How to Break Into Investment Banking | with Goldman Sachs, Evercore & Jefferies Offers

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. Rachel Feely was first identified as a high potential candidate through our Amplify Me simulations and has since gone on to secure multiple offers from some of the world's leading financial institutions.

0:37But what does it actually take to stand out in such a competitive industry? In this episode, we'll explore Rachel's journey, the strategies that made the biggest difference and what she learned from navigating applications, networking and interviews and most importantly, will uncover some practical advice that you can apply to your own journey to break into finance, which I know is going to resonate with many who are right in the midst of applications at the moment. But Rachel, firstly, thank you so much. You've just had a full day at work for your industrial placement. And then you've jumped on with me at just gone 9pm on a Thursday evening.

1:12So thank you. No problem. Very, very happy to. It was very happy when I got the message. So very very happy to chat cool well look we always start with guests to get to know you a little bit better so perhaps we could start with that where are you from and what sparked your interest in in finance yeah for sure so i'm i'm from somewhere that you probably wouldn't hear a lot of people who are in the finance pathway say they're from i'm from quirk in the west of ireland in go to College in UCC, which is an amazing place that I adore and will never, ever say anything bad about. And I probably don't come from the most traditional finance background.

1:54Both my parents are doctors. It was very, very encouraged for me growing up that I would study medicine in university. So that was always something that I would have worked towards in school. But then going into doing my final exams, I started comparing the very set, very predictable career path in medicine with something that maybe offered me a little bit more options and a little bit more flexibility. And I always really liked business subjects at school, and I really enjoyed just reading the news. So I started looking at something like finance that would give me so many different options to explore, like whether that be trading, banking, accounting, but essentially just allow me to explore new opportunities as there was.

2:43I thought that would be really interesting and would be something that suited my personality a lot. So I went to college and started studying finance and tried to get involved with as many things I possibly could. And I think that's something that has really said to me in the long run of getting to meet so many different people and getting to experience a lot of different cultures very early on by getting involved in like national competitions. So I thought that was something that was really, really cool and has led to me broadening my experience and becoming better able for the recruiting pathway.

3:20It's not something that has been easy. But I guess then going more into what drew me to investment banking specifically, It was, I was always looking for a career where I felt like I was doing something that was genuinely impactful and I felt like I was fulfilled. And I got a sense of motivation from my work. And investment banking always, when I started studying finance and got that exposure to different areas, I saw how in something like banking, you essentially can learn and develop in one year what might take you four or five years in another sector to do. so I thought that was something like as someone who wants to achieve and is naturally quite ambitious I thought that was something that would suit me quite a lot so I don't I definitely don't come from the most traditional background and I definitely have had different ways of getting to this point than what might be considered your standard or typical pathway but I think all of the experiences that I've had have really helped me get to where I am.

4:24And I would absolutely very happily do it all over again. So I'm really grateful for everything I've had. And it's been amazing. I mean, just just listening to that, that journey that you've been on, one of the things I'm curious about is how much of it was kind of planned in a sense of, okay, at the beginning, I want to explore, and I'm going to try, I don't know, accounting, then fintech, then trading, then banking, how much of it was opportunistic and a little bit more like, oh, this has come up, I'm just going to go? What was the blend or the weighting between those two? Yeah, I think it's a very good question because for me, it's very much a mix of both.

5:07How the whole wanting to go to London and work in banking started was very much opportunistic. but when I first heard about it then from there it became something that was very meticulously planned so when I say opportunistic with how it all started I had never like I do a four-year degree in college I'd never heard of spring weeks at all in my first year I'd never really considered a career outside of Ireland outside of Dublin I'd never really considered traveling and the idea of summer internships were pretty foreign to me. So what first opened my eyes to what was out there was my university organized a trip for a couple of students in my course to go over and visit Irish alumni from Irish universities who are now working in banks like JP Morgan and Citibank.

