bad about not coming in on Sunday.

Quick and dirty

2008-05-29T11:19:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was crazy! I'm writing this on Thursday because I didn't get home from the office until 1:30am. I had my first experiences "flipping books" (basicaly you take two pitch books that have just come from printing, then you set them side by side and flip through them page by page to make sure that production didn't screw up the pages or that there aren't any typos, which, invariably there are). A few times we had to switch out the pages and rebind the books, but it wasn't so bad.

Also today I was put in charge of spreading some credit comps. Man I got nailed. The associate came over to my desk and started asking me where I was getting the numbers from that I had put into the model. I had double-checked everything, but the problem was that I hadn't printed out all of the 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and 8-Ks that I had been pulling from, so when he asked where the numbers were, I couldn't just show him. He made me go back and redo everything, but this time I had to pull all the information, highlight it, and then tab it in the K so I could show him any number at any time. He also told me that I should always have a calculator with me and should always be taking notes about everything. I should write everything down that people tell me so I never forget stuff.

It was a painful experience beacuse I felt like a moron for not doing it right the first time, but in the end the associate told me that everybody has had mistakes like those and you just have to learn from it and not make the mistake again. I'm glad it happened.

Working the longer hours hasn't been that bad yet. Time goes by so fast that you don't really notice that it's been 14 hours since you came in. It would be pretty bad if you didn't have anything to do, but luckily my group is busy and they always have things for us to be working on. Plus, the more projects that I do, the more I know and the more the analysts are willing to give me. Hopefully by the end of this summer I'll be working on some interesting stuff. Well, back to work!

Back to the grind

2008-05-27T23:28:00.000-04:00

Well Memorial Day was nice. I spent it inside studying for the CFA exam and cleaning the apartment. I have a lot to learn still for the CFA, but I'm feeling good about it. Things are starting to warm up here and it's starting to get humid. I've heard that this isn't even close to what it will be in a month.

Today at work I got staffed on a project again. This time it involved working through a presentation for a client that is looking to purchase some assets and wants our firm to both provide the financing and find buyers for the debt it will incur. It's a cool project and I'm happy to have work! They gave us some accounting homework to do but working on a live deal is a LOT more exciting than more accounting worksheets.

Today I was really glad that I have done a lot of work in Excel before I started this internship. I was blowing through these spreadsheets and I got a lot done in a short amount of time. I've never done credit comps before, but today I was working through some income statements for a few companies and looking at their credit metrics. A lot of the work that I've done involves pulling 10Ks and 10Qs and checking/updating models and making sure they still flow correctly. Probably 70% of my time is spent going through company filings.

One thing that I had to learn the hard way is that when you look up information, it's really important to have a hard copy to back up any numbers you put into a model. You have to actually print out the 10K and then highlight all the stuff you are inputting so when your associate comes up and says, "Where did you get this 2007 Letters of Credit number?" you can pull out your copy and show him. Otherwise you look really stupid and then you go find the number.

Tonight I was also put in charge of ordering dinner for everybody. It sounds simple, but freakin SeamlessWeb logged me off after I had put in the first 10 orders so I had to start all over. It was the first time I've really experienced the wrath of bankers. More than a few people came by and said, "What's the status?? When will you be done with this??" It's funny that when it comes to food, the deadline was last Friday and you're already late when you start. I finally got the food ordered and then went down to pick it up. When I came back, I realized that they only delivered half of the order! Everybody gave me a hard time, but they all laughed because it wasn't my fault. It turns out the restaurant ran out of paper and only the first page of our order got printed. The other analysts went on and on about "doing your diligence" and "attention to detail" and how I should have known to ask about the restaurant's paper status. It was funny.

I was about to leave at about 9:15 tonight when another analyst that I've worked with called me and asked if I could help him scrub a deck. That phrase sounds like something a pirate would do. That's funny. Anyway, he had me go through a 70-page deck with red pen all over it from an MD. It was crazy how bad this guy's handwriting is. Seriously - I could write better with my feet than this guy. It's like he knew that some poor analyst or intern would have to stay up half the night trying to decipher his scribble. We got through it and made the changes. I felt bad because I ended up leaving before the analyst. I probably shouldn't do that again, but I didn't really have anything else to do and my group is really big on NOT getting more face time. They always say, "If you're done, go home!!!" I like it.

