Investment Banking Internship Guide

Remote Investment Banking Internship Guide

• Up to the present date, nearly all institutional investment banks have been very discrete in terms of the limited amount of information disclosed regarding how their first-ever virtual internship programs in Summer 2020 were run, as well as their plans for Summer 2021.
• The reasoning behind why many investment banks were refusing to give a definitive answer of whether internships would be in-person or virtual was because the decision had been conditional on the rapid roll-out of the vaccine.
• On that note, anecdotal insights derived from several MBA Summer 2020 Associates who completed internships at bulge bracket banks (“BBs”) and elite boutique banks (“EBs”) were compiled to have the first-hand perspective of insiders serve as the foundation for our predictions, as opposed to pure speculation.
• The individual internship experiences shared with Wall Street Prep should serve as a useful point-of-reference and proxy for what to expect from 2021 internships – albeit, there’ll of course be some degree of variance (i.e., room for unexpected changes specific to a bank).
• While much of the content found in this guide pertains to how COVID-19 impacted dealmaking within the investment banking industry and the implications it had on MBA summer associate programs, the actionable advice to secure a return offer in the virtual setting are nevertheless applicable to in-person internship programs, as well as in full-time roles.

Trends in Remote Internships: Work-from-Home (WFH)

Throughout this comprehensive guide, we delve into various topics including the latest updates on the status of investment banking internships, an explanation of how MBA Summer 2020 internships were coordinated, our predictions for Summer 2021 and its similarities/differences from the prior year, and specific internship advice pertinent to the remote work environment.

But before doing so, we would like to provide a quick, summarized rundown that entails the top five key trends to be aware of in 2021 and onward.

Learn More → Investment Banking Primer

Investment Banking Internship Logistics: Virtual Setting

Traditional Internship Timeline

• Investment banking summer internships have traditionally been around nine to twelve-week programs with ten weeks being the approximate duration of the “intensive period” of high workload, following the completion of the onboarding and initial training.
• In the past, these internships were preceded by orientations and oftentimes guest speaker events and intern mixers.
• On the flip side, to wrap up the internships: presentations of collaborative projects would be made to the investment bank’s senior bankers with final celebratory dinners before all the interns departed back home.

2020 Internship Timeline

• Due to the logistics of having to host virtual internships for the first time in 2020, most investment banks were forced to shorten their programs to somewhere between 5-10 weeks.
• For example, Evercore’s internship program was reduced to seven weeks, whereas JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Jefferies, and Goldman Sachs each lasted approximately five weeks.

^{Transition to Virtual Internships at Initial Breakout (Source: Financial Times)}

For Summer 2020, due to various challenges such as the shortened timeframe and privacy concerns of working from home, most banks decided to replace their entire internship program with an education-oriented training program.

Instead of doing real investment banking work, interns at these banks worked on projects that taught them about the job of an investment banker, in a similar format as the case study assignments completed in business schools but with more strict time constraints and emphasis on mimicking real on-the-job tasks.

There are several potential reasons for these investment banks to have come to this resolution, but one of the main concerns during that specific period was the volatility in the capital markets during Spring 2020 and the dramatic plummet in M&A deal count and the number of IPOs.

By the end of Q2 2020, the market sentiment held substantial uncertainty due to the coronavirus outbreak growing exponentially as M&A volume plunged in Q1 and Q2, with the exception being sectors related to healthcare, industrial technology, and enterprise software.

Through H1 2020, the IPO and M&A landscape in the US was shaping out to be a disastrous year on par with the Great Recession Recovery Period as dealmaking had been brought to a halt.

But with public equities leading the recovery, the IPO and M&A market was eventually brought back in an extraordinary recovery throughout H2 2020 to end in-line with previous years:

• M&A Deals: The M&A deal value was particularly concentrated in the last few months to close out the fiscal year with Salesforce acquiring workplace communication application Slack, S&P Global acquiring IHS Markit, and AMD buying rival chipmaker Xilinx.
• IPOs / Direct Listings: Several highly anticipated companies also became publicly-listed such as Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR), Asana (NYSE: ASAN), Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), DoorDash (NYSE: DASH), Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB), and Lemonade (NYSE: LMND).

^{North American M&A Activity Q2 2020 (Source: Pitchbook)}

Another concern for investment banks was regarding the issue of confidentiality, in which firms were reluctant to have interns contribute to pitches, let alone participate in live deals.

In total, when you combine the uncertainty surrounding the M&A and IPO market as the virtual internships were being planned, the risk of financial underperformance, and the sheer amount of confidential data/material involved in the M&A Diligence Process, the pragmatic, logical decision for most investment banks were clearly to structure their internship programs around training.

Keep in mind, the shift towards remote work was not only an adjustment for interns but all employees within these investment banks. Under the circumstances, the decision of firms to not prioritize the training of their interns is understandable – although this meant less practical experience and minimal (or no) participation in live deals for interns.

While the types of projects provided to interns differed by each bank, some of the most common tasks included:

• Banks would train interns on the “ins and outs” of putting together Confidential Information Memorandums (“CIMs”) and let them put together a CIM for a hypothetical sell-side mandate.
• To simulate the real investment banking experience, interns participated in so-called “fire drills.” These were time-pressured, practice exercises in which interns would unexpectedly receive an email and have to complete certain analyses within a strict time constraint.
• While less common, some interns were fortunate to gain real investment banking work, or even better, were staffed on live deals, where they got a better sense of what transactional work involves. But the responsibilities were kept to a minimum in most cases, with the tasks being closer to supporting the less technical, repetitive tasks on a need-basis.

What are the Pros and Cons of Virtual Internships?

Depending on the specific individuals’ perspectives and goals, remote internships could be perceived as a positive or negative:

Will Investment Banking Internships Be Remote or In-Person?

Heading into the New Year, not a single elite boutique bank or bulge bracket bank had made a decisive choice on whether Summer 2021 internships would be virtual, remote, or a combination.

