5 Keys to Land Investment Banking Return Offer

May 04, 2025

Only 50% of banking interns leave their end-of-summer review with a return offer.

My class at an elite boutique in NYC had 38 kids all fighting for those few same spots.

Banks use feedback and rank you against all the other kids to determine where to make that cutoff.

I wanted to relax SR year knowing I had an amazing full-time job on lock…

But knew the competition was rough since 90% of my class came from ivy league target schools.

Before that summer started, I made a game plan using advice from the director of our academy.

He was a partner at one of top firms in CHI and said these were the five keys to secure a return.

KEY 1 - ABUSE THE OFFICE PRINTER

As an intern you have no real responsibility, so you’re judged on how well you can do the little things.

Our director preached that “Attention to Detail” is the number one trait SR bankers look for in analysts.

This is because banking’s a client facing business, so even the smallest error can ruin a firm’s credibility.

During my internship, I didn’t leave the office most nights until after 11PM.

When you’re that exhausted, it’s easy to make stupid mistakes.

The best way to catch those mistakes is by printing out all deliverables before sending.

You spend 10+ hours / day staring at a screen which just makes your brain miss all the small stuff.

I’d always take a red pen and markup my deliverable, checking for the following.

  • Numbers Tie - For Example 2019 Revenue Page 9 Matches Revenue Page 12 Chart

  • Alignment - Boxes & Text

  • Font - Consistency Type, Size, Bold, Italic, Titles

  • Typos / Spelling

  • Page Numbers

  • Sources

For more meaningful deliverables, I’d also do a few other things before sending.

  • Read Out Loud - Our subconscious skips over words when reading silently. I’d read all paragraphs / sentences in decks & emails

  • Email Myself First - I’d first send myself the email with the same body text and deliverables attached. This is just another layer to put yourself in their shoes, pretending you’re them receiving it and opening the files

  • Fresh Set of Eyes - Last I’d usually go for a quick walk to grab a Gatorade from the bodega. Once back, I’d do a final read through before officially sending

KEY 2 - DAILY COFFEE CHATS

Before your end-of-summer review, every full-timer that’s interacted with you fills out an evaluation.

In my review, the first thing the MD mentioned was how impressed people were with my networking.

He said they all noticed how I made a big effort to build relationships across the firm.

Full-timers love getting out of the office for intern coffee chats and lunches, especially since they can expense them on the company card.

I took full advantage of that and had nearly 50 coffee chats by the end of those ten weeks.

Here was how I decided who to reach out to and how I approached setting up each chat.

  • Step 1 - Swing by Desks

    • First people I reached out to were (A) Bankers staffed on deals with and (B) Bankers I interviewed with. I was staffed on two deals day one (one healthcare & one consumer). Each team had ~4-5 bankers

    • Swung by all desks to introduce / re-introduce myself day one & brought up idea of “sitting down 1:1 for coffee / lunch sometime in the next couple weeks”

    • The rest of that first week I gradually swung by more desks of (A) All full-timers sitting near my assigned desk and (B) Anyone I met during networking process

  • Step 2 - Put on Calendar

    • For JR bankers, I followed up with a Microsoft Teams message to “see if there would be a good day / time that would work well for them to put something on the calendar”

    • For SR bankers I sent a more formal email asking same thing

  • Step 3 - Execute Chat & Add to Tracker

    • Brought notebook to SR banker chats

    • Added name / date / details to excel tracker so I’d know when to follow up again

  • Step 4 - Thank You Note

    • Later in day sent quick thank you on same Teams / Outlook chain as outreach

  • Step 5 - Repeat Chats

    • Did 1:1s with all bankers on my deal teams bi-weekly

    • Followed same bi-weekly cadence with a few JR & SR bankers I hit it off with best

  • Step 6 - Group Placement Chats

    • Our internship was generalist but group placement happens before full-time. It’s a mutual ranking system

    • Put out feelers for which groups had personalities I aligned with most early in summer. Had 1:1s with every banker on my top choice teams by end of summer to strategically build relationships

The hidden benefit of all this networking is how it impacts your final presentation.