Well I'm off to bed. I have to be the first one in the office tomorrow.

A nice weekend

2008-05-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

Not much to report today. I found a cool website - www.hopstop.com - that tells you the quickest way to get from one place to another using buses and subways. It saved me about half an hour on my way to Church today.

I had my blackberry on me today and was kind of dreading a call. It never came, which is great. I'm still wondering if I'll get called in tomorrow, but if so that's fine with me. My plans tomorrow are just to do laundry, study for the CFA, and relax.

I've been thinking today about how I can stand out as an intern. It's kind of hard because we all do basically the same things - just check comps, update spreadsheets and slides, and check 10Ks for information. With six interns in the group, it's hard to differentiate yourself. Everybody will do ANYTHING they are asked to do, and everybody wants to work hard and show that they are willing to work for the job.

Because my desk is kind of separated from the other analysts, it's hard for them to remember I exist. When they have work to do, they turn to the intern right next to them instead of to me. Also, I don't drink, which is a favorite past time of the group, and I wonder what they think of that. I know that I have to work hard, but it almost seems like in the end, everybody is going to work hard. They got really really top interns for this group so everybody is smart and sharp. It seems like it will come down to kind of a popularity contest. I'm not the best at schmoozing and just shooting the breeze. I'd rather get a job and then work on it for a few hours. The other interns are always walking around talking with the analysts. I wonder how much I should just buckle down and work and how much I should go and "build the relationship" with the full-time guys.

Deep thoughts for the Memorial Day Weekend.

Oh - yesterday I saw the musical "Legally Blonde" and it was actually really good. The songs were good and the actors were awesome. We got student rush tickets for cheap and we got to sit on the front row. I want to see Wicked sometime when I'm out here. After the show we went to Pinkberry. It tasted like New York. Yum.

LSO is Back!

2008-05-25T01:25:00.000-04:00

By the way, LeveragedSellOut is finally back with a new post. It's about time!

Weekend at the office

2008-05-25T01:16:00.000-04:00

Well things went by quickly today. I went down and worked for a while. I basically worked through some homework that they gave us and then found some old presentations and recreated them to make sure that I knew how to build all the graphs and slides that the firm uses. It was actually really helpful to go through that because I figured out how to make up all the slides that go into real presentations.

After a nice dinner from Seamless web, I went with my roommate to see "Legally Blond." It was a good show and was pretty entertaining. It was a nice Saturday.

Day 5: Comps, & Accretive Deals

2008-05-23T23:49:00.000-04:00

Today I went in at about 8:45. I want to try to be the first intern in every day and near the last one out. One great thing about my group is that they really don't care about face time. If you're done, you leave. The thing is that our group is the busiest at the firm, so if you're done it's a rare occasion.

I finished up the project that I started yesterday. It was basically just going through slides and updating the spreadsheets beneath them. Not too bad. I finished that before lunch and spent the rest of the day working on "homework" that we were given. We basically have to spread some comps for three companies. They gave us a comps template (which is horrible, by the way - it runs from left to right instead of up and down, so your financial statements are a pain to read) and a bunch of 10 Ks and Qs to work through. It has been a tedious process.

One cool thing today was that I got to work through an accretion/dilution model with an analyst. I don't think I could go build one myself, but I understood how it all worked and flowed. Maybe I'll try to rebuild the one he built sometime in the next few days if I don't get staffed.

We finished off the day going out for drinks. We went to a bar and every body got beers except for me. It was a little awkward, but they were pretty cool with it. I wonder if it will affect the hiring decision at all - I'm sure it will in the sense that part of it is them asking themselves if they would like to be around me all the time. If I don't drink, I don't fit in as well. Oh well - you never can go wrong doing what's right. Wow - that sounded like a MormonAd.

I thought I was going to be free this weekend, but right as I was leaving my staffer asked me, "So did you finish that project?"

"Yeah"

"Oh great - so you have some capacity now, right? Well keep your BlackBerry on this weekend because I might need you to come in."

I haven't heard from him yet, but I'm worried that my holiday weekend might be spent at the office. We'll see...