The hold-up and final decision appeared to have been contingent on the ongoing progress of the vaccine deployment in the US – which since the beginning of 2021, has not panned out as originally projected.

To get straight to the point, most Summer 2021 investment banking internships will be conducted remotely in all likelihood. However, this does not mean that all investment banks (or locations) will hold virtual internships, as there will certainly be exceptions.

The main determinant of whether internships will be held back in the office is the degree to how disrupted the workflow has been since the switch. For the select firms that decide to hold internships in-person:

• The groups most likely to be in-person will be Investment Banking and Sales & Trading, as these were the most affected by the pandemic.
• In addition, the location will also be a key factor with the headquarters (e.g., NYC, SF, London) having the greatest chance of being in-person.

The concerns of returning to the office were further reinforced on February 16, when Dr. Fauci pushed back his timeline for widespread vaccine availability in the US to mid-late May 2021 after initially predicting late March to early April 2021 earlier in the year, and added further uncertainty into the discussion by mentioning it could even extend into the early fall.

Based on even the most optimistic assumptions, there is not enough assurance that widespread vaccination within the US would be achieved before Summer 2021. Heading into this, many firms were under the belief that vaccination targets would be achieved by early April at the latest, which would give companies around two full months before interns would join in-person.

However, these hopeful plans for in-person internships and the rapid deployment of the vaccine have been hampered by delays and now the confirmation by the NIAID Director, Dr. Fauci, may have been the final straw, as his statements validated the skepticism on the forecasts that the entire US population would be vaccinated around Spring 2021.

“It may take until June, July and August to finally get everybody vaccinated,” Fauci said. “So when you hear about how long it’s going to take to get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated, I don’t think anybody disagrees that that’s going to be well to the end of the summer and we get into the early fall.”

^{(Source: Axios)}

Several of the top technology companies, most notably Facebook and Google, have publicized that their summer internship programs would be virtual in 2021, and the consensus appears to expect EBs/BBs to soon follow suit with their announcements within the next few months.

From a risk management perspective, it seems doubtful for an investment bank would needlessly take on the liability of flying in interns from all across the country. The limited benefit and upside of having interns come into the office for in-person internships are disproportionally offset by the potential downside.

The priority of most investment banks is bringing their deal team, required deal support members, and trading roles back into the office (rather than the training of future employees). To put this order in jeopardy by proceeding with in-person internships would be an unreasonable risk.

The statement by Solomon has been receiving scrutiny as it seems to prioritize the training of new interns over the safety of their employees. Goldman’s official decision is subject to change as the start date of internships approaches, or it can also switch back to virtual after the internship has begun if any potential issues arise (i.e., there is still much flexibility remaining).

Nevertheless, the statement is an interesting development that could potentially have a ripple effect and impact the decisions of other rival banks.

Remote Internship Return Offer Rates (Summer 2021)

To begin this section on a positive note, most EBs / BBs have indicated they anticipate hiring most (if not all) of their interns in 2021 similar to the year before. But this should not come as a surprise considering most of these top firms already had high retention rates (i.e., summer associate to full-time role conversions) in the first place due to securing the best talent at the top business schools.

As with the rest of the world, investment banks were caught off guard in 2020, leading to unstructured internships and an evident lack of preparation, with one of the few positives being the high retention (i.e., high return offers). Neither summer associate nor summer analyst internships were a priority for these investment banks and most banks were planning to give return offers to all of their interns barring any unforeseeable circumstances.

The internship length in 2021 will return closer to the traditional full-length duration, as opposed to lasting as short as five weeks. In effect, the amount of time the banks had to plan out the internship program and the longer-lasting internship can be interpreted in two opposite ways:

1. From a more positive viewpoint, there’ll be more time and opportunities throughout the internship to leave a positive impression on the employer. Plus, being able to work on case study projects where you can obtain real knowledge that can be applied on-the-job.
2. Conversely, the bank had more time to put together more challenging training exercises, and the increased duration can be pessimistically interpreted as posing a greater risk of making mistakes/errors, which can lead to the bank’s perception of you deteriorating.

Job Responsibilities of Remote MBA Summer Associates

Given the increased amount of time to prepare and develop the program, the Summer 2021 internship experience should (and certainly will) be run better than Summer 2020.

Summer 2021 internships are anticipated to be training-oriented again – albeit, they will consist of more engaging, realistic exercises to simulate live M&A deal experience.

But the drawbacks and risks that caused the limitations in the first place such as the concerns surrounding client confidential data, software breaches, and an intern that the team has not yet met in person nor proven themselves remain unchanged.

In effect, the disappointments of many Summer 2020 interns may not be addressed by most firms. To specify, many interns received barely any transactional experience and zero participation in live deals.

Similar to Summer 2020, tasks related to pitching will be handed off to interns. Examples of deal-related tasks include formatting pitchbooks, business development work (i.e., pulling and organizing contact details, gathering relevant information/data when putting together a reference sheet for the call), and light valuation work (e.g., trading comps, transaction comps).

So the internship program in 2021 should be an improvement by a large margin from the previous year. However, the improvements made to the internship program are going to be most evident in the training material, as opposed to increased responsibilities and live deal participation.

Note, as always there can be exceptions to a rule, as certain intern groups played very active roles in the group they were placed in. While the responsibilities given to them may not be significantly demanding and be relatively minor tasks, this ability to “virtually shadow” an analyst/associate during a live deal and help out as-needed was something many groups were not given the chance to do so.

Analyst / Associate and Summer Associate Interactions

In 2020, some firms were reluctant to make their analysts/associates be placed in charge of an inexperienced, unproven summer MBA associate while adjusting to the foreign remote work environment themselves. Amidst the transition period, many of them were consistently pulling all-nighters with weekly hours being on the very upper end of the typical range.

