Interview with Nick Mehta: The Road to Global Investment Banking

A firsthand account of successfully navigating the global investment banking recruiting process as a Canadian.

We were lucky enough to get to speak with Nick Mehta recently. Nick is a WCM, Western, and Ivey HBA alumnus who completed a Dual Degree with Medical Sciences. He has spent the past two years working as an Investment Banking Analyst for Citigroup at their London, UK office. Before that, he completed a pair of internships with the investment banking teams at Citigroup in New York, and in London. He is now slated to join on with a private equity firm in the next chapter. He had some great insights on how best to position yourself to succeed in Finance recruiting at every step of the way — see the transcript below.

Interviewer: So Nick, could you walk us through your story — how did you go from studying science at Western to working in finance? And what aspects of finance drew you in?

Nick: For sure, so starting out at Western I was in Medical Sciences (for the first two years), but I found that looking back into high school and in the first two years at Western, some of the areas that I was most excited about studying were economics and accounting. I also joined Western Capital Markets in first year and found that programs like these were where I was most engaged outside of classes, particularly learning from a business and finance perspective. I remember reflecting back on my first year at Western and thinking that the WCM New York trip was one of the most memorable experiences. The chance to meet directly with alumni in the finance world, tour the firms, and explore a new city was very impactful. I was still really engaged in the Medical Sciences aspect, but thought that I would take a shot at the world of finance as a precursor to starting the HBA program in third year. I ended up getting an internship at a hedge fund in Toronto before HBA1, and I saw it as a really strong opportunity to translate into a more formalized Bank Analyst program role for the summer following HBA1. And so, during HBA1, I really opened up to what you would be able to learn in finance: the exposure you would get working with a ton of really smart people in some of the biggest knowledge hubs in the world, Toronto, New York, London, Hong Kong. And it allows you to think from a strategic perspective about ‘what’s good for this company’ and work through the math to ensure that the decision works economically and financially as well. This combination is what drew me into the world of finance, and that’s what carried me through until today.

Interviewer: So if that’s what drew you in, has your experience lived up to that after having done it for a few years now? Has anything surprised you?

For sure, I had the chance to do an internship with Citigroup in New York after HBA1, and another with Citigroup in London after HBA2 in the Financial Institutions and Healthcare Investment Banking groups, respectively. I found that with the work there was a lot to learn, and you’re drinking from a firehose. You have to grind a little bit to get everything done, but as I reflected at the end of those internships, I realized I was quite interested in what I was learning. The technical skills I was developing, from how to think about problems and solve them mathematically and strategically, to working with a team to pitch an investment story to providers of capital were things that I found to be quite exciting. Ultimately I rejoined Citigroup in London following graduation and spent 2+ years with the bank in London, UK. The opportunities certainly lived up to and exceeded expectations. This has happened in everything — from stepping in and taking as much initiative as possible when joining your team, the ability to work with a global set of bankers that are exceptionally smart, and the responsibility you get in working directly with clients across corporates and private equity. You get to look at problems from the angle of M&A, equity capital markets, debt capital markets, etc, in order to provide a solution to a problem that a client will have — and given that you sit in the investment banking seat, you are expected to be versed in all of those.

One thing I didn’t appreciate before I started was how you build relationships with clients and how much work goes into that. The ultimate goal is to be a trusted advisor to a client and the amount of time it takes to represent yourself and properly understand the issues a client is facing demonstrates how valuable this role can be. When your team has the chance to work in this privileged position with a client, this can be an exceptionally valuable learning experience, particularly as a junior banker. Another part was how much you learn from all the aspects of the job. People talk about how you just want to be doing deals and closing transactions and that’s the best thing you can do. I think that’s something that’s broadly misunderstood. Something you start to appreciate after working in the business for a short amount of time is the importance of working on pitches and client relationships in turn. You’re pitching them and showing them new and crazy ideas, and this is where you exercise a lot of your brain to turn this creativity into a reality. I found this part really interesting. In a deal, everything becomes real all of a sudden — and by that I mean nothing is theoretical anymore, every decision you make will be highly scrutinized by your client and the counterparty, and there is a ton of process work to get a deal done. It’s a great learning experience from the perspective of “how do you do a deal”, working directly with clients on a day to day basis, and that is the focus of investment banking, but there’s also a lot of really interesting stuff that comes along with pitching ideas and thinking strategically about transactions, and getting clients to think differently.

Bringing it back to the first question, I’ve decided for the next step in my career to move away from the transactional side of the business towards the investing side. Here you can look beyond the initial transaction and focus more on operating a business. And that’s something that I’m excited about. It requires a different type of conviction, particularly in that you are putting equity capital on behalf of investors and partners at risk in the projects you are choosing to pursue.

