Bank of America Summer Analyst
My journey to becoming an Investment Banking analyst at Bank of America - An insight into Investment Banking by Jack Moore, 3rd Year Economics student at Josephine Butler.
Bank of America. I once believed that a role at such a firm would be impossible. Yet I have become the first summer investment banking analyst and soon will be a full-time investment banker, in the entirety of my small village, including the first at my secondary school and sixth form college. But first of all, let me talk you through my journey to securing an analyst and full-time graduate investment banking offer at Bank of America.
The internship application process requires an initial application, hirevue, telephone interview, and an assessment centre. This is all public information and unlikely to be news for any of you reading this, but there’s one stage that I believe is most important, that being the pre-application stage. This stage is the most important but most easily forgotten—the hours of research, networking, and preparing for when applications open. Unfortunately, I did not know this for my spring weeks, and I was not accepted into any. However, I learnt the lesson and adequately prepared for Internships. This meant that on the day internships were opening, I already had the cover letters written, an updated CV, and interview questions prepared. This was the critical step in securing the role at Bank of America.
Investment banking at BofA runs differently from most internships. It is ten weeks, with two weeks of training and eight weeks on the job. There were no teams, as we followed a pooled system. This meant I was staffed onto individual projects across the group, using a staffer to help me manage my workload. I began work with Healthcare, TMT, and UK. Due to this differing style of internship, you are required to network to a much higher level to secure the best work and create relationships with the teams you are working with.
After attending many networking events, working closely with my favourite teams and figuring out where I wanted to work most, I had to put preference lists in at the end of the internship. This, along with a discussion with teams from HR, results in team allocations. I was lucky enough to get my top choice team, TMT. I was pleased about this due to how TMT had worked with me, making me feel valued. At week 10, I joined a four-person meeting with a veteran Silicon valley tech SEO attempting to sell a billion-dollar business. I never believed a team would provide such an opportunity.
The main takeaway from my internship is finding a firm where you can feel accepted and valued and, most importantly, where you want to work every day.