Day 3-4: Unbelievable!!

2008-05-22T22:57:00.000-04:00

Well I thought life would be interesting enough out here without all the craziness that happened yesterday. Our last day of training was pretty mundane. We had four straight hours of Excel, and in those four hours I only learned one thing. It's cool though. I'm sure for all the liberal arts kids from Harvard it was a great use of time. We also learned a bunch of stuff that I thought was useless (and I therefore didn't pay attention like I should have) and then came to the office today to find out that I needed to do exactly what I didn't listen to before. Woops. Good thing nobody else was paying attention!

So after training, they took us to a restaurant over in the City. On the way I met a life-long banker who just happened to ride the ferry and the bus with us. He was a really nice guy and was excited for me to be starting my career like he did so many years ago. This week is Fleet Week, which means that there are sailors everywhere. It's kind of weird.

The restaurant turned out to be a bar with food on the side. Everybody was drinking, and I got some pineapple juice. Pretty lame actually. I left and went home. I got to my apartment at about 8:30 and realized that I had left my key in the apartment. I live on the top floor and we're the only apartment on that floor. I figured that my roommate would be home in a while because he has always come home between 9 and 11 every night I've been here. I talked to Jenni Mae, read a book, and just waited for him to come home. I finally buzzed the door and went inside to get out of the cold. I walked up the stairs and waited outside our door.

And waited...

And waited...

And he never came home. SO on the night before I start for real in the bank, I pulled an all-nighter. Well, I did fall asleep for an hour or two just lying on the floor in the hallway, but I basically just sat there in the hallway all night long. My roommate never came home! He didn't answer his phone all night, and I still don't know what happened. It was crazy.

So at about 7am I just got up and went back to the bank. I got some breakfast and went to my desk and just waited for some people to show up.

There are six interns in my group, and they told us not to freak out if we didn't all get staffed right away. I walked around and met all of the analysts, then went back to my desk and started reading primers on MLPs, Oil & Gas, and Energy. After about two hours of that, I got an email saying that I had been put on a deal. I was the only intern that got on a deal today. It was pretty tight.

An SVP, Associate, Analyst, and I went into a conference room and the SVP basically laid out the book that we needed to put together. We talked about the company and what they are looking to do, and then that was it. He left to go fly to Sweden and we got to work. I was put in charge of about 10 slides and spent the rest of the day working on it. All the other interns went home at about 6:00 PM but I stuck around until about 10:30. I actually LOVE it. It's awesome to work on real deals and know that the work you're doing is going to be used in a presentation to the CEO in a few days. The resources available to you at a bulge-bracket bank are also amazing - you can really get anything you want. I have my own "Assistant" who basically can get me whatever I need as soon as I need it. It's great.

The other analysts in my group are really cool. Two of them in particular are pretty entertaining. One of them swears every time he speaks. It's almost unbelievable that someone can swear that much. He's really smart and helpful though, and did a lot to get things going for the interns. The other guy is basically just a baller. He's not cocky, but you know that he's a rock star.

I've come to learn that it's really important to network while you're here. I always kind of thought the game stopped when you got here, but the game just keeps on going. You have to be nice to the other interns, but deep down you know they're competition. I wonder if that's how it feels when you're full time and you're "competing" for a good bonus. Who knows.

Well it's been a LONG few days and it's already late here. I want to be the first intern in the office tomorrow and I'm hoping to finish up my work pretty quick so I won't have to come back over the holiday weekend. I really need to keep studying for the CFA too - it's in a few weeks!

Well the internship is going well after one official day. At least I can sleep in my own bed tonight.

Day 2: DCM, ECM, but no SXHM

2008-05-20T20:23:00.001-04:00

Today we had our second day of training. Most of the day was filled with lectures from different departments in the firm talking about all the resources we have available to us. It's pretty amazing. If I get staffed on a deal and need all of the 10-ks and 8-ks, research reports, financials, or anything else about the industry or whatever, I just put in an order, it's outsourced to India, and a few hours later they deliver it all to me in a big book. Amazing. They also have services where you just send them the data or model that you've made in Excel and they turn it into a finished presentation ready to go! Nice stuff.

