Five things I wish I'd known before my banking placement.

My placement in M&A was supposed to be a three-month internship, and it ended up lasting eight. Over that time I worked on valuations for more than fifteen mandates, helped build the materials for over ten pitches that the firm went on to win, and followed a live sale all the way through to completion.

I had no idea how to do any of that when I walked in, and I don't think anyone does. So if you're about to start a placement year, a summer internship or a grad role in investment banking and you're worried you know nothing, this is what I'd want you to hear before your first morning.

A note on firmsMy placement was at an M&A advisory firm with a fairly flat structure, where interns are expected to play a real part. Bulge bracket banks and the more elite boutiques can feel more structured, and sometimes stricter, but I think everything below still holds.

011. You'll be thrown in the deep end

The learning curve on a banking placement is steep, and you'll be handed real responsibility much earlier than you'd expect. That's especially true at a firm with a flatter structure, where interns and grads are there to do part of the job rather than to watch it being done.

A spring week or a short summer internship is gentler, because there's more structure around you and more of the time is set aside for learning. On a placement year or in a grad role, though, you should expect to be dropped straight in, which means the thing that matters most at the start isn't how much you already know but how quickly you can take something in and use it.

Bring a life jacket

Nobody expects you to know everything on day one, but walking in completely blind makes the deep end much harder than it needs to be. Before you start, build yourself a base. Read the firm's website and its recent deal announcements, find out which sectors it focuses on and what kind of clients it works with, look up the team you're joining, and get comfortable with the basic terms (there's a list at the end of this guide).

Think of it as a life jacket. You'll still be thrown in the deep end, and you won't be able to swim yet, but you'll float. You'll recognise the names and the words people use, you'll have something to hang new information on, and everything you're taught will stick faster because it has somewhere to go.

Then, once you're in, it's about learning to swim, and two habits helped me more than anything else with that.

Actually use your notebook

Everyone at the firm will have a notebook, so the difference is whether you make proper use of yours. I wrote down everything I could: how a process worked, where a file was saved, how someone liked a slide laid out, a shortcut I'd spotted over somebody's shoulder. Half of it was scribbles I had to make sense of later, and that's fine. Keep it with you wherever you go, particularly in the first few weeks, because the things you're told once have a habit of coming back, and you'll be glad you can find them.

Ask once, then remember

You'll hear "ask questions" from everyone, and it's good advice, but the part people skip is what happens after you've asked. Don't be scared to put your hand up when you're stuck, because sitting on a problem for an hour so you don't look slow does more damage than the question ever would. When you get an answer, though, hold on to it and put it into practice. Asking something the first time is just curiosity. Asking the same thing a second time is where it starts to look like you weren't listening.

It also helps to play a task back before you start it, so you're clear on what the finished thing should look like, who it's for and when they need it, and to ask whether there's a previous example you can follow. Spend some of your first week learning the house style too, the templates, fonts and the way the firm lays out a slide or a table, because a surprising amount of early work comes down to getting that right. And if the team already has material on a company or a deal, read it before anyone asks you to work on it.

022. Fast and accurate

The pace is quick. On an ordinary day I might have a model open in Excel, a deck in PowerPoint, my inbox going and Mergermarket, PitchBook or Capital IQ in another tab, all for different pieces of work. A lot of the people around you think faster than most people you've worked with before, and part of the job is learning to keep up with them.

Work tends to go back and forth quickly. You'll send something over, it'll come back asking you to improve one part, and they'll want the new version soon, so you turn it round and it may well come back again. Deadlines are tight and nobody waits for you to settle in, so you adapt as you go.

All of that would be manageable on its own if the work didn't also have to be right, and it does. The numbers need checking and should tie back to wherever they came from, and the small things carry real weight when a client is going to read the document: a full stop in the wrong place, a company name spelt wrong, a misplaced comma. If I had to name the core skill for a junior, it would be doing accurate work at speed.

