2nd Year Analyst at Micro-Boutique Open For Questions and Also Looking for Career Advice

First part of the title: There are hundreds of small IBs out there focusing on M&A Advisory/Private Placements and I'm just beginning my 2nd year as an Analyst at one of them. We have less than 10 people and I'm the only Analyst, however my deal flow is great and I've been a part of closed deals in Industrials, Food & Beverage and IT, all between $25-$125MM. I graduated from a Top 30 semi-target and worked a year in AM before starting my IB job. I'm happy to answer questions about my experience thus far if anyone is curious about the lifestyle, since there is so much on WSO about BBs and another thread currently going on about life at an Elite Boutique.

Second part of the title: Call me crazy, but I may want to stay on the sell-side long term. I like working with clients and the feeling when we are closing a deal. I'm worried my undergrad GPA (3.4ish) may not make me a competitive applicant for a top B-School, and I also like work a lot more than doing homework and preparing for exams. Do I try to lateral to a bigger boutique or MM (HL, Baird, Stifel, etc.) or is B-School really going to be my only option if I want to continue in IB? My bank has told me they expect 2-3 years from me and then I move on. If I try to lateral, is it a move I go for now after my 1st year or do I try to get more experience? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

Greta thread, always wanted one like this.

What types of internships did you have i college? ECs? Did you apply to top shops for FT? How technical was the interview for this shop? Salary? Bonus?

Looking forward to the answer. Thanks for the thread

The difference between successful people and others is largely a habit - a controlled habit of doing every task better, faster and more efficiently.
 
mhurricane:
Greta thread, always wanted one like this.

What types of internships did you have i college? ECs? Did you apply to top shops for FT? How technical was the interview for this shop? Salary? Bonus?

Looking forward to the answer. Thanks for the thread

Only had one internship after my junior year and that was doing research on the credit worthiness of municipal and corporate bond issuers. Although it wasn't the same firm, that experience was attractive to the AM firm that hired me out of college.

In college I was a varsity athlete in a non-revenue sport, and although it wasn't D1, we were nationally ranked in D3 and it was a pretty high level. Other than that, I did the student-run investment fund where we studied companies and pitched them to the rest of the students.

I did apply to top shops and had a couple final rounds but no luck. To answer another question, I wound up in AM because it was February of my senior year and I had no offers, so I took that one even though I didn't really want it. My interview for this shop was not very technical; they asked me to walk through a DCF and the toughest question which I couldn't answer was what kind of Total Debt/EBITDA ratio would you expect a manufacturing company to have.

I won't get into base/bonus specifics but I pocketed about 85k for my first 12 months. Keep in mind I live in a mid-sized city and my roommate and I pay $1400/month combined for a pretty nice place.

 

The way I found this job was through quite a bit of luck. I was stalking LinkedIn one day and I stumbled upon someone who had interned there. I never heard of it before so I went on their website and saw they had a job posting looking for an Analyst. I applied through the website, got a call a few days later to set up a phone screen with HR and that was that. It turned out their current Analyst was leaving for B-School and I applied at exactly the right time because they needed someone to fill in. I have never asked if they interviewed anyone else to fill the position, but my guess is no.

 

Why'd you go to AM out of undergrad, and why did you move over to IBD from there? I'm sure in your interviews they asked the question about why you left AM... what was your answer?

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Why'd you go to AM out of undergrad, and why did you move over to IBD from there? I'm sure in your interviews they asked the question about why you left AM... what was your answer?

coming over to the dark side?

The difference between successful people and others is largely a habit - a controlled habit of doing every task better, faster and more efficiently.
 
mhurricane:
BlackHat:
Why'd you go to AM out of undergrad, and why did you move over to IBD from there? I'm sure in your interviews they asked the question about why you left AM... what was your answer?

coming over to the dark side?

Hahah never! But that does make me wonder. New thread coming!

I hate victims who respect their executioners
 
BlackHat:
Why'd you go to AM out of undergrad, and why did you move over to IBD from there? I'm sure in your interviews they asked the question about why you left AM... what was your answer?

