1st year analyst questions
1st year analyst in a good coverage group at a solid MM bank (Blair, HL, etc). Have a couple of questions and just want to gauge my experience and if I should be changing anything.
-How many analysts are staffed on your deals? We have 2-3 analysts staffed on each deal and this leads to me not having a lot of responsibility.
-What kind of responsibility are you getting? I don’t expect to be running the model, but feel as though I have plateaued in my learning curve (due to lack of responsibility) over the last month.
-How many deals are you staffed on? I’m currently on 2 deals and 2 pitches.
Basically, my group has decent exit opps historically to PE but I’m worried I’m not getting the responsibility that I should be at this point. Worried this will translate to me not having enough to speak to in interviews. I haven’t pushed out poor work product (associate/senior analyst have always said it looks good or have me correct a minor mistake) so not sure why I’m not getting more responsibility given. Should I ask VP, etc for more responsibility? At the same time, I don’t know if this is normal or if I landed in a sweet spot (less hours/work but will be fine for PE recruiting)?
Aren't you ~2 months on the desk at this point?
If so, this all sounds pretty normal. Typically saw 1 - 2 analyst deal teams w/ double staffing of 1st years in the first few months so that would increase it to 2 - 3 (i.e. 1 M&A analyst, 1 coverage analyst, 1 1st-year learner). When double staffed like that the first year's typically doing intern level work still, most of the responsibility is picked up by the senior analyst. Your deal amount seems pretty solid for any one time.
Overall I wouldn't stress as this sounds like a pretty normal experience for the first 2 - 3 months of an analyst stint. You'll continue to gain responsibility as you prove yourself. The dirty secret is most 1st years don't have much to talk about in PE interviews. The idea is to bs your small role in a deal into sounding bigger than it is until you actually have that experience.
Going through a similar issue. 2-3 analysts per deal and despite being staffed on 3 live deals at the moment, I barely do any actual work.
A lot of work where the ASO/A2 does a shit ton of model/analysis work then says “put this on a slide”.
The answer every time I ask for more involvement is “it’s just easier for me to do it”. Which I 100% understand, but also when are we supposed to learn and take the reigns.
Give it time. Also if you have free time, why not try being proactive. Work in a rider and start doing work that isn’t assigned to you, but you know needs to be done. Then send to associate and say hey I had some capacity and took a stab at XYZ. Personally, I would appreciate that as along as I know you have been asking for more work and it hasn’t been granted. However, if you have capacity and Aren’t letting your staffer know, then it could be an issue.
As a second year just waiting to jump ship I can’t tell you how much I envy you complaining about having too little work to do on live deals
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