A lot of that speed comes down to Excel. You'll be using COUNTIFS, SUMIFS, pivot tables and VLOOKUP (or its newer replacement, XLOOKUP) constantly, so it's worth getting comfortable with them before you start. Learn the keyboard shortcuts too, and use them until they're second nature. Everyone around you will already work that way, and if you're still reaching for the mouse, you'll be noticeably slower than the people you're working with. The less time the mechanics take, the more you have left to think.

PowerPoint is different, because there the skill is less about speed and more about how you think. When you're writing a section of a pitch or an information memorandum, imagine you're one of the company's stakeholders. Write "our company" rather than "the company" and put yourself inside the business. If you owned it, how would you position it? Which parts of it would you lead with, and how would you sell it for the biggest multiple? Once you start thinking like that, the slides stop being a summary of facts and start making a case.

That shapes how you build the deck, too. Whatever section you're working on, start from the top and work backwards. First decide what part of the company you're trying to sell, and what a buyer will actually want to see. Then work out how you'll get that message across, and what numbers and analysis you need to back it up. If you don't have those numbers yet, that tells you exactly what to go and find. Working this way means every chart and table is there because it supports the story, rather than the story being stitched together from whatever data happened to be lying around.

A market section is a good example. Say the company makes earbuds with hearing-aid features built in. I'd start with the global market: what it's worth and how fast it's growing each year, its compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Then I'd narrow it to the UK market. Then I'd look at the two markets the company sits between, wireless earbuds and hearing aids, and then at the bridge between them, earbuds that double as hearing aids, which is the niche where the company actually competes. Finally I'd look ahead. If hearing tests can be done at home through your phone, people won't need to book an appointment to get started, and that could favour the brands selling online.

That's where your instinct comes in, because you're breaking the story down and coming at it from different angles. What problems do people have today, and what would make them want to buy this product? The story has to be convincing, and every part of it has to be backed by numbers and sources. One good source is a start, but several sources coming at the same point from different angles make a much stronger case.

Not every deck works the same way, and you won't always come at it from every one of those angles. What matters is that you end up at the company's niche, and that you've framed it within the wider market so that everything has its place and the reader understands why it matters.

You'll also have far fewer words than you'd like, and that's the point. You're telling a story, not trying to sound professional. Long, flowery, over-sophisticated writing that never gets to a point does nothing for anyone. The aim is to sell the company with as few words as possible while still fitting in the evidence that holds the argument together, and that applies to every section of the deck, not just the market one.

None of that means bending the truth. Every number you use has to be checked and verified, and it has to come from a real, reliable source. What you do have is a choice about emphasis. You're working on behalf of the company you're selling, so you lead with the information that tells its story best and you don't go out of your way to dwell on the parts that work against it. Choosing what to put forward is your job; inventing or misstating anything is never acceptable, and a buyer's own due diligence will find it anyway.

The hardest part of all of this is the judgement. What is this slide actually trying to say? Which parts of the business are we showing, and how should we phrase this achievement or that part of the operation? If you could only put forward four achievements, which four would they be? ChatGPT can't answer those questions for you, and usually nobody else will either. That instinct comes with experience, and with seeing a lot of other decks. Look at what other firms have produced and notice what they choose to put forward. When you start making those calls well on your own, that's what shows people you're suited to the job and capable of doing it.

The numbers themselves need judgement too. Different sources will give you different figures for the same market, so check with your supervisor or whoever you're working with on the project which ones to use. Sometimes you'll have to go on instinct. If the sources are all over the place, that's genuinely hard. But if most of them line up and there's one outlier, you can usually set the outlier aside and use an approximate figure based on the rest. It's also worth asking whether the firm has a research team or access to market reports, because they can save you a lot of guessing.

More generally, don't be afraid to go to people for their expertise. That isn't the same as asking someone to do your work for you. You're borrowing what they know, or a report they've already got, to make your own work better, and most people are happy to share.

And look over your own work before it goes anywhere, checking the numbers, the formatting and the names, because it's far better that you catch something than that someone senior does.

Handling feedback, and your own mistakes

Don't expect much praise for the early work. When you've crunched some numbers, worked out a pro rata, done a piece of due diligence or put together a small section of a document, it's hard to impress anyone, and nobody is going to come back telling you it's excellent. That's normal, and it doesn't mean you're doing badly.