We learned about both Debt Capital Markets and ECM. Both were actually really interesting. I never thought I would like working on one of those "buffer" groups that go between S&T and banking, but I think it would be a cool experience. The DCM and Lev Fin guys had worked on over 80 deals already this year. They touch everything that comes out of the firm - it's a cool place to get a lot of experience.

We had a two-hour-long training on the firm's policies about sexual harassment. It was actually pretty good - they gave situations that have happened in the past and had us decide if it would qualify as harassment or not. They also did that with confidentiality and other areas that we have to be careful of. We just can't be specific about anything when we talk about what we're working on. Some stories we heard were crazy - I couldn't believe that people would be a dumb as they are.

I filled in the down time playing brickbreaker on my Blackberry. I'll have to be careful that I don't let that become a habit, but the game is kind of addicting. I went and saw Steve Southwick and found out that I'll be on the same floor as him.

Well we have one more day of training. Tomorrow will be the Excel training and the introduction to DealMaven. Good thing I've already done it! I went and met the guys in my group and they seem to be pretty cool. There's a lot of work right now because the group is really busy and all of the second years just left, so we'll be busy right away. I'm looking forward to it because I want to get as much experience as I can this summer.

I love this bank. Every day when I meet more people and hear more about the firm, I'm so glad I came here. The culture fits well and I can't wait to get to work.

Day 1: Training and Blackberries

2008-05-19T20:57:00.000-04:00

One day of training has come and gone. I had a crazy time just getting to where they did the training today. Because of the large analyst class, we had training in Jersey City across the Hudson from the financial district. I had to take a subway to 59th, walk to 57th, take a bus to the pier, then take a ferry across the Hudson until I finally go to the training building.

I saw a few of the people that were there when I interviewed - I guess interviews worked out for them. Everyone I talked to said that the group I'm in was their first choice - I feel more blessed than ever to be in this group. It's the top group at the bank and on the street, and it's a great time to be doing oil deals.

We spent most of the day doing administrative stuff. They showed us how to log onto a computer, gave us blackberries, got us our id cards, and had us fill out paperwork. In the afternoon there was a training on how to do comps that lasted two hours - about an hour and a half too long for what they taught. We also had a training on the cool stuff that's here to help you with powerpoint and excel. It's amazing - if I had these programs in school I could have saved myself TONS of hours of work. I did today in about 20 seconds what would have taken me 45 minutes to do. It was amazing. It made me wonder...if that only takes a few seconds, what do you spend the rest of the 100 hours a week doing?

I am surprised how many different types of people are here. There were tons of people from other countries, people of different ethnicities, and lots of female bankers too. It definitely wasn't the "white male dominant" atmosphere I had heard about. I found out that there are 6 interns in my group, so I'll have a few others there interning with me. Three of them were here last year doing the sophomore program. Since they were here last year, they got to choose their group and they all chose naty res. Hopefully I won't be behind since they've all been here before.

I do feel out of place a little because I'm from BYU. Pretty much every single person there (I know because we all introduced ourselves) goes to an east-coast school, and 90% of them are in the Ivy League. There were tons of kids from Cornell, NYU, Penn, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Emory, and other big-name schools. It was weird to be the only west-coast kid. The other thing that wasn't as fun is that everybody else has at least another person they know from school. I'm the only one who is the single person from their school. It's alright - I'll just have to really represent BYU well so we can get more next year. I think to make BYU more legit it would be good to have more people do the summer internships, not just the winternship.

On the way back I stopped to get dinner at Subway and these two girls stopped me on the street. They were missionaries for their church and were out telling the world that there is a Heavenly Mother and that the Bible proves it. They said a lot of kind of strange and interesting things, and really pressured me to meet with them again. I shared my beliefs and we kind of left it at that. It was an interesting experience.

Well tomorrow we're going down to 745 7th Ave, and I hope to meet some people in my group. I found out today that training is only 3 days long, so by Thursday I'll be on the desk and doing REAL work. Pretty crazy stuff. I'm more nervous about that than anything else. I just don't want to mess up this internship. I don't think I will though - it seems like people have pretty low expectations about interns. I've been surprised already at the attitudes of some of the interns. I feel like if I can be honest, work hard, and try and really learn as I go, things will work out. Some of these kids kind of have the attitude of, "Tell me what I need to do to get by, and that's all I'll do." They don't say that, but actions speak louder than words.

