In 2 months, you're starting your first FT role in ER straight out of college - what should I learn beforehand?

As title alludes to, I'm starting a FT role in ER this September. I have some spare time and money right now, so what skills could I be learning I'm this period to thrive for the first 6 months?

Haven't interned in ER previously

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Brush your Excel and Powerpoint skills, you will spend a lot of time with those. If you are going to cover a specific industry, better start reading about it.

In fact, you can reach out to your bank/group and ask if there is anything you can start learning right now, what materials you should read etc. - I have done that and they seemed really happy that I was motivated to learn before joining.

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I was just networking with a few firms that published graduate roles and hit it off with them pretty well. I'd say networking for me was the major foot in the door. Otherwise start building a complete 3 statement model for a company and project it for 5 years using equity research guidance and create a stock pitch for it. There are not alot of roles for grads so you wont get multiple opportunities, just be prepared for the ones you do get.

 
  • Get some primers on your sector (DM me if you want) to learn
  • Dial into the Q2 conf calls for the smaller names in your space (smaller names are simpler to understand, I think of the megacaps as conglomerate of smaller names as segments)
  • Learn 1 new Excel and PowerPoint shortcut each day leading up to your day of start
  • Do a Wallstreetprep or Breaking Into Wall Street, the basic course is fine (you don't need those insanely detailed M&A modeling lessons)
  • Try "covering" a company - take one of the names in your analyst's coverage, spread the numbers, read the 10Ks / transcripts / proxy, do the forecasts and keep track of daily news flow for the name
 

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