The Weekly Sitrep: My Post MBA Career in Detail and What I Would Have Done Differently

Part 3: The Investment Bank Internship between the 1st and 2nd year of the MBA

Happy Weekend Sitreps Team! In this post I am going to talk about the Investment Banking Internship that I did between the 1st and 2nd year of my MBA.

1. Matching with groups at the bank

2. Finding a place to live in Atlanta

3. Rotating through the Mergers and Acquisitions Group

4. Rotating through the Industrials Group

5. Lessons learned and what I would have done differently looking back

Matching with groups at the bank

During the second semester of the 1st year of my MBA program SunTrust flew all of the interns who had accepted offers down to Atlanta for a team match during the week. The purpose of the two day trip was for us to network with the different groups at that bank and rank order what two groups we would want to rotate through during the summer.

It was a very classy weekend, they put us up at the Ritz and we got wined and dined throughout the process. I thought to myself, man I have finally made it. The ritz, investment banking, fine food etc etc.

We met with a bunch of different bankers from each of the coverage groups (Industrials, TMT, healthcare etc) and the product groups (Leveraged Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions). Initially I wanted to do leveraged finance because during my corporate finance classes I found how companies used debt to be really interesting. I liked industrials as well because I thought my aerospace experience would line up nicely with the group.

I also liked the pitch from the M&A group. You would get very strategic and high level experience which I thought would greatly enhance my career. Both the M&A group and the Lev Fin group had a bunch of veterans in it so I thought it would be good to be in groups with them.

I also met the other interns. It was a mix of folks from schools like Cornell, Duke, Darden, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt. One other veteran was in the intern group.

Finding a place to live in Atlanta

Housing is always kinda tricky during an MBA internship. The bank provided some suggestions for housing (staying at the Georgia Tech campus was one option). I also looked at booking a hotel for the long term and even some short term fully furnished rentals. Georgia Tech was too far away for me because we only had one car at the time and my wife needed it. The other options were really expensive and I did not want to use my entire salary. So I went on airbnb and found a mothers in law type house that this woman was renting out. After talking with her on airbnb she asked if I wanted to book outside the app. I was a little hesitant but decided to go with it. It was the right price, good location and was well furnished. We signed a contract with a start and end date and I gave her a small deposit. My wife and daughter would spend most of the time in Montgomery Alabama during the summer with her parents. 

Rotating Through The Mergers and Acquisitions Group

I started the internship in the M&A group. After a couple of days of orientation I went to the group floor and found my desk. The first thing I noticed when I got settled was how quiet it was on the floor and after a couple of hours how no one (and I mean no one) came up and said hi or welcome to me or the other intern. I thought this was really odd, they knew we were coming and made no effort at all to say hi. 

Eventually, we got to know the other associates and VPs in the group through happy hours and coffee chats. We were told that networking was really important so a portion of the internship was having informal 20-30 minute chats with other members in the group. I found the group members to be mostly stiff and boring. We also had M&A group happy hours, and none of these people ever once asked about my time in service, or displayed anything that resembled interest in the cool stuff I had done prior to the internship. I was shocked by this, I had flown helicopters after all, seemed like something that would be unique and cool to them (this has become a constant throughout my civilian career, there is almost no interest expressed by your coworkers in your previous life. It informs many of my memes). I also found most of them to be incredibly selfish, to the point that none would even buy the interns drinks during these happy hours. Every group culture is different, but these people were truly awful. 

M&A has a much longer deal cycle than other groups (selling a company can take 6 months to over a year), so it took longer to get staffed on projects than in other groups. Eventually, I was staffed on a sell side deal where the bank was helping sell a defense contractor that was owned by a private equity firm. The deal was in the active bidding stages and my contributions consisted of helping build buyer profiles, answer diligence requests in the data room, helping get pitch decks ready, sitting on calls with the PE firm, and getting some of the presentation materials ready for buyers. I quickly found out why Investment Banking is not a great lifestyle, everyone basically worked around the clock and there was almost no respect for your time.