Unusual Concern

Unusual Concern

Hi monkeys, looking for advice on an unusual situation. I’m a second year working in M&A and I’ve pretty much gotten no material exposure. I’m staffed on live deals but they’re kinda dead and I’m a bit concerned that I haven’t gotten any tangible experience. I don’t know how a data room works (on the sell side I’ve been on I can navigate it and stuff but don’t know how it works or how to populate or interact with it beyond very basic stuff), haven’t really gotten hands on with the “deal process” aside from taking notes and cleaning them up. I’ve just been put on a bunch of pitches and done really surface level research and a bunch of high level market layout work for certain pages but I’ve yet to touch a model and haven’t really gotten my hands dirty. The most technical thing I’ve done is run a cost of equity and there isn’t really any mentorship in my group in that the VP will stay late and show me the ropes (though this seems to be the norm).

The irony of this situation is that my interview processes have gone really well and I’ve made it very far despite not having done anything on the job. I can speak intelligently on the “deals” on my resume (I’m a good BSer I guess), even though they’re not truly deals and I’ve had so much downtime I can pretty much do all the Peak Framework models blindfolded at this point but my concern is that I’ll get an offer from a PE firm and have no idea what I’m doing once I start and then I get absolutely destroyed.

I haven’t exactly experienced the “drinking out of a firehose” my peers have gotten, but the WLB is pretty good because of this. Obviously I’m not the only one, but my experience so far hasn’t really matched my aspirations for PE and I’m genuinely concerned I just won’t be ready. Anyone experience something similar?