5:59And getting that exposure was something for me that took something that was very much an abstract sort of fantasy and made it into something that actually felt quite achievable which was weird for like a 20 year old girl to see this and suddenly feel like this has really really changed my perspective um so it was that was what first exposed me and gave me the like sort of idea of this is a whole new field beyond what I could have imagined in my first year of college that I kind of want to explore now so from that opportunistic start then the journey through second year and applying to spring weeks and then getting summer offers was very very planned I set goals for myself in terms of wanting to land through spring weeks and trying to talk to as many people who had done those as possible to try and get that exposure of people's different perspectives of how they had found the recruiting and what they had learned and maybe what they would do differently and I think it's very important if you're coming from somewhere that seems like a non-target university I think it's very important to focus on what makes you unique as a person because coming from a uni that people may not have heard of or that may not be on like a certain prescribed list, it means that as a person, you have to make yourself sound interesting and sound like you're someone that could genuinely fit in in a culture that you might not have been exposed to for as long.

7:43So I think it's extremely important to focus on what you bring that is different from what another 10 ,000 applicants might bring. And that was a huge part of my planning in second year was more than any technical prep was focusing on what made me different. Coming from a rural background in Ireland, having a family, no one who would study finance, like knowing having zero contacts in the industry. Things like that, that made me truly stand out as an applicant and as a person. I think that is one thing that I would definitely say is if you're coming from a non-target university is vital is like your differences are your strengths and play into them as much as you can because they're what people will ask you about and be interested in.

8:27I think that was something that I would take. Yeah, I mean, I hear this a lot from students, particularly if you're not from a traditional pathway, you always feel like you need to acclimatize to the group, follow the herd. I must be like them. And how do I be like them? But actually, 100 % agree that I've seen the effectiveness of what you said. It's almost like your point of difference is your strength. And you almost need to double down into that. And that's what makes you different, particularly in the world where I talk to the early career kind of hiring teams. And now with AI, technically, everyone's sort of leveled up.

9:05So actually, even at an early career stage, what is it you're looking for a lot of it is behavioral signals that you're looking for now so it's like if you can tell a good story like yours it's like one that's required persistence and grit and determination then that all the characteristics that are highly desirable now in 2026 and the ai kind of enabled world and the other thing i took out there was interesting is role models you mentioned there about the trip to london and i guess it's one of those things as well with social mobility where you can only be what you what you can see in a sense of you can read books you can watch movies but that's abstract like you said if you meet someone and they're from cork or limerick or wherever they've done it too yeah and they go oh my goodness what they've done it they've left the island and gone to london and they're working like that's so important for people to see and this isn't about being irish this could be anything gender ethnicity yeah age whatever career transition so yeah I think that was really really cool point that you made um you did mention though and and kind of segue from that point was being able to then network network with those Irish alum network with you know you I love the way you kind of quite casually said I'm gonna aim for three spring weeks I think you said you were ambitious people called me crazy for that yeah but I mean fair play to you you know but one of those things you mentioned there in order to enable the, I guess, the probability to fall in your favor, you said you were, you know, you were networking, you were trying to get, you know, meet, talk to people, learn, things like that.

10:44Now, people get told, particularly students to network all the time. It's like, you should go off and network. And it's like, no instruction, you know, university doesn't teach you these things. That's not really what university is for. So how, what's your approach to networking in terms of how do you build relationships how do you maintain and develop those relationships so that they become something actually genuine and valuable rather than like transactional this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

11:30Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. Yeah, it's a really good question because I think networking is something that is very personal. Everyone has their own approach that works for them. And I think it takes a couple of practice goals and practice tries with different conversations before you can actually find out what approach works for you it's very dependent on personality I think what how you approach people and like what conversations do you enjoy having because I do think as much as there is a very obvious sort of burden placed on it I do think it is something that if you use it to play to your strengths is something that can actually be enjoyed like for me if I were to go into how I approached it and something that has always worked for me is I always stick to approaching people who I have a clear point in common with so whether that be the fact that they come from Ireland might come from my university if they're a woman if they've entered a competition that I might be entering I always something that I would bring up pretty quick would be a point of shared interest or something that we've an experience that we've shared so for example one time when I was entering a venture capital competition up in Dublin I reached out to a girl who was working in Goldman Sachs who had previously entered this competition and I used that as an avenue oh I saw you enter this I would love to hear more about your experience and use that to build up the relationship I one thing I would say I've never had a conversation that has been technical I think it's very important at this stage to be honest about your knowledge or lack thereof and not pretend to be someone you're not so I've never like if you have a very high level of technical knowledge and you're able to have intricate discussions about deals and about specific sectors or stories that are of interest to you I think that's great and go for it but it personally has never been something that I've tried to use in networking.

