Q&A: Senior VP in BB M&A (London)

Good question. The below is a mix of tips that helped me and traits I see in successful analysts in my team.

1. Attitude above all else. People want to work with people they like. Be proactive, keen and enthusiastic. Maintain a good attitude even if it’s late at night or a stressful situation
2. Think ahead – the biggest mind-set shift I made as an analyst was to start thinking about the wider context of each piece of work. What is the purpose of this analysis, what are the client’s strategic objectives, how does this deal achieve them etc. This also extends to being able to explain your work to others, particularly when it comes to modelling - why does EBITDA move in this way, why is the ICR breached in year 3 etc.
3. Ability to learn – show an aptitude to learn and pick things up. Most seniors have no problem giving you their time to train you but we want to see that our time is not wasted and you are moving up the learning curve
4. Always check your work – this gets preached so much but it’s amazing how many analysts don’t follow it and let down a great piece of work with sloppy errors
5. Work neat and clean – be organised, setup good shortcuts/hotkeys, label files properly, save things down in the right place, format your excel well etc. A few extra minutes a day save hours in the long-run
6. Understand it’s just business and not personal – it’s inevitable you’ll work with difficult characters in IB, being able to take it on the chin goes a long way
7. Treat people well – again one that’s preached often, but not followed. Treat the cleaners/presentations team/printers/assistants well. Aside from being the right thing to do these people can save you in a pinch
8. Practical – get a good screen and keyboard/mouse setup for home so you don’t need to always go into the office on weekends

On avoiding burnout I’d say:

1. Understand it’s a marathon not a sprint. I went flying out the blocks as an analyst and it was only a few years in that I realised it wasn’t sustainable and adopted more work life balance
2. Being a good performer helps, if you are trusted as someone who can deliver your seniors will be much more flexible in terms of deadlines – I appreciate that it can take time to build up this sort of political capital
3. Don’t sacrifice exercise; doing something is better than nothing even if it’s only Friday/Weekends or going for a walk around the City during the working day
4. Take advantage of your disposable income to make life easier (healthy eating, laundry services, cleaner for your apartment etc), its money well spent. Apps make it easier than ever particularly in London/NY

Re staying in the long haul, I landed in a really good group early on with a great learning experience, good comp and a couple of good Rabbis so my threshold for leaving was quite high. Over time this meant I had quite a bit of leeway to choose what I worked on and lots of upward exposure so my experience has been very positive. I also saw a number of peers who left for PE having an experience not so different to IB with in some cases worse comp. Thirdly I suppose a small part of it is the paradox of choice when there are lots of opportunities out there (PE, tech, start-ups, corporates etc).