How to crush my SA gig and get that return offer

LedgerShelf:

Most of the return offer is decided by whether people want you on their next deal, not by how smart you are. Rough list of what matters.

Be right before you're fast. A clean model with no errors beats a quick one that's off. Check every page twice before it goes up, and tie your numbers out to the source. Nobody remembers the good pages but everyone remembers the typo in the headline.

Don't ask the same question twice. Write the answer down the first time. Ask for the why behind a comment, not just the fix, so the next one comes out right.

Own the small stuff. Formatting, footnotes, version control, turning comments fast. That's most of what an SA actually gets judged on, because it's most of what you get handed.

Say when you're slammed, early. Better to tell the associate at 4pm you can't hit 8pm than to miss it silently.

Get on a live deal if you can and be useful on it. Ask your associate what's coming up and raise your hand. Also be someone people don't mind sitting next to at 1am.

Still have your technicals ready for the end-of-summer conversations. Returns are mostly about work product and fit, but teams do sometimes ask.

Agreed with everything said above. That being said, there are things that you can’t control when it comes to returns sometimes. So I HIGHLY recommend reaching out to other firms that may hire FT during the summer to guarantee that you do not go back to school empty handed.

yep, this guy nailed it. it's mainly attitude and do you do the grunt/dirty work without bching and moaning. do you send invites for calls quickly vs. sitting on them, do you schedule calls immediately when the request comes in, do you do admin BS with a smile, and for real work that isn't overly complex, do you crush it. is your work clean and well formatted. no one expecting you to build models and run ridiculous sensitivites but the stuff that falls in your camp needs to be crushed and handled properly. another massive massive massive one - do you take notes on calls and circulate immediately. or do you only take notes when asked and miss a bunch of important stuff.