13:48I try a lot more to focus on building a relationship and focus on actually getting along with someone and getting to know them as a person and take a long-term avenue rather than just have a call with someone, have a technical discussion, try and blow them away with your technical knowledge, which you're not going to do with a full-time analyst or associate. So I've always, my approach has probably been different to a lot of people in in terms of that, because of how much I just focus on the person. Like, what do you like to do outside of banking? Who are you really as a person? And how can I get to know you and genuinely enjoy the conversation we have?

14:27So that's, my approach is probably a little bit different. But again, as I said, everyone has an approach that works for them. And it's something that's very personal. And that's just what's worked for me. Yeah, it's great. It's great advice. And, you know, even before we hit record today you and I were just talking about Ireland and stuff like that because that's our common common thing in connections yeah it's those things that definitely build bonds and it's great because hearing you talk about it I just love for people to hear it that I think there's too much assumption made that it's you've got to know all the technical talk and you've got to talk about that all the time demonstrate and flex those muscles where there is definitely a competency of knowledge that's required like at like a certain level but beyond that people want to know you and particularly in an area like banking when you're working with someone for like long periods of time yeah you've got to want to you know got to be a good team member good teammate so you know and the other things is what you we talked about role models and role models before going up i need to see what i can be it's interesting what you said because i almost thought in my head it's like reverse engineering it so the people you reach out to need to see them in you like you said they're a woman or they're from ireland or whatever it might be it's almost like the payoff is reciprocal because it's like well that was me or i see me and them so it's like the reversal of of the trip to your role models and then yeah having a hook and honesty like yeah i have that's another great point you made just to double down and say it again, like the person who tries to prove, you know, you're a 20-year-old going for an internship or 19 and you're going to sit in front of a global head of macro research and start talking about how we're going to fix, you know, the inflation trap or the AI valuation perfect formula for valuing companies.

16:22You've got to know that you're talking to an expert. You're better off leaning and building rapport. When someone talks about that stuff all day long to clients, That's kind of the last thing they want to talk about a lot of the time when you're in relationships. So yeah, sound advice. So the other thing that I wanted to ask you about is I've got your LinkedIn up here. I was having a little refresh of your kind of resume. And my gosh, you were busy from like the beginning, as you said. It was a busy time. I mean, you were on it. You were Irish Student Consulting Group, the Irish Managed Fund, the University of Cork Student Managed Fund.

17:00you did get your three springs PIMCO, RBC and Evercore and then you also with Amplify you did the Goldman Sachs EMEA Banking Academy so I just wondered because you know whilst all of that sounds great one of the risks that I do see is then it's almost like these accolades if you like and I just wanted to distinguish then at what point and how do you go about actually assessing that that narrowing of am I getting closer to what I like here because there's a little bit of consulting here in your early experiences as well like I mean you were going all around that the kind of full piece if you like so how do you turn those experiences into better commercial knowledge stronger interview answers and ultimately making yourself more competitive each time you go to the next level like intern grad so on yeah I think um It's something, it's an interesting point because you're right, when you are doing so many different things and gaining so many different new skills, it's important to be able to tie that back ultimately to how that makes you a better candidate for the job you really see yourself in and you really want to do.

18:15And for me, that was from when I got the exposure to the spring rates. For me, that was always investment banking. So when I was doing all of these different experiences, be it, as you say, the Irish Student Consulting Group, the Irish Student Managed Fund, the UCC Student Managed Fund. It was important for me to be able to look at it on a high level and take the skills that I had learned, be it communication, proactivity, leadership, teamwork, and ultimately use them as ways that I could improve myself as a candidate for the banking jobs I was going for, and how I could use those experiences to show how I would become effective in that obviously fast-paced, quite pressurizing environment.

19:01So, for example, if you're working in a project similar to something like the Irish Student Consulting Group and you're working with different students with different viewpoints and you experience conflict, and it's important to be able to look at that and take from it what you see is relevant to the job you're going for so let's say you've learned a lot in that period about communication about leadership and how can you show in an interview that what you've learned from that experience even though technically it might not be related to so much to what you're going for how do the soft skills end up being relevant to banking?