Every bank assigns interns a “final project” about halfway through the summer.

Ours was basically creating a pitch deck for a potential merger of any two public companies.

It involved making multiple valuation models (Accretion/Dilution, DCF, LBO) and a ~50pg deck.

During week ten we then had to present it to a panel of seven MDs / Partners.

I’d already done 1:1 coffee chats with six of the seven Partners that were on my panel.

This made me a lot more comfortable up on stage and calmed my nerves right away.

KEY 3 - FIND YOUR OLDER BROTHER

Our bank had a “buddy system” where every intern was assigned a JR & SR mentor day one.

I got relatively close with my formal “buddies” but found my informal mentor to be 100x more helpful.

My informal mentor was an associate I first met on the boat cruise event week one.

He was also a hockey player so we immediately hit it off and talked NHL playoffs all night.

This informal mentor relationship was crucial for three main reasons.

  • Informal Feedback - We had a weekly calendar block for 30min on Fridays where I’d ask him a ton of questions I’d piled up that week. It was nice to ask these to someone I was more comfortable with since you don’t have the same fear of being judged

  • Extra Responsibility - To build our relationship, I made an effort to swing by his desk ~3-4x a day just to say what’s up and see what he was working on. There were a few times he’d be working on something cool and ask if I’d like to help if I had the capacity. The projects he roped me into were much cooler than a lot of the mundane stuff I was assigned by my real deal teams. The SR bankers in his group were also impressed seeing I was being proactive

  • Final Project - Every time I finished up a slide, I’d send it his way for initial comments. I also did tons of dry runs with him in the week before. He told me what kinds of questions I should expect each of the SR bankers to grill me on because he’d learned each of their tendencies from working under them so long. This was huge because not a single question they asked caught me off guard

KEY 4 - OVER-COMMUNICATE

My director said there’s four words every analyst should live by - “Under Promise, Over Deliver”.

I was staffed on 4-5 deals at a time during my internship.

The amount of work you have for each varies drastically from week-to-week.

You just have to build the habit of updating your teams with everything that’s on your plate.

I felt really annoying at first constantly updating everyone, but trust me they appreciate it.

Some deals just take priority over others and full-timers help you out when conflicts come up.

Here are three of my best practices for over-communicating.

  • Ask How to Prioritize - Whenever assigned new task, tell them everything else that’s on your plate and ask how to prioritize. A few times bankers stepped in for me when I had conflicts to tell other teams I was working with that they’d need my full attention for the next day or two to meet a deadline

  • Send Progress - Never waste time “spinning your wheels”. After starting a new task, swing by desk / send email with what you have so far to the JR banker on your team to make sure you’re going in the right direction. From then on, send what you have completed with an estimate for when you’ll have it done a couple times a day

  • Under Promise, Over Deliver - When giving estimates for how long a task will take you, add 50%. That way they’ll be impressed if you finish ahead of schedule or if something does come up you already have a built-in buffer

KEY 5 - INTERN BUDDIES

Although you’re competing for the same return spots, you should get close with a few other interns.

By week three, we had a core group of 5 or 6 of us that all helped each other out.

There were four main ways we did this.

  • Social Events - We had weekly intern events with full-timers, most of which were rooftop happy hours. These are great chances to build your network but can be awkward to navigate since everyone breaks off into little circles. Our group would split into 2’s or 3’s to bounce around from circle to circle. You can feed off each others’ conversation points and make timely entrances / exits from each circle together

  • Homework Assignments - We had weekly excel homework graded by a third party that was basically more complex versions of the models we built back at school in our academy. Our group collaborated on these and compared answers for every assignment

  • Proofreading - Before sending emails / other deliverables we’d often bring our laptops to each others’ desks for a fresh perspective

  • Final Presentation - Lots of late-nights rehearsing to each other in those couple weeks before the final presentation

Most of my intern class moved to the city a week before the start date.

We had to fill out a “get to know you” slide, so I reached out to a few kids that had similar interests.

We met up during that week before training which made the first day way less intimidating.

They didn’t know anyone either, so having a few friends to gravitate to makes you more comfortable.

Cheers 🥂

- Jack