These would refer to product or industry groups specializing in areas benefiting from pandemic related tailwinds, which saw increased deal flow. Alternatively, banks with pent-up demand from when the deal count in H1 was effectively flat with weighed-down valuations. But now that period has passed (for certain firms) and there is a sense of normalization now, an increased amount of communication and opportunities for networking could be a possibility.

Many investment banks that received positive feedback were those that directly paired each intern with a specific analyst or associate. As a result, these “mentor/mentee” pairings might be seen across more investment banks. But many of these were mid-tier investment banks that had deal volume on the lower end, and their analysts/associates had more availability to dedicate more time to interacting with interns via video calls.

Therefore, the positive feedback was more related to interns receiving career advice, meeting the deal team on a personal level, and of course, the return offer.

Contradicting this possibility is the rumor that a few EBs / BBs will NOT be doing group placement in 2021 for their class of new interns. While not yet been confirmed, this would indirectly suggest 1) the interns should expect virtual training, not live deals, and 2) the main contact will be HR representatives and/or a group of employees specifically put in charge of leading the internship program (but not the deal team).

To restate the disclaimer, this is speculation heard from employees – again, confirming banks have not yet finalized their internship.

Investment Banking Summer Associate Classes

One of the main positive aspects of the training phase is getting the chance to meet and become close with the rest of your intern class over the duration of the internship.

A clearly stated focus of Summer 2021 internships will be giving summer associate classes more opportunities to build rapport and develop into a more collaborative team.

Some banks put interns into peer groups to go through the training and complete assignments together, but this was not standard across all EBs / BBs.

In a virtual environment, this peer group can serve as a great network and resource you can get help from throughout the internship – we highly recommend that you take advantage of this opportunity to interact with the other interns as much as you can as they potentially represent future co-workers (assuming full-time offers were received and placed in the same office).

Remember, these other interns are likely just as unsure of what to expect from the internship as you; hence, having access to peers that are undergoing the same experience as you to rely upon for support can be mutually beneficial for the entire group.

Sociability Factors

As a continuation of the prior section right above, the investment banks’ employees will for a fact, get to know you more on a personal level, as well as assess your ability to socialize with the rest of your intern class and leadership skills.

Whether it’s the deal team or HR that is judging you, your social skills will become more important during 2021 to assess the potential “fit” with the firm.

Realistically, bringing the same level of networking and social aspects of in-person investment banking to this virtual environment might be unattainable, but many investment banks have expressed their desire to introduce more enjoyable social activities for their intern classes for better bonding despite the distance barrier.

For example, many investment banks have expressed their plans to increase social engagement by hosting mixers, “Happy Hour” events, and scheduled video calls over lunch/dinner with more senior bankers – all arranged and conducted through virtual means.

“Traditional Wall Street internships are immersive affairs in which interns learn technical skills, forge bonds with peers, get hands-on experience and try to make a mark on senior executives who may some day hire them.

JPMorgan’s objective was to “replicate every piece of what an internship would involve” including social engagement, said a person familiar with the bank’s planning, adding: “We haven’t quite figured out how we’re going to deliver it.”

The bank, which hires about 3,000 interns globally every year and has pushed this year’s start date to July, plans to use technology including virtual mixers to immerse students.”

^{(Source: Financial Times)}

This is an important consideration because sociability can oftentimes be a function of the environment. To list two quick examples:

1. Some people are very social and project confidence in-person, but may find video calling to be uncomfortable and are less talkative as a result.
2. On the opposite end of the spectrum, other people can be timid in-person, yet be very confident and social through digital communication.

Internship Feedback – Caveats to the “Positive” Reviews

Most MBA summer associates, if asked to provide a review on the internship experience, would provide a positive response. But this positive review can most likely be attributed to the fact that they received a return offer, above all else.

The more important question that an intern should be asked is: “After your MBA Summer 2021 Associate stint at [Investment Bank], do you truly feel adequately prepared to join the team and capable of contributing in a meaningful way in a short matter of time?”

Realistically, virtual internships cannot replicate in-person internships. An intern, whether a summer associate or summer analyst, does not receive the same opportunities to add value and prove their work ethic, attention-to-detail, and reliability to the deal team.

These are not only opportunities for an intern to earn the trust of the deal team, but also a chance for the intern to gain confidence in his/her abilities under real pressure in a live deal.

Instead of time constraints being the main source of pressure as with training exercises, the high-stakes of the deal where every detail matters and the pressure to earn the respect of the deal term are significant sources of pressure not replicated in virtual internships.

Even if return offers were received, the fact that many interns themselves have indicated they feel inadequately trained should be a point of concern that implies there’ll be a steep learning curve once their full-time job starts. These concerns were confirmed by private surveys conducted independently.

Many of these interns were not pushed to their true limits to confirm they can perform under high pressure as well as withstand the physical toll of long hour weeks consistently without a noticeable reduction in performance or quality of output.

When the factors listed above are taken into consideration, there is a sizeable amount of risk for many of these investment banks and increased rates of employee attrition could be seen in the coming years. Note, investment banking is already an industry well-known for its high employee churn at the junior levels.

Now that our findings on what to expect during Summer 2021 Internships have been covered, we will move onto how Summer 2020 Internships were structured.

MBA Summer Associate Onboarding Process

Onboarding Remotely (Offer Letter Signed ➞ Internship Start Date)

Before the actual internship began, most investment banks sent “care packages” to welcome the new class of interns. These packages would contain items such as:

• Firm branded merchandise (e.g., branded vests, jackets)
• Official internship handbook guides along with office supplies such as notebooks and pens
• Additional “perks” such as food delivery services gift cards (e.g., Seamless, DoorDash)

Each bank also had its own set of policies in handling technology-related equipment such as:

1. Sending their own equipment such as laptops to the interns. Certain firms sent laptops pre-installed with strict security software programs that were required to be returned by the end of the internship, whereas others sent out brand new laptops and let their interns keep them.
2. In the case that equipment was not purchased on the interns’ behalf, most reputable banks paid their interns a stipend to cover the cost of purchasing new equipment. This is done mainly to prevent the same laptop from being used for personal usage as well as work (again, bringing up the risk of confidentiality).
3. Otherwise, another policy was for firms to let interns use their own devices and reimburse the costs of purchasing additional equipment if needed, implying most of the work involved was training-related.

