M&A deals for PE recruiting - help!

Hi monkeys. As far as I know, most of me and my friends (all in pretty good BB / EB) have not closed a full M&A deal as of the end of first year. Given that recruiting is coming up, is it completely necessary to have one closed? Or just some that are in the works?? 
 

recruiting used to be so early that it did not matter because nobody has closed deals by sept/oct of their first year, but any help now?? Anyone else in same position?

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This isn't that big of an issue - you as the analyst have absolutely no control over which deals close. Even if you get put on the "best" staffings, those can often hit bumps or drag out for many months.

Best way to deal with this is to put 2-3 really solid deals that you can talk about at length. Stress in bullet points what you did (ideally ones with high level of model and process ownership). If a deal was terminated but you can talk about why it didn't happen and show some modeling nuance, that's still good conversation (i.e. we didn't reach the final valuation because we ran our valuation in this specific way)

Also despacs aren't traditional M&A, but if you've closed any, would definitely put on your resume but below any bigger M&A work. There's still a good amount of diligence and process work involved, and SPACs have been a huge percentage of the work done this year so many analysts will have them on their resume. 

 

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