19:43How can you show that because you navigated that conflict and developed a solution, worked with others to come to a shared outcome, but ultimately, how did the experiences shape you and allow you to thrive in banking? The answer might not be so obvious, but it's things like they allow you to work with others under pressure, under time pressure to come to a solution when the odds might be against you. It shows your ability to take orders and take initiative and work quickly and have the drive to see things through and not give up on yourself or on what you're doing. I think those are things that no matter what experiences you're doing in college, those are things that you develop.

20:27And I think that's important in banking because technicals are something that you can learn on the job. That's something that you can pick up as you go. but attitude and willingness to work with people is something that's like you can't teach that and gaining that experience through different university projects I like I don't really think it matters so much how what the technicals of what you're doing are whether it be a student managed fund or a student consulting group I think the experiences and the soft skills that you're learning and the ability to work effectively with others is something that makes you a standout candidate and a huge asset to any firm you're joining later down the line.

21:08So I think it's important to look at everything and be able to tie back the skills that you learned and how do they specifically make you an asset when you're going for the job interview later down the line. When you think now that you've done quite a few, considering where you're at, you've probably done quite a few interviews now because a lot of these jobs take multiple rounds of interviews to secure them looking back retrospectively what do you think has been your greatest area of improvement with being able to do an interview do you think from the very first if you cast your mind back to that very first one when it was the first meaningful one when you were super nervous never done one of these before don't know what to expect to where you're at now having got a few under your belt what do you think was like the biggest change or evolution in what you've approach to how you've done it?

21:58Yeah. The biggest, what I would say was most beneficial to me when I was preparing for different interviews was I started doing mock interviews with people who didn't have a finance background. And so who weren't asking your traditional questions, like, can you walk me through a DCF? What happens to work if tax rates increase? Things like that, that you can read off a book. Someone who's not like my parents being doctors, my friends in uni were studying random courses. Like they doing interviews with people like that, they'll ask you questions that you might not have preempted and they force you to think outside the box.

22:39And if you, if you have to explain to them what a DCF is to someone with no knowledge of what it is, it forces you to like enhance your own understanding of it and I think things like that that encouraged me to actually think about things and think about what I was saying because the person who I was talking to didn't just have that base level of knowledge of immediately understanding certain acronyms I might be saying I think that forces you to be conscious of what you're talking about and it forces you to really understand a technical topic before you start speaking about it and if you don't fully understand that best to just stay away from it in an interview so I think what the biggest thing for me that allowed me to improve was definitely starting to interview with people who didn't have that background and being able to then forcing me to think outside the box from doing that so much in the end in interviews I felt like I'd been asked everything I could have been and I was able to I was a lot more calm in the scenario because of that because I had interviews where I was forced to think outside the box so I think I think there's not your most conventional method of preparation but it certainly helped me enormously yeah that's super interesting and I wanted to ask it's moving so fast in terms of how good these AI tools are is almost like advisors or coaches or feedback loops.

24:14Do you use AI in any way? I mean, it probably was not so much so maybe when you started two years or three years or so ago. But nowadays, is there anything you do or you see your peers around you doing using AI to help with interview prep? Or is it all more just getting the natural human cues out of just getting comfortable with exchanging with a with a human yeah i certainly do use ai to break down when i'm studying more technical concepts things like if you're like you're breaking into wall street books where you're given weems and weems of information to learn off i don't tend to learn very well from having just a being just presented with a very large pack of information.

25:04So for me, AI is very useful in breaking down topics and allowing you to understand them in a way that doesn't force you to just learn off a book of definitions. So I would always have asked AI when I was preparing for interviews to explain it to me like it would to someone without any background understanding and to put it into an everyday analogy. And like I did the same thing when I was studying for my exams. So like, for example, when I was in school and I studied physics and I would be doing my physics exams, I would ask AI to break down weight and pressure distribution into how your weight is distributed in snowshoes when you're skiing or walking on snow.