What you will get is feedback, and it's rarely blunt. Unless someone is very strict, they won't say outright that something's wrong. You'll hear "I feel like something's not quite right there" or "this isn't quite there yet", so learn to hear that for what it is.

You'll make mistakes too. Everyone does, whether it's a number that doesn't add up, a word spelt wrong or the kind of thing you'd swear you'd checked. Don't panic when one gets pointed out. Acknowledge it, own it, apologise, fix it as quickly as you can and send it back, then make sure it doesn't happen again, because a mistake made once is forgiven far more easily than the same one made twice. The same logic works the other way round, too. If something you did goes through without a comment, you got it right, so do it the same way next time.

Most importantly, never take feedback personally. The people correcting you have usually been at the firm for years, they know more than you, and they know you're at the start. Almost always, they're trying to help you get better. Don't take it to heart; take it on the chin, and build on it.

033. Never sit idle

Something I wasn't ready for was how quiet some days can be. Deals go through slow patches, your team might be busy on something you aren't part of, and as an intern there isn't always an obvious way to fill the time, so those days can really drag.

The answer is to go and find work rather than wait for it. I'd email the team to say I had capacity, ask my supervisor to let people know, or put a message in the group chat. Nobody thinks less of you for asking, and people do notice who asks.

Whatever you're given, treat it as a chance to build your reputation by getting it back promptly and to a high standard. Credibility on a placement rarely comes from one big moment; it builds up gradually as people learn that your work arrives on time and doesn't need fixing.

The thinking has to be yours

AI will come up, so it's worth being clear about it. It's genuinely useful for an initial search, for getting your head around a sector or for speeding up something repetitive. The work you're actually asked for has to come from you, though, whether that's the deck, the figures, the valuation, your view on a deal, your comments on an LBO or a market section for a pitch. That's how your team works out what you're capable of, and it's how you learn. Never put client or deal information into a public AI tool, and stick to whatever your firm's rules say.

044. Get curious, and get your name known

Even an extended placement goes quickly, so use it to understand the whole firm rather than just your own corner, and to make sure people across the firm know who you are.

Be curious about everything

Ask about anything that catches your interest. How does a process work from start to finish? What does someone in another team spend their day on, and what's their side of a deal? How did they end up in the job? People are usually happy to answer a genuine question, and every answer makes the work around you a bit clearer.

Don't stay quiet

I didn't appreciate this until I was there, but doing good work is only part of it. People also need to know your name and enjoy working with you, and that turns out to matter a lot. When people like working with you, good feedback finds its way to the people above them, your name comes up when work is being handed out, and more work gives you more chances to show what you can do.

So make the effort. Ask someone you haven't properly met to lunch or for a coffee, and spend your breaks with people instead of on your own or at your desk. Check in with people you've worked with after the task is finished. Some of it can happen outside the office, too: going out to eat, going to the gym with colleagues, or getting drinks after work with the younger members of the team, which you can do perfectly well without drinking. And when there's a work event, go, and talk to people while you're there.

Keeping your head down can feel like the safe option, but it's also the easiest way to be forgotten. Getting to know people makes the work more enjoyable and the office somewhere you actually want to be, and it means people remember you after you've gone. Some of the conversations I valued most on my placement happened over coffee rather than at a desk, and the more people knew about my interests and what I was building outside work, the more they knew me for more than one thing.

055. Everyone is human

The thing that surprised me most on my placement, and it may partly have been the firm I was at, was how much it came down to simply getting things done. I'd expected long nights in the office for the sake of it. In reality, if you'd finished your work, done it well and done it quickly, nobody expected you to sit at your desk until midnight with nothing left to do. People know everyone is human.

That's also what earns you everything else. Getting your work done accurately and quickly is what gives you the right to speak up, a bit of breathing room and some flexibility, whether that's going for a coffee chat or actually taking your lunch break. The work comes first, and the freedom follows from it.

When you first start, it's easy to think of everyone above you as a different kind of person, sharper and more polished than you and never wrong. Some places do feel like that, and at certain bulge brackets or elite boutiques people can be stricter and more formal. At a lot of firms, though, people are down to earth, and wherever you are, nobody is a robot and nobody is perfect.

