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July 31, 2026
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Get an interview guide. WSO and BIWS both make good ones. Then get the Rosenbaum investment banking book from Amazon. You can get an older version of that book to save money.
That should set you up with some industry knowledge. Then, start networking. I would highly, highly suggest spending a few hours searching through WSO, paying close attention to the Hall of Fame threads here. There is a lot of helpful information here. Good luck.
If you want to do M&A go for it, but in re to you "Master Plan", M&A is not going to help. I don't see how you need M&A experience to help companies merge supply chains. M&A will only give you transactional experience and with have nothing to do with operations after the company mergers.
I would look into supply chain consulting and / or corp development for a large MNC that historically does a lot of M&A. All the big consulting firms have supply chain consulting where they consult companies after mergers to optimize their supply chain. This will give you the best experience to open up your own supply chain company.
Stop, stop, stop. Most of the other commentators here have completely missed the mark, and as "students" or "first year analysts," it is no wonder. You should go into consulting at an MBB or a Big 4 accounting firm. That will be much more complementary to your supply chain aspirations. I did 5 years of consulting before business school and now banking after an MBA. So that I am crystal clear: There is absolutely nothing at all as a banker that you will do that will add knowledge or experience to anything even remotely tangential to supply chain analysis in any fashion. These companies hire MBB or a Big 4 accounting firm to do their M&A integration. A banking associate puts in working capital items in the model, maybe a few lines for cost synergies, and verifies the numbers on the back of the consultants' reports. You can learn that in a day. There are many interesting aspects to a banking Associate work but anything approaching rigorous supply chain analysis is not one of them.