Interviewer: This is a theme that comes up at Ivey a lot as well, but finance jobs are known to be pretty demanding. Are there any methods or practices that you have used to fight burnout? And can you confirm that the job was as demanding as they say?

So I think it definitely is. It takes a lot of time to become really good at something. And when you’re working with clients you’re effectively a hired gun, and their expectation is that you’re gonna have a good shot. And so to get to that level, and to reach the expectations that you have from your seniors and clients as a trusted hand, and given the number of advisors that compete for these big time mandates, the amount of work that needs to go into things is exceptionally high. I think right away from my summer internship I could tell that. And it takes a lot of nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of short term projects and assignments to develop your capabilities. This is a fundamental aspect of the job and you need to be proactive in your mindset of working through that aspect. It’s certainly a business that’s demanding, but when you look back on the leg work and heavy time that you put in, a lot of it was proving yourself. Your first year out of university you’ve got no professional experience outside of perhaps some internships, however you got a mind trained well in thinking. You still need to prove that what’s going on in your head demonstrates capable decision making and to try and minimize the number of mistakes. So a lot of the time you’ve gotta put in a ton of work to develop and prove to people that you’re competent and can be trusted.

Another key component is that you’ve gotta be a steady hand, but I’m telling you — you won’t be a steady hand on day one. You won’t be used to dealing with the level of perfection, volume, and time pressure that comes with the job. It takes a lot of time to get up to a level where you start to feel comfortable… and then you have to deal with the next challenge. It’s always dealing with new challenges and learnings, and that’s what makes the job interesting, but at the same time that’s what makes the job quite demanding. It takes me back a bit to the “drinking from a firehose” analogy, as soon as you feel comfortable the pressure turns up!

As for how to fight burnout, I think the way to do that is just taking a positive approach to as much as possible. Sometimes you have to say, hey, this is super tough, but here’s what I’m getting out of it. You can try to look a bit deeper and see if there are any pain points causing you problems. See if you can try to ask some questions and look out for yourself to try and address it. Sometimes this just means stepping back to think deeply about what you’re doing and looking within yourself to see if the skills that you’re building really interest you.

The last thing I’d say is just making sure that you look out for yourself. A lot of these companies take an active approach and have programs in place to help you push through the stressful times — there’s your contractual vacation, team events, having lunches with new people, or breakfast sessions with senior management. It’s so easy for you to skip the little things on a day to day basis because you’re swimming in work, but making and taking the time to just do little things helps a lot. Participating in these types of events helps you keep a positive mindset and develop a broader understanding of the company that you’re working for. It also helps you meet more people in more places, so the next time you need a connection or some help on something from another team, you know that person in a non-professional sense — which should improve your ability to work together. And so taking advantage of these little things: making sure you’re shutting off on vacation, being strict about having time where you put away your phone on weekends, and understanding that even though there might be a massive amount of stress on you for projects, at the end of the day everything will always work out. It may feel like the end of the world if you make a mistake or don’t meet a deadline, but everybody knows that mistakes are going to happen. Yes the work you’re doing is important, but you are part of a broader mechanism solving a problem. Everybody else might look exceptional at what they’re doing, but everyone is working through challenges and nobody is perfect. So that said, make an active effort to take care of yourself, because it’s you that knows yourself best.

Interviewer: Right now a lot of first and second year students are seeking internships in the realm of finance. That’s always been a notoriously unstandardized process — do you have any advice for navigating those waters?

I think a lot of it is going to be just shooting your shot. I think part of it is figuring out from the students above you what job they did — because generally if they did something, that company would trust you to do the same thing. So look at who’s in Western Capital Markets ahead of you, who’s in Ivey Finance Club, and Western Investment Club — who’s an interesting person you’ve met, even if they aren’t in any of those clubs, and what did they do in their first two summers? Contact that person and say, “Hey, I want to talk to you about what you did after first year or second year summer, and maybe I could do the same thing, or maybe you could point me in a direction that would be more useful.” Try to have a really honest conversation with them. It’s going to be challenging at first, to come up with questions and have an engaging chat, but I think it’s very possible to do that, and it’ll point you on your way. Unfortunately — as you pointed out — it’s challenging and unstandardized so you gotta go for volume. You might get lucky on your first shot, but likely you will need a few attempts to find your spot.