Well it was a long day of just sitting and listening to boring lectures, but it's one day closer to the real thing, and I won't complain about getting done with the day at 6:15 PM!

Last Day of Summer Vacation

2008-05-18T21:45:00.000-04:00

Well it's over. It was a nice break between school being out and starting the internship. Tomorrow is training. I'm not sure how long it will go, and how long they expect us to work this week. I'm kind of hoping for shorter hours this week while we're in training, but we'll see how it goes. I think that things might be kind of boring for the most part because I'm a finance major and have had a few accounting classes as well. We'll see.

I figured out the crazy route I have to follow to get to the training in Jersey City. One thing I love about New York is that it has a great transit system. You can get anywhere by bus, ferry, or subway.

Today I went to the Harlem 1st Ward. It was awesome! The members are really nice out here and I loved being back in Church. I'm hoping I'll make some good friends there.

Well tomorrow is the big day. I'm going to bed early so I can get some sleep, especially since that won't be happening much in the next 8 weeks!

"Chubby"

2008-05-18T00:47:00.000-04:00

So today I went to the temple. It was awesome, and a good way to start things off out here in New York. Shortly after that, I was walking down Broadway and this guy saw me and said to a woman he was standing with, "Well look at this nice little chubby piece of work. I would love to get some of that!" I was like, "are you serious???" Welcome to New York.

Things have been alright around here. It's frustrating because we only have internet about 20% of the time, so I wasn't able to work on things that I needed to get done.

I'm glad it's Sunday tomorrow - I'm just going to sleep all day and read scriptures. I know that time will be short for the rest of my time here.

I bought a bag today, ironed 10 shirts, and studied accounting. It's late.

Getting Started

2008-05-17T09:19:00.000-04:00

Well I'm here! Yesterday I flew into the city, took a Taxi over to 142nd and Broadway, and unpacked. The internship starts on Monday. We have training for a few days and then it's off to work. I'm really glad I got into the group that I did. Naty Res is the best on the street and they're doing tons of deals right now.

My apartment is pretty nice. It's bigger than I expected it to be. Well, the apartment is bigger. My room is basically a bunkbed with a desk under it, and three feet of space around three sides of the bed. That's it. But I guess that's about all I need anyway. We also have a Wii with Guitar Hero III and Mario Kart, so that should keep me busy :).

I'm planning on posting every day of my internship so I'll have a good record of what happens to me. None of last year's interns could really tell me what they did on their internship, so I'm just going to make a daily record and when some Junior asks me, I'll refer them here!

It's Saturday today, and I need to iron about 12 shirts. I also really need to study accounting and CFA stuff, especially since the CFA is in a few weeks. Well... this should be fun!

Resume Review Service

2008-05-09T20:48:00.000-04:00

So here's the deal. I've been getting some requests from people to look at their resume. I've seen tons of resumes (including reviewing resumes this summer for full-time candidates) and can give solid advice on what bankers are looking for. There are various online resume review services that are all very expensive. Mergers and Inquisitions has a good one but it's $200. If anybody wants an independent, line-by-line look at their resume, send it my way. I can make suggestions, give you some ideas, and help you get your resume looking great. And instead of charging $200 or more, it'll only cost $30.

The reason I'm charging for it is obvious - time is precious and we all have to support ourselves! That said, I want to offer a high-quality review for much less than what is available today. Here's how it would work:

You get your resume prepared. You can take your personal info off if you want. A lot more important than your address is what your resume actually says!

When you're ready, you pay the $30 through PayPal and then send me your resume. I'll go through it line-by-line and return specific comments, suggestions, and ideas that will help your resume get noticed. If you have questions, need clarification, or want me to help you change anything, just send it back and we'll do that as many times as you want until the resume is pristine and ready to be sent to any bank on the street. Often you might not know anyone at a bank, so your resume is the only chance you have of getting an interview.

If you have further questions or are ready to send me your resume, email me here.

It's the best value you'll find on the web. Enjoy!