25:45And because I skied a lot, that was something that I could understand about how snowshoes worked. So simple things like that, that didn't force me to learn off a book, but that I could understand it in my own head was something that was hugely beneficial. I think AI is good for things like that in that it can be configured to your own personal use. That was how I got use out of it. And that suited my personal way of learning. Other people have different ways of learning. They might want AI to break things down visually for them and give them visual sets of information rather than something that's, again, just a big range of information so i think the advantage of ai is how versatile it is and i think it's very a personal thing the benefit that you got from it yeah no you're so right in terms of it's different for different people and actually that's where the tools are so good like i remember i was looking at trying to explain to someone the yield curve and it's kind of in the old school teaching days i'd use my hand or I draw it on a whiteboard whereas now you can just quite quickly create an interactive html that you can just share with someone and they can move the toggles along on different durations different yields and then the whole thing starts moving shape and you're like took me five minutes to create that the teaching aid it's amazing so definitely people should be using it in that way for for sure so before we move on one thing is you you know you did the spring at the likes of you know jeffrey's evercore others and so um and then converting some of these into internship what's advice for the conversion process because everything we talked about so far is like breaking in but then you land and not many people talk about okay now you're there what do you do then so what advice would you have to improve the chance of someone wanting to put you know put an offer out to you to come back in future yeah i think i've had a lot of experience with this i'd like as you say i did the spring weeks at like jeffrey's evercore and then i did the banking academy at goldman sachs and i was really lucky in that i then got the summer internship offers from evercore and goldman sachs and jeffrey's so i i feel like i can speak to what it takes to convert offspring.

28:15I think one thing that I noticed throughout the three of them was that all three involved a presentation in which you were given information that you would, there was no way of, it was completely abstract. There was no way of you ever having known it before. And you would present that to analysts and associates. And from what I saw and what I experienced myself the people who converted were the people who were who could sell themselves and sell their ideas and their knowledge so the ones who the ones who could command a room no matter their level of technical knowledge if you can convince people that what you're saying is wide whether it is or not in fact right you will get the job because banking for me i obviously speak heavily to banking in this because that's where my experience comes from but banking is a people's business and if no like no amount of technical knowledge makes up for the fact that someone might be stood on a podium giving a presentation and it's visibly uncomfortable i was like i was very lucky growing up i had public speaking classes and i was very involved in things like school plays so i had a lot of experience with public speaking i think that's something that cannot possibly be overestimated if you're looking at springs and recruiting.

29:38As much public speaking experience as possible is probably the biggest advantage you can have, more than any technicals. Being able to sell yourself and captivate a room is what distinguished the top performers every time. Those who were given information and within an hour were able to convinced the entire room that what they were saying was right that element of public speaking is like vital for springs and as much prac as an experience that you can have before that as possible the better position you're in to be in no that's that's great insight and what i'll do is actually maybe in the show notes i'll share an old episode that we did with amplify me you know part of our job is delivery in front of large audiences, you know, early careers, students.

30:30But we all have an elocution coach who teaches us everything about how to speak, how to present our body language, all these different things. And I did a really great conversation with him a few months ago. So for other people, if you are, you know, struggling or maybe just looking to improve, we'll drop it in the show notes. There's an episode there you can listen to where he shares some really great sort of practical things you can go away and do as training to get better at that sort of thing because I know it's not natural to most people so yeah so we'll share that you can definitely improve that it's a skill you can learn for sure so uh final few things then before we we kind of conclude one of the things I wanted to ask you was if you had to narrow everything down that you've learned to just five things that's made the biggest difference to your success so kind of distilling it down I think I've got a decent idea of some but not all of the five so far so in your mind though what would those be yeah obviously there are so many things that play into it but if i were to put it down to just five i would say um building up my cv from day one at university and staying consistent with that is something that has stood hugely to me.

31:49From when I first joined back in 2024, I immediately started getting involved in the UCC Student Managed Fund and then built that up then to go on to the Irish Student Managed Fund and then the same thing doing projects with the Consulting Society in Cork and building that up afterwards to the national level of the Irish Student Consulting Group and showing that linear progression on my CV and showing that I can progress to that higher stage and be able to perform at a higher level that showed consistency and determination I think in my applications so building it up from day one and staying consistent is definitely one thing I would say and then I guess I like again this is something that is more relevant to my particular way of learning but I do think it was really important for me was I tried to get practical experience rather than just again learning things off which I really just don't like doing so in second year I took a financial modeling course and that was way way way easier for me to understand and it made it far easier to understand topics rather than just learning something from a book like for me being able to experience it myself see how it see how changes actually looked in a model and see how things actually practically play out made me understand the concepts far more and again took them away from being abstract and made them very understandable so i think if i were to like give someone advice on technical preparation i would say always prioritize getting practical exposure than just reading things on books i think it enhances a level of understanding in yourself that you won't get from just reading about a topic then I was very lucky in college in that I had an amazing mentor who has now graduated but who when I was in first year he was in third year of my course and I was very very lucky that he had gone through the spring process he had gone through preparing for spring weeks then doing and converting spring weeks and ultimately then doing a summer internship in an elite boutique and converting that into full-time where he is now in London.