Work-From-Home Setup (“WFH”) for Investment Banking

As a side remark – to get work done efficiently, the importance of setting up a quality workstation cannot be emphasized enough.

The bare minimum should include items such as an external monitor, keyboard, and headset.

By this point, you probably have a workstation setup at home already, but make sure your workplace is up to the “investment banking standard” and optimal for productivity.

For example, a 21.5-inch monitor is probably not going to cut it when you have to go through a 30 column Excel model.

If possible, try to create a workspace where you can separate “work” and “personal life.” While certainly not necessary, it can be helpful mentally to have a clear-cut distinction to improve your ability to focus.

As another example, imagine working on a scattered desk within your dimly lighted messy room versus a clean table in your common living space area with a monitor on top where you can plug in your work laptop – and ask yourself: “Under which setting would I be more likely to be productive?”

Initial Intern Training Phase (Week 1)

At the start of the internship, banks normally offer a one-week (or longer) training session to welcome the interns to the program.

During this week, they will also cover some of the basic technical skills (e.g., Spread Comps, Build DCFs) and the bank’s specific ways of doing things (e.g., PowerPoint templates).

To see how M&A Deal Documents and deliverables such as pitchbooks vary across firms (e.g., Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Qatalyst Partners), take a look through our article on M&A Investment Banking Pitchbooks.

Despite these tasks not feeling like “real work,” your performance during this training is being closely tracked.

Also, to ensure interns are proficient with these things before releasing them to the project teams, most banks give interns graded assignments throughout the training program to complete.

There might be very little “upside” to completing minor tasks properly, but mistakes in menial practice exercises can have very negative implications on others’ perception of your reliability and competence.

Put another way: “If you can’t do minor tasks correctly, how can you be trusted with more important projects where attention-to-detail is critical?”

As soon as you begin the internship program, banks will start to collect data points on you, which collectively impact your final summer evaluation.

Therefore, it is critical to approach the training exercises with the same degree of seriousness as the actual job and not only deliver high-quality work consistently but also in a professional manner (e.g., not be late for an 8am training session).

Neglecting the importance of these training exercises can end up being a costly mistake as these truly do matter over the long run. For the lack of effort, instead of the lack of technical knowledge or cultural fit, to be the basis for not receiving a return offer would be a regretful lapse in judgment that should NOT be seen at the MBA level.

“On the Bench” Phase (Post-Intern Training)

Once you have completed your training and finally “hit the desk,” here comes the next challenge – getting staffed on projects.

Here, the biggest takeaway is to be proactive but not aggressive. Because M&A Activity in Investment Banking comes in waves and is unpredictable for the most part (even during pre-COVID times), it is common for bankers to be staffed on multiple projects at the same time.

To coordinate this staffing problem, there are staffers in each team whose job is to find junior bankers who have availabilities and staff them on new projects (and the same process goes for summer associate staffing).

Moving on, the question becomes: “So how should you approach indicating your interest in being selected to be staffed on a deal?”

1. To begin, be observant and pay close attention to how occupied the deal team appears. The busier the deal team seems, the less aggressive you will need to be in trying to get staffed on a deal. But going into the internship, you should have a relatively good sense of how deal flow activity might be based on the bank you are interning at, the industry/product group focus, recent transactions, etc. Therefore, do your research beforehand and if the opportunity arises, casually ask how the workload has been to an analyst/associate.
2. Using the information compiled above, you can plan your next move accordingly since you are aware of the current state of the firm’s workload. While it is helpful to indicate your interest and reach out to teams that you want to work with, do not burn yourself with excessive outreach if in the first step you concluded deal activity is high. If you are on good terms with the staffer (or a senior banker that may specifically request you) and your performance in training exercises is not an issue, it is only a matter of time before you will get staffed on a deal.
3. The importance of the point above is that you might not have to wait for too long until projects start to arrive, and the last thing you want is to get bombarded with too much work while still in the learning phase. This exposes you to the risk of becoming the “bottleneck,” the weakest link holding the deal team back.

Throughout your internship, always remember that quality is more important than quantity, so make sure you are not leaving negative data points to your intern evaluation.

After a few weeks, as you become more proficient in the work involved and can also better gauge your availability, you can then think about doing additional outreach to the teams that you are most interested in working with.

While the section up until this point has been based on a group where interns were actively getting staffed on deals, most firms were not giving many responsibilities to interns (especially not on live deals). In this case, you should be more proactive in expressing your interest in gaining transaction experience (or a live deal if possible), you should still avoid being pushy.

Staffing capacity can open up at any time – therefore, continue to work towards being the most qualified, as you never know which unexpected opportunities might present themselves.

For these banks, either:

1. Summer associates are straight-up not being staffed on live deals
2. Only a select few stand-out summer associates get to have more responsibilities

Clearly, if it is the latter, it would be the best use of your time to focus on standing out more and showing your work ethic to “earn” the right to be staffed on a deal.

In addition, you must also directly ask to be staffed and ensure the team is aware of your desire to participate in a deal. Otherwise, they will not staff you on a deal, as they were not even made aware of your interest in the first place.

Taking the initiative at these banks is important to obtain the deal experience you desire, as it’ll certainly not be handed to you.

But this request needs to be backed up by your evaluations and training performance.

Ultimately, it comes down to your scoring, how positively (or negatively) the analysts/associates speak about you, and your general reputation within the firm.

Misconception: Purpose of “Training” Exercises

One common misconception is that training exercises are just learning experiences for your own educational benefit throughout the entirety of the internship.

