How to get an entry level job in M&A

To people outside of investment banking, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is what a banker does. An “investment banker” is just an M&A banker. Like Patrick Bateman, although he doesn’t do any actual banking in the movie.

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Although M&A stands for mergers and acquisitions, it is also known as just “advisory”. Simply put, an M&A transaction is one in which a company buys or merges with another. Someone who “works in M&A” is someone who provides financial advice to any of the companies involved in this transaction.

Most M&A deals are usually pretty small, all things considered, to the tune of a few hundred million dollars. But deals can also be huge, to the tune of a few hundred billion dollars. These mega-deals re-shape entire industries, make headlines, and can lead to government intervention.

Senior M&A bankers are widely respected by the businesses and businesspeople they serve. They make huge bonuses, they sometimes fly in private jets, they can go onto distinguished careers in politics and government. But nobody starts their careers in M&A as senior bankers. You’ll have to pay your dues first – as an analyst or associate. As a junior banker.

What do entry-level M&A bankers do?

There’s some variation according to the exact role and title of the banker involved in the transaction but generally, junior M&A bankers scour financial records and build financial models. They also help develop huge “pitchbooks”, which are used to pitch M&A deals to client companies. The former requires a lot of Excel; the latter a lot of PowerPoint. You will become intimately familiar with the Microsoft Office Suite.

The work hours are very tough. 90-hour weeks are common, and back in 2021 Goldman Sachs juniors complained about working 120-hour weeks. Generally, you will work less as you climb up the ranks, and senior bankers such as managing directors (MDs) usually work around 60-70 hours weeks. At this level, however, the hours can be erratic and the travelling intense. This is the nature of maintaining client relationships, which is what MDs are primarily responsible for.

So why do people work for potentially up to 120 hours a week in a seemingly tedious job? Well, because the pay can be spectacular. A first-year analyst, fresh out of university at the age of  22, can earn around $150k. Vice Presidents (VPs) in their mid-20s can earn four times as much, before the age of 30. And MDs can even earn seven figures.

So – how do you get in?

Getting a job as an analyst or associate in M&A

You get in early. If you want to start your career in M&A, you need to start young. You need an M&A-related internship while you're at university. More specifically, you need a summer internship, which can convert into a job. To get a summer internship, you possibly need a spring internship – although this is more of a UK thing than an American thing. And to get a spring internship, it will help if you attend an insight day first. 

Unfortunately, getting a summer internship in M&A while you're at university is very, very difficult. Acceptance rates are as low as 0.7%. However, these summer internships are the key route into M&A jobs. Banks "convert" around 50% to 75% of their summer interns jobs as first-year analysts. That’s significantly better than sub-zero percentage chance you had of getting an internship in the first place.

Getting the internship and then converting the internship are therefore critical to getting an M&A job. How do you convert an internship? Tips and tricks for this include putting the time in at the office, networking as much as possible with the people in your team, asking for feedback, and quite frankly (and visibly) enjoying yourself.

If you didn’t manage to convert your internship, you’re in a difficult position. Other banks will look at you a bit funny for it. They may very well ask themselves why they should hire you, when their peers (whose opinions they respect) thought you a poor fit.

If you still insist in working in M&A at this point, you have two options. One is to do a master’s degree in finance or something similar, and apply for more internships in the following summer. The other is to graduate a bit, work a bit, and then do an MBA. MBAs go straight into banking jobs as associates and skip the dreaded analyst years.

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