Can you talk a little bit about yourself?

Sure. My name is Rob, and I just finished an internship with National Bank in the M&A group and investment banking. I’m currently in my third year at UofT. I am in the Rotman Commerce program.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what you really did this summer? What were some highlights of your internship?

I got to see lots of different industries, getting experience kind of across the board in a few different areas, rather than specializing in one.

Can you tell us a bit of how investment banking in an m&a group would differ from investment banking in another industry group.

Investment banking is divided up into two different areas, one being as an industry coverage group. You could be working on the mining team, the real estate, team oil and gas, whatever.

And another one is called product groups, which are the different services that our investment bank might offer. They’re a little bit more specialized in sort of a specific service rather than an industry. Mergers and acquisitions would be one of them. Also, there is the equity capital market, which is raising funds on public markets. And then, there will be debt capital markets, which are raising funds from debt.

With the M&A team, more of the focus is on executing the current deals in the pipeline and working in the later stages rather than maintaining contacts within a specific industry.

Can you tell us how your tasks varied from maybe some of the analysts you interacted with?

It definitely depends on who I was working with. In certain times it’s more of a research job, where you’re doing industry research. It also might be building out slides based on information from various sources.

The modelling, I think, I get a little bit on some basic stuff. But it is more for full-time than for the interns.

Can you tell us a bit about some daily tasks you would do every day? Or was it really completely different every day, depending on the task you were given?

There wasn’t really one thing that I would do every day, to be honest. It was kind of day-to-day, depending on what sort of people I was working for.

I had an analyst and associate and a VP, and I was working directly with them. So it just really depended on what they were doing on the day-to-day.

I will say this wasn’t related to the job necessarily, but one thing I do every day is to spend 10-15 minutes looking at the current news. Because especially in a job in finance, you don’t want to be sitting there having no idea what’s going on when people are talking about.

So I think staying up to date with that kind of thing is crucial. Even just more so for your own learning and talk to anything that’s going on in the market.

Can you tell us a bit about some skills you think you developed specifically during this internship?

I think the biggest thing was attention to detail, more so than any technical skill. The bar for attention to detail is so much higher when you’re not in school.

But really, it’s kind of a whole different game; once you’re in the workplace, you know, a mistake isn’t just the difference between an A and A-. One mistake can invalidate everything you’ve done all day. So I think that that was kind of the biggest thing that I developed from start to finish is limiting mistakes.

So does that sometimes lead to a lot of stress? And if so, can you tell us about some things that you did to mitigate that stress?

Yeah, for sure. It’s stressful, but honestly, the team at National is super supportive, helping me learn the skills to spot out my own mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. So I don’t think anyone’s going to penalize you for that. It’s just all about learning and not making the same mistake twice, and then learning to sort of be able to spot them out by yourself before you have been told about them.

I didn’t feel an immense amount of pressure or anything like that. But you know, I definitely want to do the same thing twice.

Everyone knows investment banking has a pretty bad rap when it comes to work-life balance. Can you tell us a bit about what your experience was with that?

Honestly, I didn’t find it too strenuous. I mean, I did work some long hours at times. But it just really depended on the weeks and stuff. I think the biggest thing people find about it is unpredictability. For example, some days, you’ll think you are off by seven at night, and then something comes through 6:30. So you just never really know, which I didn’t mind at all, especially work from home. Investment banking does come with a lot of hours and hard work, but I think it’s definitely worth it in the long run.

Are there any programs that you needed to use, like Bloomberg or Capital IQ, that people can maybe brush up on before entering an investment banking internship?

I use those programs daily:  Bloomberg, Capital IQ, and the Thomson one for equity research. So I would say those are valuable. They’re not going to expect you to have Bloomberg experience going into an internship. But things like Capital IQ,  learning how to find equity research reports and how to read them, I’d say, is pretty important. For Capital IQ and equity research, you can definitely learn how to use that for your internship.

What is one piece of advice that you have for someone who is starting an investment banking internship?

I would say just don’t worry so much. And just try and sort of learn as much as you can while you’re there. You know, many people get caught up in getting a return offer, and it’s going to be a competitive process. But I would say as long as you’re constantly learning, improving and showing that you’re genuinely interested in the stuff, I don’t think it should be a problem. You can only control what you can control. All you can control is working on your skills, learning as much as possible, and immersing yourself. So, I’d say, in some, my advice would be not to worry about the return offer, but more worried about what you’re going to get out of the experience and bringing everything that you have to the table in the four months.