34:03And it was truly, truly valuable for me to get firsthand insight, not necessarily from like an industry professional, but from just another student who had also gone through Springs, who knew exactly what recruiters were looking for, both in hiring for the Springs and then in converting, and who knew the level of technical expertise that was expected at a spring and how that played on then into assessment centers for the summer. How did you meet? We met at, there was a society event. We were having the local, like there's a firm in Cork, a local consultancy firm that were doing a sponsored event with the Economic Society in UCC.

34:47And he was a part of the society. And I obviously was trying to like get involved in the uni as much as I could. I'd only started about three weeks before. So I went along just to meet people. and got chatting and immediately like from then he kind of started looking at my cv and helping me prepare and became ultimately a huge source of support and help and preparation and many mock interviews were done with him but um yeah people like that are like vital yeah um great i think um if I were to say other things I guess as I was talking about networking earlier but I think it's I would say how I did it that had a very very big impact on my applications and made me stand out was where I was whenever I was interviewing with somewhere I would always aim to have had two conversations so one with a previous intern and one with a full-time analyst or associate and that was hugely beneficial for me to talk about in interviews because I would have the I would be able to speak about the experience of someone who had done an internship there and who was able to talk about that experience of being a temporary employee with the firm and then compare that with the insight I'd gotten from the full-time employee about the culture of the firm like specific experiences rewarding stories that they had to share and how they'd found their time at the firm so I think being able to compare those two experiences of temporary and full-time employees and how I thought that was relevant to me going forward was something that I think made me stand out quite a lot in interviews and was useful to have so um that was that was probably another thing that was very very helpful to me and then yeah if I were that's that's four I guess if I were to name one more, it would be just the same with networking.

36:43Having my approach of making sure I had something in common with someone before approaching them allowed me to develop genuine relationships. And the relationships I have now with people at Goldman Sachs and people at Evercore are relationships I gained from having genuine conversations with people. It always came from a genuine interest to want to get to know them as a person. and want to get to know their experience and how they had gone through this whole pathway before me rather than just trying to blindly recite off a bunch of technicals and like prove myself and my knowledge. I never really felt the need to do that and I think that played out in my relationships and allowed me to develop really good relationships which I still have today with people at Evercore and Goldman Sachs and that's something that has benefited me hugely.

37:32So those are probably five things. There are so many more, but those are five that I think have really changed the landscape for me. So important to start from day one and build it up. I think you can be consistent, you said. So I think that's a really important thing because often people might look at a successful student who secured, let's say, a highly desirable coveted role and they go, oh well you know they did it because of this or they did it because of that but in reality you know it's been a journey right you've been knocking on this door for many years accumulating this knowledge um on that point i wanted to ask like you know some people will sit there and listen to this and go i would love to be there and just go look this is what it takes to be in the one percent yeah you know this sort of approach and it's it definitely is true but in order to have this level of proactivity that you've had like that serendipity it almost happens because you're putting yourself in the right place you're at the networking event you're acquiring the mentor because you're there you're present sort of thing what's the weighting towards doing a lot of this and studying and social life yeah and all these other inputs for a young person yeah um it was i guess it was important for me to realize especially in second semester of college when the spring weeks were starting that you really cannot have it all as much as you can try to there comes a point at which preparation for recruiting and for technicals takes up a substantial amount of your time and there comes the point at which a decision kind of has to be made where like uni work for this period or recruiting preparation and well obviously uni work is very important that you keep it up to a high standard for me I chose at the time that preparation for springs and for recruiting was going to be my ultimate priority so that did involve sacrifices that needed to be made to uni work my focus did ultimately go on learning as many technicals as possible and making sure my knowledge was up to the standard that was maybe expected.

39:49I do think it's worth pointing out that if you work very hard during your spring preparation phase of learning technicals and building it up to a very high standard, 99 % of that you will never use in either your interviews for the springs or the springs themselves. The technical that you may have spent hours and hours and weeks learning won't be used then. And why I think it's a really, really good idea to learn them during spring is because during the spring preparation process is because going into summers, when you're doing preparation for summers, often for assessment centers, you're given very, very little notice.