While this is not 100% completely wrong since the firm is training you for the job and wants you to be progressively learning more each week, the purpose of these training exercises shifts from being “education-oriented” during the initial onboarding training week(s) to “performance testing” to gauge how close you are in terms of being ready for the job (and to benchmark you against your peers).

Once the initial training has ended, your focus must shift to performing at the top of the class as each exercise is scored for benchmarking purposes and to determine if you’d be a viable full-time hire.

If a deal team is short-staffed and could use some additional help, “Who would the staffer bring onto the deal?”

The staffer might already have a sense for the few top interns that clearly stand out, but will refer to the performance benchmark to confirm their decision before bringing the intern onto the deal.

The fact that a few interns at a certain group got live deal experience does not mean that the entire intern class did too.

These “fortunate” interns chosen to work with the deal team in a live deal (or transactional work) are the ones that have proven through the training exercises that they can complete tasks properly with both accuracy and speed.

From the perspective of staffers, their priorities are the live deals and picking the most qualified interns to be staffed on the deal based on a subjective and objective assessment, as opposed to making sure all interns get their fair share of experiences.

While understanding the core concepts behind M&A can be grasped quickly, Accretion / Dilution Modeling can take time to be able to complete accurately at a fast pace.

There should be plenty of time to put in the effort to learn concepts beforehand through your own initiatives and have the foundational knowledge to build upon.

If you are not a fast learner or coming from a non-traditional background, it would clearly be in your best interests to take advantage of Financial Modeling Courses that will teach you all the required practical skills required on the job – in addition, make the extra effort to get along with your peer group and potentially find at least one individual with more experience that can be a reliable source of guidance when you are stuck or having trouble.

Even if you have decent technical knowledge in finance and accounting, lacking modeling experience can set you back (figuratively and literally). Therefore, it is crucial that you come in with at least some level of Excel and PowerPoint familiarity.

Throughout the training, if you are inexperienced in modeling, you want to focus on learning proper implementation when building fully integrated, dynamic models. What you want to avoid at all costs is being the slowest, least efficient person within the intern class due to a lack of Excel / PowerPoint knowledge.

Memorizing the basic shortcuts at a bare minimum can free up a significant amount of time, which can then be spent on your weaker areas, the modeling of financial data with proper integrations (as opposed to the other way around).

To reiterate, as an intern you are certainly not expected to come in with perfect modeling skills. But if you desire more responsibilities and to stand out amongst your peers, it is necessary that you are a step ahead of them and prepared well ahead of time.

On the flip side of the matter, at the very least, stay on par with the rest of your intern class, understand the basics fundamentals, and avoid falling behind in terms of technical knowledge.

M&A Deal Staffing: Project Preparation Advice

Staffed on a Deal? The Next Step

Let’s say that you are actually staffed on a project, and immediately begin some form of preparation.

For example, reach out to the project team and ask to get on a call with the analyst or associate. If possible, ask for materials you can go through by yourself and make sure you can get the proper IT access as soon as possible.

These are easy wins to showcase your positive attitude and can make you more efficient when the team gives you specific pieces of work.

It is also important to make an effort to get to know your project team. Most project teams are comprised of:

• Senior Bankers (Partners, MDs, EDs, VPs): Senior bankers oversee the project, the key deliverables, and spend most of their effort on client relationships and sales.
• Junior Bankers (Associates, Analysts, Interns): Junior bankers focus more on project execution and producing work products to be delivered to the client.

As a side note, VPs and Senior Associates tend to be in between the two categories; however, there is a very noteworthy pay gap at the VP vs. Senior Associate level despite the two being relatively close in terms of roles/responsibilities (i.e., this is the first of many “step-ups” in IB compensation).

Junior Bankers and MBA Summer Associate Relationships

As an intern, you will most likely have limited interaction with senior bankers and spend most of your time with the associates and analysts on your team, so winning junior bankers’ support is the key to the success of your internship.

To all summer MBA associates, be cognizant of how investment banking analysts are far more experienced than you, which means that they can be great resources to learn from.

Besides, they will also provide input to your summer internship evaluation, so it is equally important to work well with them and gain their support.

To work well with different bankers, be mindful of each banker’s working style and personality – then cater your interactions with them accordingly.

Often, there can be an internal conflict between analysts and MBA summer associates within firms, which typically coincides with the treatment of analysts as inferior to them in an Investment Bank’s Organizational Structure.

An analyst will rarely have disdain for an MBA associate without reason if treated with respect; thus, adopt the mindset that an analyst is someone from whom you can learn.

Regardless of how prestigious the business school you come from or how high you scored on the GMAT – at the end of the day, the analyst has more real working experience than you however you look at it.

From the perspective of the analyst, it can be frustrating to be looked down upon by someone who has less experience.

Be mindful of this predisposition of many MBA interns from top business schools to act in a pretentious, condescending manner when you first interact with analysts and make it very clear how you do NOT fit that stereotype during your interview and the initial weeks of the internship.

If done correctly, these analysts will not only be helpful resources for you throughout the summer but vouch for you during your evaluations, as well as become good friends.

Remote Work Environment: Effective Communication

Challenges of the Virtual Workplace

One of the most difficult aspects of working remotely is effective communication, and it is even more important for interns as they never get the chance to meet most people they are working with.

To illustrate this point, let’s walk through a hypothetical scenario:

1. An MD has reviewed a deck and sent a VP ten questions
2. Of those ten questions, five questions are passed down to an Associate
3. The Associate then directs one of those questions to you, the MBA Associate Intern, as it’s related to an area that you specifically worked on

Here, as you can see in the illustrative graphic below, that one question from the MD trickled down three layers before arriving at your desk. Each Communication Layer incrementally adds more time to the flow of information within the deal team (and the “cycle” is completed).

To make matters worse, while you may think it’s only one question, there may be three other questions that are dependent on your answer.

For instance, once you respond to the associate and the associate relays your findings to the VP, the VP may have come up with more questions with regards to your answer due to areas of potential minor inconsistencies or contradictions with the other answers that the MD will likely point out.