And at the same time, try to leverage any other connections you might have. Take the strides to build your network and leverage the fact that everybody in the finance world started at square one. Try and reach out to anyone, be it from previous summer jobs, organizations that you may have worked with during high school, family friends, whoever — anything that you can do, try and take advantage of.

I also wouldn’t say you necessarily need a summer job in finance in the first two years. Realistically, hiring managers looking at Ivey students know that one summer internship from first or second year shouldn’t make or break you as a candidate. It’s about demonstrating that you are capable of working in a professional environment and can do your best to add value, and this can be done in many roles. Showing your interest in finance can be done through other ways such as clubs, organizations and certifications. There is a story I remember about an individual who was a lifeguard after second year and ended up working at Goldman Sachs in Investment Banking after HBA1. The person was able to demonstrate leadership skills, interest, and professional capability through that summer job and a number of other extra-curricular activities.

Interviewer: What did your prep routine look like for third year finance recruiting. It would be great to hear about key resources, and how you went about scheduling your prep.

I think the key to everyone’s success in finance is people ahead of them taking the time to mentor them and provide advice. I think that’s something that people underestimate when they just start and they tell themselves “why would anyone wanna help me, I’m just a junior student who hasn’t done anything, I don’t even know this person, I’m not part of any of the clubs” — fundamentally, every single person who’s got a job in finance has probably had maybe 20–30 people who have been influential, given them time, and have been very supportive. And particularly while you’re at school. Just sending that person a Facebook message or an email, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Step back and think it can’t hurt to send an email saying “hey I wanted some help prepping for interviews” or asking for some guidance on investment banking. Approach the situation with some humility and let them know that you’re just starting out the journey and would just like a basic chat, or give them a list of specific things that you want to focus on in a conversation if you think you’re further along. A lot of people will be very open to helping you. And I think that leads into how I prepped.

Before I was ready or felt confident, I must’ve done 10 or 15 mock interviews with HBA2/3s, and that was having done a semi-relevant job after second year, having been a part of Western Capital Markets for two years, and after I did the self prep to ensure I wasn’t wasting time in my mocks. I would read the Wall Street Oasis guides on the weekends, and really try to annotate and think about what I was learning versus just reading it and ripping through it as fast as I could. I worked through this process with a couple of my roommates. Every night we’d try and sit down and bounce some questions off of each other for maybe 15 or 20 minutes, over the course of a month or two. Those were the strategies, working through it with other people was really helpful. And you get better as time goes on. I did a ton of interviews when I was in HBA1, and I was lucky to get a job with Citigroup in New York — and that took a ton of time, and a ton of strikeouts. But hey — you’ll find your way eventually — if you’re focused and you put the time in.

Looking back at the different strategies people pursued, doing all of the prep work over the course of one weekend is not smart. And I don’t think it’s doable. I think focusing on it over the course of a couple of weeks or a couple of months is much more valuable. I remember my initial plan, when recruiting timelines were different, was to go through HBA1 first semester and focus on school as much as I could, and then go home for Winter Break. On the break the goal was to spend three or four weeks spending a lot of time with the material in the guides, and go over them over the course of a longer period. That way your brain has time to process and reflect, and really understand things. Versus, if you take the approach of trying to learn the guides the night before an interview — then you’re tired, and you’re not able to consolidate information. Sometimes people are exceptionally lucky or they’re very blessed and they can do that — but I think for the majority of folks, taking time over the course of a couple of weekends is the way to go.

The way I had ended up doing it when the timelines got moved up on us in HBA1 was every weekend reading two or three guides, and not speeding through it, I think I read them all once or twice, but the way I learn is by annotating notes. So just going through, making highlights, and taking notes, and saying “okay this is the way this works, that’s the way that works”, and really just focusing on understanding it. The way I approached it was — how do I succeed in school? I had to learn all the biochemistry and accounting for my academics — so I’ll apply the same technique to learning this technical framework. I don’t do well cramming the night before the night of an exam, or just skimming through stuff a ton a times — I need to sit down over the course of a couple of weeks and learn things thoroughly once or twice — and then it sticks. Same thing with the mock interviews. I did the 10 or 15 over the course of two weeks. Some people try to do 10 over the course of a day, and you wreck yourself doing that, but more importantly you don’t retain the knowledge. If you stretch them over a few weeks then you can really consolidate that information.

I think the most important thing is thinking about how best do YOU learn in school and applying that here, because at the end of the day you should treat this as another course. You’ve got homework (the guides), practice exams (the mocks), and then finals (real interviews). Everybody has a different strategy to learn, so do what’s best for you.

Interviewer: With the benefit of hindsight, what advice would you give yourself if you were going through the process again?