I went AM because it was getting late in my senior year and I didn't have anything else. While I wanted IB out of school, being at a semi-target the number of banks that do OCR is certainly in the single digits and it's extremely competitive. I left AM because I hated the city that I was in and I didn't like the path I was on at that company. While this company attracts some very talented people right out of college, they have a tradition of not retaining most of them for very long because you don't get paid well and don't develop a good skill set. I presented these reasons in a little bit of a nice manner during my interview.

I believe that as far as the finance world is concerned, doing IB your first few years out of school will open the most doors for you down the road. If you can get through being an IB analyst, you can handle pretty much anything from both a work ethic and skill set standpoint in PE, Corp Dev or HF.

 

What are your hours like? Take me through an average day

The difference between successful people and others is largely a habit - a controlled habit of doing every task better, faster and more efficiently.
 
mhurricane:
What are your hours like? Take me through an average day

My hours for IB standards are as good as it gets. 90% of my weeks are 55-65 hours. I've gone up to as much as 80 in a week. I occasionally have to go in on weekends, maybe two days per month, but never for more than 4-5 hours on a weekend. I get in between 8 and 830 and I'm usually out sometime between 8 and 9. This is due to the fact that everyone I work with has a family, they are rarely in the office past 8PM, and their typical leave time is between 630-7. They all do quite a bit of work at home though, so those aren't their true hours. That being said, I also take 20 minutes for lunch where I usually get a sandwich to go and I almost never eat dinner until after I leave. So those 60 hours a week are spent working pretty much the entire time. No two days are really the same so that's a tough question to answer. I do a lot of work with Capital IQ putting together comp sets, doing valuations comprised of Publics, Deals, DCF and LBO, occasionally building a model from scratch, managing data rooms and talking with clients to get their help for due diligence purposes, making pitchbooks, doing industry research via Gartner or IbisWorld reports, putting together Teasers and CIMs, and generating potential buyers lists for mass mailings of Teasers and CIMs. I've done other things, but I would say the majority of my time is spent on the things listed above. I usually work with one senior guy in my group at a time who's heading the effort on the deal, and it's often difficult to balance my time among everyone as the only Analyst because they all try to hog me.

 

Nesto--

Thanks for taking time out of your day to answer questions.

I'm a top 15 recent grad heading into alternative assets management in a month. From what I've been told, the group I'm joining not only does co-investments in PE but also direct LBO investments. My ultimate goal is private equity. Should I try to lateral over to the sell-side so I can get into the traditional IBD-PE track, or should my alternative assets management experience suffice in procuring an associate role with a middle market PE shop?

 
DatGreyPoupon:
Nesto--

Thanks for taking time out of your day to answer questions.

I'm a top 15 recent grad heading into alternative assets management in a month. From what I've been told, the group I'm joining not only does co-investments in PE but also direct LBO investments. My ultimate goal is private equity. Should I try to lateral over to the sell-side so I can get into the traditional IBD-PE track, or should my alternative assets management experience suffice in procuring an associate role with a middle market PE shop?

It depends how ambitious you want to be. If you look at the Associates of big MM PE players like Madison Dearborn or HIG, almost all of them did BB or brand-name MM IB before moving to PE. However, at some of the smaller shops I've encountered, the Associates have more unique paths like F500 CF or something along the lines of what you're in. Lateraling into a top IB is very difficult if you're out of IB, especially in this market. I've investigated the lateral Analyst postings pretty thoroughly among the top firms and most of them want a year or two in IB. And the smaller PE shops I mentioned above, I don't know what kind of pay their Associates get and I have no idea how these Associates found these jobs. I'm not sure how you approach a 7-8 man PE shop besides cold calling/emailing. If I were you, I'd focus on obtaining the skill set it takes to be a successful PE Associate. That means modeling, being able to dig through and understand a model that's not your own, developing an interest in a certain industry and knowing it inside out and being able to do due diligence. If you're coming through a non-traditional path where the headhunters won't be all over you, my best advice is do additional research/practice when you're not in the office to set yourself apart from the rest of the candidates. You need to be able to add value to the PE firm in some unique way if you didn't do 2 years of BB IB.

 

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