In short, the burden of performing additional diligence to figure out logical, well-thought-out explanations for the discrepancies noted by the VP returns right back to you.

The ongoing delay for the MD to receive his/her requested answers to the ten questions is further prolonged until you (i.e., the “bottleneck” holding up the process) can respond with satisfactory diligence findings that are approved by both the Associate and then the VP.

To reiterate, one can clearly deduce that any unnecessarily delayed responses on your end will not be doing any favors for the rest of the deal team by any means. The workflow process in investment banking is already time-consuming (exacerbated by COVID) with areas of inefficiency due to the constant reiterations, prolonged diligence requests, and being staffed on multiple deals simultaneously.

Proper Email Etiquette

Projects in banking can move very fast, making it crucial to respond as soon as possible. While this way of communicating has its inherent inefficiencies, these are out of your control.

As a summer intern, you should focus on what you can control and, in this case, respond to the email quickly to reduce the time lag.

Being direct and going straight to the point when writing emails goes hand-in-hand with being quick in responding. Clearly, writing longer emails is more time-consuming, but more importantly, when someone receives a long email, they will either:

Particularly in the virtual environment, being concise matters more. Having a reputation to be a fast responder makes you more reliable and more likely to be given a task.

1. Go through the headache of trying to extract the point of the message and having to unnecessarily expend their time (i.e., could have easily been prevented by getting straight to the point in a brief email).
2. Ignore or defer responding to the email to another time and letting it sit in their inbox, making a follow-up email mandatory.

Both of these results have an unfavorable impact on you as the recipient is left with the impression that you are incapable of communicating concisely.

In situations where lengthy explanations are required, at least outline the key message upfront and then have it followed by detailed explanations.

Alternatively, in a virtual environment where people cannot just walk over to someone’s desk, sometimes it may just make more sense to send people a message or give them a quick call.

Asking Questions ≠ Incompetence

Often you hear about bankers becoming frustrated with interns precisely for the reason of them not asking questions when they needed to, which leads to regret about giving them the task in the first place.

A frequent misconception that many interns have is that asking questions makes them look incompetent. Fight that misconstrued belief and keep in mind that sometimes it may be the managers who are not making themselves clear.

Plus, asking thoughtful questions can even help them to think through the task because often the reason the task was unclear or left vague in the first place can be because they haven’t taken the time to truly think through what the final product would encompass.

As a general rule of thumb, the questions asked to bankers senior to your position should be specific to the project you are tasked with.

But on the other hand, understand that asking an analyst/associate a question that can be easily Googled, found in the intern training manual, or by reverse-engineering the firm’s practice financial models or deliverables provided during training shows a clear lack of effort.

If a question comes up and your workflow has resultingly come to a standstill:

1. First, attempt to figure it out on your own – ask yourself, “Is this a question related to the project that only the banker you are currently staffed under can answer, or is this related to technical knowledge that can be found and learned online?”
2. If it is related to technical knowledge, financial modeling, or using Excel, one option is to reach out to your fellow interns. But at this stage, you should understand financial modeling adequately that any points of confusion can be resolved via a quick Google search because you have learned it before and all that you required is a refresher. If not, you should at least have the foundational knowledge and enough experience to be able to learn very quickly on your own while under timed pressure.
3. But if this is specific to the project and only those on the deal team can answer the question, do not waste time trying to figure it out on your own or even asking your peers as they too will not know the answer. Above all else, do NOT guess under any circumstances when it comes to details such as deal-specific assumptions or a specific company’s vague add-back adjustments.

This is yet another reason why it is critical for you to establish good relationships with the deal team early in the internship, and become comfortable with dropping by their desk to converse and ask a quick question (but since its the year 2021, this would involve giving them a brief text/email or call).

If a question can be answered in less than a few minutes by the banker, you should NOT be sitting at your desk unsure of what to do next as this is an inefficient waste of the firm’s time, as well as your own time.

Pecking Order of Emails: Investment Banking Hierarchy

Returning to the previous example when an MD has questions on a deck and one of them eventually got passed down to you ➞ always make sure to respond to your analyst/associate first, instead of replying directly to the VP or MD.

This not only adds a layer of review to your response, but also shows that the team is working well together, and the analyst/associate is keeping a pulse of everything going on.

Depending on the individual group’s culture, some groups in banking are still fairly hierarchical and if that is the case, you want to follow this hierarchy in your communication as well, especially if you are communicating with people outside of the project team (e.g., clients, senior bankers).

In contrast, if you help an analyst or associate impress a VP / MD, you can certainly bet that they’ll likely return the favor and speak very highly of you from that point onward.

In the worst-case scenario, a direct response to the VP or MD could be negatively interpreted by the analyst/associate as you attempting to go “over their head.”

Regardless of how much you might want to leave a positive impression on the senior bankers, the analyst/associate is the person you report to and the one responsible for the quality of your work (i.e., an error or mistake in the response puts your analyst/associate in an awkward spot, and will likely lead to some unpleasant conversations).

In the spirit of teamwork, keep in mind to always communicate as a team and make your team members look good in front of others.

If you are truly serious about impressing the upper-level senior bankers, concentrate on impressing the analyst/associate as consistent, high-quality work will undoubtedly flow upward.

Let the analyst/associate speak positively about your work ethic and quality of output on your behalf, rather than trying to impress the VP or MD by overstepping your boundaries.

Successful Teamwork in the Remote Work Environment

When bankers are working under tight deadlines and high pressure from clients, the last thing they want is to deal with any individual personnel issues within the team.

As a matter of fact, a collaborative team is such an important factor that you will oftentimes hear people joining certain groups or banks because they jive well with the team there, even if they had the optionality or qualifications to join a larger, more prestigious banking group.