40:31And having technical knowledge down and having everything learned from the spring is an enormous advantage. Like, for example, for the Goldman Sachs Assessment Center, I had 48 hours notice. So having everything learned was something that if I hadn't done it, I would have been in a pretty bad position. So while it does involve sacrifices, and it does mean that, yeah, maybe you're not going to see your friends as much, and maybe uni work is going to take a bit of a toll because of it, and your grades are probably going to suffer a little bit. But for me, it's something that I think is massively worth it because maybe you won't see the benefits of it during the spring.

41:12But when you're ultimately preparing for summers and assessment centers and you get a call that you have to get on a plane and go across to London with a matter of days notice, having all those technicals already learned is something that's going to put you, it's going to send you in really, really good stead. So I think learning your technicals early is, I would always say, it's the best way to go. And you might not see the benefits immediately, but it will come back to serve you for sure. all right last question for you if i may which is let's put yourself try to put yourself in a position of you're now let's say the third year and you're at an event in cork and there's a really eager young person in the first year just landed on campus and they're like one dying to talk to you because they've heard you've done this that and the other what would you say to that person that person who at that point has got no relevant experience they've got no contacts what's the advice what would you encourage them to do over that near-term period like first actions to just you know the hardest part of like pushing a heavy object is the first bit once it's moving you've got some momentum so that first bit what would you say is the catalyst or something to get them into action yeah i think there's every year there's one like an influx in new students that are really keen and it can be impossible to know where to start i think you like a pretty safe place to start that you can never really go wrong with is just understanding what an investment banker actually does rather than getting sidetracked by the like the narrative around the industry and how much it's talked about online and how much competition there's seen to be around it's easy to get swept up in the whole LinkedIn buzz but I think understanding what a bank for actually does and if that's genuinely something that you're interested in it's far more worth your time than scrolling something on LinkedIn so like understanding the basics of M &A of ECM DCM understanding your three fundamental financial statements and just maybe learning some like at a very high level some easy valuation methodologies like DCF DDMLBO etc being able to understand that this is something that you're actually interested in and willing to invest the time in is something that I think is very useful I would absolutely say as a second point get a mentor like 100 % someone in your uni who has walked the path before you who understands what the time sacrifice that it takes to make it like do well at this very competitive level and to convert springs into summers and then summers into full-time wills um that advice from someone in maybe a bit more of an informal manner than a conversation with someone who's already a full-time professional that's a huge source of support and is i think vital to your development and having someone to look up to like that as an inspiration is something that is gonna change your own perspective and motivate you to work harder for it which i think is brilliant and then maybe just lastly just a basic one but understand the recruitment timeline like understand spring applications open begin opening late August, early September, run right through to December, understanding and being ready for that when it happens.

44:55And then obviously summer is done a little bit earlier. So working to prepare your CV and your cover letters during the summer and being ready for when those applications open. I do think it's important to be aware of the timeline so that you're ready for things while it's done and you're not catching up with people because you're already going to be at disadvantage so i i think just if i were to say three things just to understand the basics of what your day would actually look like if you were a banker get a mentor who can guide you honestly and just understand the timeline of what it is you're getting into and understand how many applications you're gonna have to make to be noticed at all and like be able to know within yourself is this truly something that you're willing to invest the time in i would say yeah And to add to the show notes, anyone who wants to experience these roles, I mean, that is exactly what we do.

45:52Amplify me, hopefully through all these different simulation experiences. And there is an M &A finance accelerator, which is a free two-hour session that anyone from anywhere can join, regardless of background, age, all that sort of stuff. So check that out and do take part if you wanted to. and I'll also on our YouTube channel there is a category dedicated to investment banking so insights explanations about what is DCM ECM all these different sort of things so people can also check that out as well if they need to so all right Rachel that is the end so thank you so much for sharing your insights it's been a real pleasure to you know unpack it with you thank you and I really enjoyed it myself.

46:37So it was great fun to get to talk to you and get to reflect on everything. It was the first time I actually did reflect back on everything. So it was cool to do that. Well, thank you very much. Good stuff. All right. Thank you everyone for listening. And we'll... Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than real pricing. See you next time.