Being The Grunt

depends on what group and which bank you are in but yes you do get exposure to clients, I would say it is 40% modeling/pitchbook/riders for ppt 30% email/communication 30% administrative work

I recommend talking to a full time analyst about the different functions of the different banks and different groups at a BB / EB / MM

Depends on the investment bank you join and how much the higher ups respect you (in terms of if you communicate with the client). If you are at a boutique, you are more likely to interact more with the client since the deal teams are smaller.

Hours are usually exaggerated, but they are relatively bad. It is more on the extremes when it gets bad. Some weeks you work 50 hours a week, some weeks you can work over 100.

Yes, some of the work is also repetitive/mindless, but that is how any first job out of college is.

In general, banking is an amazing stepping stone compared to other careers paths right out of college. It allowed me to transition to the buyside at a distressed hedge fund where I have now worked for years.

Would read finance blogs if your interested in learning more. Buyside Hustle for example :)

LOL I wish I worked in excel all day. It's probably a 30/50/20 split across excel, ppt, and outlook/general admin/recruiting.

Yeah, agree with the others. I'm at an M&A boutique, and it's been on either extreme hours wise. Minimum day will be 11 hours barring like a Friday before a holiday or special situation (in at 8:30, earliest I can leave is 7:30 if the senior guys are gone and I'm done), so 55hrs, to 80+. My Firm is pretty good about weekends and doesn't give a shit about making us come in if we don't need to, but this leads to later nights during the week at times, and it's obv not out of the question, but isn't expected for the hell of it.

If I have a book to build, the majority of my day is split between PPT and Excel, probably 55/25 respectively if you're including the research going into the CIM, but hard to put exact numbers on it since they go hand in hand, and the remaining 20% will go to answering client emails/calls.

Other days it will be completely flipped and I will do almost nothing but answer emails and calls if I am doing something like scheduling meetings with potential buyers and our client, or it could be entirely excel based if I'm building a complex model for one of our publicly traded clients.

Also, unsure how this is at bigger banks, but the thing I really wasn't expecting going into IB was all the little random research projects that just get tossed at me. Like my MD might just have a random thought in the middle of the day for a potential area of interest for XYZ client, or a new way to approach a buyside, or whatever, and that will get thrown at me to just figure out. Sometimes it's interesting, but a lot of the time it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack when you need a sewing machine to get the job done.