10 Months of Ball Sucking Pain — I finally did it dad

Note: The last paragraph includes a note on how to make sure that you get the guide that I'm putting together (designed for undergrads looking for guidance) and the list of resources that I found most helpful for my summer analyst recruitment, even though I'll be posting it on here as well. 

For some context, I'm currently a junior at a non-target. At the start of my sophomore year, I honestly couldn't tell you what investment banking was. After hearing about the industry through a conversation with someone in my fraternity, I decided to watch a few Youtube videos, and after that, I was set on pursuing the recruitment process for SA 2024.

I remember dropping everything to work on my resume, read up on technicals, learn about what networking is... the list goes on. I stopped going out and hanging out with friends. If I wasn't doing schoolwork, I was prepping. I really wanted it. At first, I thought that I could grind for 3-4 months, land an offer, then go back to my normal life. Quickly, I realized how unrealistic my expectations were. 

A few weeks ago, I finally landed an offer with an MM firm in their M&A team! I ended up recruiting for ~10 months straight! I couldn't be any happier with the outcome. The workload definitely lightened up towards the end as fewer firms were recruiting (so less networking) and because I basically had technicals drilled into my head, but the stress of not having an offer/waiting to hear back after an interview/waiting for an interview drove me crazy.  

I did a little recap of my journey last night to find that I sent over 2000 emails, did over 250 networking calls, and had 85 interviews with 32 different firms in those 10 months. While it was tough, I can definitely say that it paid off. Not only did I land an offer that I'm ecstatic about, but I feel that I've grown so much as a person—especially when it comes to my social skills. I started this process as a huge introvert. Now, I feel so much more confident in my social skills and feel that I can easily have an engaging conversation with anyone whenever I need to (a huge game changer now that I'm back at hitting the campus bars 4 nights a week). 

For the sophomores who are getting ready for SA 25, good luck. Regardless of where you go to school, the process is going to be tough, but it'll all be worth it in the end. Even if you don't end up landing an offer (I was extremely lucky to squeeze one out at the last second, pretty sure this was one of the last firms to run a process), you'll walk away with invaluable skills and knowledge. One piece of advice—if you're not passing interviews, it's because you're focusing too much on providing the "right" responses to questions as opposed to building a connection with your interviewer. Your interviewer probably hasn't slept in 2 days and is running on 200mg of Adderall. Bring some energy to the interview, be personable, be funny, and make the interview an enjoyable conversation. Every other kid in the room is qualified on paper so you need to stand out. These bankers would much rather hear a funny story or listen to someone speak on some random passion, even if it has nothing to do with IBD, rather than hear someone half-heartedly prattle on about the super cool Microsoft Blizzard acquisition that happened last year.

Thanks WSO for all the guidance, resources, and support over the past year. And thanks for reading. 

To pay it forward, I'm working on an extensive guide, it'll include my personal thoughts and a list of all the resources I found helpful, for those who want to break in but feel lost and don't know where to start. Expect it very soon (it'll be posted on here, but if you want me to send you a copy when it's done add me on Discord and drop a comment with your username (so I know who to add back, got way too many requests). My username is cooldame. Happy to answer any questions via Discord DMs as well).