That doesn't mean treating senior people as if they're on your level. They've earned their seniority and it deserves respect, but you can respect the position without being in awe of the person. If you spot a mistake, say so, and if a number looks wrong, flag it. If you think something could be better, suggest how. Give your own view on the work, and your own perspective in conversation generally, including when it has nothing to do with work. As long as you do it respectfully, it isn't overstepping, and it's a big part of what makes you useful.

The same applies at socials and work events. Talk to people and let your personality come through. You don't need to turn yourself into a perfectly polished, perfectly quiet part that fits into the system like another cog in a clock. You can be yourself, within reason, and the people worth impressing will think more of you for it. I've written more about where that line sits in Authenticity is your edge and Turn the volume, not the station.

06From small pieces to main analyst

If you want to know what all of this adds up to, the clearest answer I have is how my own role changed between month three and month eight.

For the first few months I was doing small pieces of work that fed into different deals: a bit of analysis here, a few slides there, rarely the whole picture. By month eight I was in the consumer team and working as the main analyst on a deal, which meant a completely different level of responsibility.

I built the buyer list, which is part of origination. That meant the team trusted me to map out the whole market and work out who was most likely to end up buying the company, and who would make sensible backups if they didn't. I also wrote the market section of the information memorandum, and that was my own research from start to finish: the figures, the dynamics of the market and how it all fitted together. It went straight to the stakeholders and was written to be part of the final document.

Nobody hands you that on day one, and I don't think anyone gets there through one impressive moment. It came from months of the things in this guide: asking for work, getting it back quickly and accurately, fixing mistakes without fuss and being someone people were happy to work with.

07The night before day one

If I could tell myself one thing the night before I started, it would be this. Yes, the people you work with have to like you. But don't walk in asking yourself how to make them like you. Walk in asking whether this is a company you actually want to work for.

That small shift changes the whole first week. When you're trying to win people over, you get anxious, you second-guess everything you say and you're scared to ask questions in case they make you look slow. When you're deciding whether the place is right for you, you get curious instead. You want to meet the people, understand the work and find out how the firm really runs, and asking questions stops feeling like a risk and becomes the point. It's the same idea I wrote about in Authenticity is your edge: stop asking whether they like you, and start asking whether you like them.

And go in excited rather than scared. Being thrown in the deep end sounds frightening, but it's also the fastest way to learn anything. Be grateful that you've made it this far, because a lot of people applied for the place you're about to fill. Every person in that building knows something you don't, and for the next few months all of that knowledge is sitting there for you to learn from. You were chosen for this role for a reason. Now it's your chance to make the most of it.

08Words you'll hear in week one

If you're walking in knowing nothing, these will come up almost immediately. You don't need to master them before day one, but knowing what they mean will save you a lot of quiet confusion.

• Mandate: a piece of work a client has hired the firm to do, like selling their company.
• Pitch: the presentation a firm makes to win a mandate, often built around a "pitch book" of slides.
• Origination: finding and winning new deals, including working out which companies might sell and who might buy them.
• Buyer list: the list of likely buyers for a business being sold, from the strongest candidates to the backups.
• IM (information memorandum): the detailed document that introduces a business to potential buyers.
• Comps (comparable companies): similar listed companies, used to compare valuation multiples like EV/EBITDA.
• Precedent transactions: past deals for similar businesses, used to see what buyers have paid before.
• CAGR (compound annual growth rate): the average rate a market or a figure has grown by each year over a period, as if it had grown steadily.
• DCF (discounted cash flow): valuing a business on the cash it's expected to generate in future, discounted back to today.
• LBO (leveraged buyout): a purchase, often by private equity, funded largely with debt.
• Due diligence (DD): the buyer's detailed checks on a business's finances, tax, legal position and more before a deal completes.
• Locked box: a way of agreeing the price at a fixed past date, so there's no adjustment after completion.
• Mergermarket, PitchBook, Capital IQ: the databases you'll use for deal, company and market data.

09How Ritual helps

10Questions

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