As a summer intern, the key to being a team player is to shift your focus away from your own self-interests (e.g., attempting to impress others, being concerned about your reputation, building out your resume further) to doing whatever you can to make the team better.

To get along well with the team and steadily become a more integral member, start with the menial tasks such as taking nicely formatted notes from meetings, sending out calendar invites, and properly cleaning up the formatting on deliverables (e.g., aligning text boxes on an appendix slide).

While these little things may not be exhilarating for you, completing these tasks on behalf of more experienced bankers frees up their time, which they will certainly remember and these minor tasks progressively build up your reputation and trust from the deal team (leading to more responsibilities).

Networking Considerations During Remote Internships

While you have probably done a fair bit of networking during recruiting and as you start the internship, one of the key rules to remind yourself of is: keep your connections warm.

This should go without saying, but warm connections are always better than cold ones, and you should rely on your existing connections to expand your network.

That being said, banks will generally offer you plenty of opportunities to make new connections within the bank, be it with senior bankers as mentors, junior bankers as buddies, or your fellow interns.

• Senior Bankers (VP, MD): For senior bankers, the rule of thumb is to not expect too much time from them and take advantage of the time you have with them to listen to their career story.
• Junior Bankers (Associates, Analysts): For junior bankers, as there’ll be more of them, you can rely on them more for questions specific to your projects, or even use them as a resource to navigate your internship. For example, they can potentially help you to get on projects in the areas you are interested in. Besides, it would be great if you can foster a mentorship relationship with a few junior bankers, and have regular touchpoints with them throughout your internship.
• Summer Associate Class: As previously mentioned, your peer group is a great place to get to know your fellow interns outside of your personal network. This is a group you can rely on for simpler questions and oftentimes moral support to make those tough eighteen-hour days in your room more tolerable.

Even as you gradually settle into a routine; nevertheless, continue to network and remain active as doing so will pay dividends in the future.

This can be as simple as remaining in touch with your past co-workers and former bosses.

Or, it could involve cold-emailing employees at firms that you someday want to interview for. Many of these employees on the buy-side tend to be more receptive to requests to chat nowadays due to having more time available in their day-to-day schedule.

Plus, the employee probably expects career advice and a casual conversation because you are amidst working an internship at a reputable bank; whereas, the majority of “networking” emails in their inbox are inquiries asking to be hired.

Remote vs. In-Person Hours Comparison

Investment bankers often complain about the long hours and the face time culture in banking. The good news is, in a virtual environment, these things are a bit easier to manage.

Enjoy the flexibility that comes with virtual internships, but remember to be available and easy to reach at all times.

That being said, because of these flexibilities you are enjoying, it is even more important to always be “on-call” and responsive (i.e., avoid going “MIA” needed to be reached urgently).

Besides more challenging training programs, expect more nuances from the prior year such as check-up calls to be made to ensure you are truly are “on-call.”

In the case that a call is not picked up (or returned within a few minutes), this could clearly be marked down in your evaluation as a negative.

Try also to be more attentive to ensuring that your co-workers and deal team can give your cell a ring with the assurance that you’ll pick up.

These calls to confirm you are at your workstation can come in the form of an abrupt video call request from an HR rep or a fire drill exercise emailed to you (and required to be completed soon).

To finish this part up, do not be caught off guard by the increased number of tests.

If you follow instructions and pay close attention to what is expected of you as an intern, none of these tests such as a check-in video call or a fire drill exercise should be a concern.

Full-Time Return Offer Rates

Under the shortened time frame, interns will inevitably have fewer opportunities to leave a positive impression on the team, which makes each interaction and task matter more.

Many firms were more lenient with giving return offers post-2020 summer. Citigroup, in particular, released a note that upon graduation, their interns would receive full-time job offers as long as certain minimum requirements were met.

^{Citigroup Preemptive Internship Offer (Source: Institutional Investor)}

The 2020 full-time return offers from EBs and BBs were on the higher end with investment banks such as Moelis, PJT, Morgan Stanley, and BAML gave return offers at or near 100%, whereas firms such as Evercore, JPM, and Goldman Sachs were slightly lower and more consistent with their past return offer rates.

But this should come as no surprise since these firms pick the very top candidates from the leading business schools (i.e., low-risk hires).

As a side note, another consideration is that certain offers came with delayed start dates or in the case of Evercore, the optionality to delay the start date in return for compensation.

^{Evercore Junior Bankers Offered Delayed Start-Date Option (Source: Wall Street Journal)}

What to Do if No Full-Time Return Offer?

In the case that you did not receive a return offer in 2020; quite frankly, you are in a very disadvantageous position and your best bet may be to recruit for a boutique to lower middle-market investment bank ideally through connections (and eventually lateral).

Even if the economic outlook improves in 2021 / 2022 and the COVID-19 vaccine does indeed lead to the full recovery of the global economy as forecasted by many economists, full-time recruiting for front-office roles in investment banking will remain close to non-existent for the time being.

Without a full-time offer secured, you will find yourself in an unfavorable situation to be in due to the limited number of openings firms will be interviewing for. Because of the high return offer rates given in 2020 with 2021 expected to be along the same lines, the odds will be stacked against you in the current job market.

Or, potentially consider a role in Equity Research if you have an interest in following the stock market and Sell-Side Research. Similar to choosing a bank with less prestige due to the cultural fit with the team, you have to be open-minded and figure out what it is that you truly enjoy.

This means, choose the career path where you can see yourself working on a long-term, sustainable basis, not the one where you dread waking up each morning (as this will inevitably lead to regret later down the road).

Furthermore, it can be very difficult to positively spin not receiving an offer from a virtual internship. The exception being if the bank you were at gave low return offers, but this will be public knowledge and most view the bar to receive a return offer in 2020 (and 2021) to have been set lower given the atypical circumstances.

While 2021 return offers are expected to be on the higher end, yet again, do not allow that to get in your head.

Nothing is for certain, but to return to an earlier point – focus on what is within your control, which is putting in your full effort.

Another factor to keep in the back of your mind is that one of the key reasons that return rates were so high in 2020 was because of the shorter duration of the internships. A five-week internship, no matter how you look at it, is insufficient to judge a candidate accurately and it would thus be unfair not to extend an offer.

But in 2021, the internship duration is anticipated to return to (or be near) the typical range of lasting around ten weeks. And coupled with more training prepared for interns and opportunities to assess interns accurately, there very well could be lower return rates in 2021 compared to 2020.

A countereffect of many banks giving higher than normal return offers is that 2022 (and potentially even 2023) may have smaller analyst/associate classes. However, this will be reliant on the bank’s deal flow and financial performance; meaning, the performance of the bank’s other business segments such as its Sales & Trading Division.

But for reasons that should not require further explanation, try to avoid finding yourself in this disadvantageous position in the first place by treating the virtual internship as seriously as if it were an in-person internship and ensuring each of the guidelines stated in this article are strictly abided by.

By the end of the internship, there should be no doubt in your mind that you gave it your best effort and have zero regrets regarding your Internship Preparation, how you approached each project given to you, and the manner in which you conducted yourself professionally.

Hiring Red Flags: How To NOT Receive a Return Offer

Be mindful of the three of the main red flags that lead to not receiving a return offer:

1. Careless Attitude: Coming across as not taking the work seriously and showing a lack of effort is an easy way to get crossed off the list of interns returning full-time. These are stressful, difficult times for many employers, the least you can do is take your work very seriously and be respectful at all times. Understand that you are fortunate to be working this internship and for this firm – the HR team in particular – is going out of its way to provide the best experience possible.
2. Lack of Effort: Having a poor understanding of Basic Financial Modeling Integrations and Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) concepts that lag behind the rest of the intern class can be another unfortunate reason a return offer is not received. When it comes to training exercises, everyone comes from different backgrounds and experience levels. Firms are aware of this, so understand that you do not necessarily have to be at the top of the class in terms of performance. But over time, there should be tangible progress that begins to show. If not, this can be interpreted as either a lack of effort or disinterest. In most cases, it is a combination of both as the lack of interest is the cause of the amount of effort. It is often only through real experience that you might learn that a certain career path is not meant for you. But even if that turns out to be the case, you should give it your best effort and be able to do well on the exercises. To tie this to an example related to academics, not every course you took during your time as an undergraduate student and now MBA student interested you – yet, you still gave it your best effort (if not more) to receive a high grade in those classes and maintain a high GPA.
3. Unprofessionalism: Not following the firm’s specific protocol, clearly stated instructions, and lack of professionalism usually stems from a lack of past internship experience (i.e., unintentional ignorance). When you join an investment bank as an MBA summer associate, you are becoming an employee of the firm. Therefore, it should be common sense to follow instructions when they are provided to you. For example, not being at your desk on-call during working hours, being given a simple formatting task in PowerPoint and using your own formatting, font colors, and font style instead, not dressing up to at least “business casual” wear during Zoom calls (especially during calls with more senior bankers), and cutting an analyst/associate mid-speech during conference calls (i.e., constant interruptions without allowing the speaker to finish) would all be examples of unprofessional behavior that would clearly lead to not receiving a return offer.

Based on the examples listed above, you should be able to recognize why these types of behavioral flaws are unacceptable and are basic qualities that you need to have down by now, especially as an MBA student.

Furthermore, be understanding of the firm’s situation and never complain to any extent about the shortcomings of the internships (have some genuine gratitude internally and always have a positive attitude), and prepare in advance to prevent falling behind within the intern class.

Hence, the notion that return offers were given far easier than in the past, as most analysts/associates agree that these interns were not given a “fair shot” to prove themselves and are biased towards giving a return offer.

Many bankers also understand the state of the hiring market, and not giving a return offer after a sub-par, less-than-ideal virtual assessment could damage the candidacy of someone qualified that might have gotten along well within the firm if it had been an in-person internship.

The Bottom Line

To bring our guide on virtual internships to a conclusion, some of the key points to engrain in your mind have been listed below for convenient reference:

• Even if a project or task is training and based on a hypothetical scenario, approach it with the same level of seriousness as if you were staffed on a live deal – having the right mindset that everything matters (or lacking it) will inherently show in the quality of your work.
• To stand out and be staffed on deals, you must be proactive – but simultaneously, understand your limitations and be risk-averse by getting your priorities in check (e.g., performance in practice exercises, communication with your peers and superiors) before asking for more responsibilities.
• Be easily accessible either through email or phone and respond promptly to messages on time – the importance of clear, effective communication throughout the internship cannot be emphasized enough, especially in a remote environment.
• If deemed necessary, ask questions that are thoughtful and regarding details specific to a project. Questions asked to senior bankers you are staffed under should convey attention to detail, an understanding of the assignment, and indicate that you actually know what you are doing (because this serves as “proof” that the project was not given to the wrong person).
• Understand the hours that you are expected to be at your desk and be disciplined in following those instructions. As a remote intern, the hours are far less demanding than in-person internships, so the least you can do is stand by your obligations and be “on-call.”
• Request feedback and more importantly, implement the feedback and show the tangible progress as proof that you actually took their advice. Showing that you not only listen to advice but can actually act on it will leave a very positive impression because bankers want to hire those that are intelligent but with enough humility to pursue continuous improvement.

In closing, Summer 2021 will most likely be similar to last year in being training-oriented, but firms this time around will be more prepared in advance. If not, firms with internship programs starting out in-person will at the very least have a backup plan ready in case of an unexpected turn of events.

So expect the internship programs to be more refined in terms of being structured, consisting of a diverse range of projects with greater depth to mimic the actual investment banking experience, and comparably a more well-rounded curriculum than the year before.

While the possibility of an in-person internship is not yet completely off the table, all of the prevalent data and information that impact the decisions seem to point towards virtual internships in 2021 for most firms.