I think one thing would just be to do even more networking, and to not be afraid to reach out to people. Sometimes that was something where I was like — oh, maybe I should reach out to this person, maybe I won’t — and then a week goes by and you never did it, and then all of a sudden you hear somebody else has got an interview and you think, ah, I should’ve sent that person a message. These professionals get so many emails a day, they get so many messages about this topic, they aren’t going to be upset, nervous, or angry that you sent them a message too. Just do it! Writing recruiting and networking emails at the start might take you a while (I know it took me 30 minutes each to write my first few emails), but once you build out your template / thought process and have your way to introduce yourself to people, it shouldn’t take very long (5–10 minutes). So I’d set a goal for myself: I need to send at least one email every day and reach out to one new person. That was the key. Looking on LinkedIn and trying to back search through the Ivey alumni database to see where people worked, working through the sets of folks who were coming to info sessions, and having chats with all of them and following up. Because maybe they go and get 30 business cards in an info session, or 30 thank you emails right after, but they may not have an extended chat with all students.

You also need to find a way to differentiate yourself. You should be asking yourself how can I convert more of my emails into valuable conversations. Because that person might have received your email, but they probably also got five other recruiting emails, and they had a ton of work to do that day as well. There’s a chance you might have gotten lost. The trick that I realized was that if you go into your own sent email and hit “reply all” on the email you sent, and start writing a follow up message and say, “hey, I just wanted to follow up and check in to see if you might have 20 minutes to have a chat at some point in the next week or two, happy to be flexible around your schedule.” The person won’t have missed your email, because people generally don’t miss emails. They see your name and say: I’ll respond later — and then they forget. But if your name pops up again, and/or they see the “RE:” in the subject line, it’ll make them think, hey I already had a conversation with this person, or this is multiple times now I received a message. Give the person a week or two to respond, and if they don’t, then send a follow up email, and then send one more if they still don’t reply. Your hit rate will go up massively with folks if you do that — so that’s probably something I should’ve done even more of.

Interviewer: Having come from a Medical Science background, do you have any advice for the students coming from a non-business/economics background to get up to speed?

I think, to be honest, the academic background that you have is not that relevant, because everybody that comes to Ivey has to do accounting. If anything it makes you special and gives you something interesting to talk about in terms of your transition into business. So you’re fine from that perspective: everyone’s on the same baseline. They aren’t really testing you in finance on your knowledge of economic concepts or business management that you would see in the Econ and BMOS programs, which I assume are probably the two biggest programs entering Ivey. But I think that it’s just about joining clubs, networking, and having chats with older students — this is how you prove your interest in finance. You go to a meeting and you stick around after and have a chat, just a quick thing to build a relationship with that person, or even message them after and say “hey that was great, maybe we could get a coffee sometime, and I could hear a bit more about *this idea* or you could teach me a bit more”. I think just getting those directions from people who are a bit more senior to you in school is massive — and it gives you mentors to look up to. I had a ton of people that I looked up to while I was at Ivey. There was one in particular who was one year ahead of me. I thought she was incredibly smart, and she was a few steps ahead of me on the path I was eager to pursue. I looked up to her from the perspective of mentorship and advice and even to this day I still keep in touch in that capacity, even though she’s in a completely different city. Those friendships / relationships don’t come from nothing though, it takes a lot of time to build them. So you have to be aware of that, they’re not just gonna pop out of nowhere but they’re incredibly valuable once they do arise.

Interviewer: So you recruited for roles in London and New York. It would be great to hear how that processes in the different geographies differ from one another, and any advice you might have for Ivey students trying to follow a similar path.

For sure. When I did my summer internship with Citigroup in New York it was just on the precipice of when visa regulations were changing, and so the options for me from an immigration perspective was to go to either Canada or London for full time. I guess I made my own third option, because I ended up going to London for a summer internship. The reason that happened is because as a Canadian, the visa rules are significantly easier in the UK — it’s a much simpler process and it’s easier to navigate your way in. I was effectively an internal move which made it easier for me, but looking back on the way it does work — processes in London are called Graduate Programs. Instead of an Analyst program you see in North America it’s called the “Graduate Program for the Analyst Class of xxxx”. If you’re interested in recruiting for London, you should be looking out for those types of things. When you’re networking, make sure that you reach out to the HR team that includes the graduate program recruitment managers, or hiring managers, because those people are much more important and guide the process more than the bankers do in North America. Typically in North America the stack of resumes will be run by the analysts, and they might make a few recommendations. It differs significantly in the UK where HR is much more in control of what’s going on and they’re the ones who’re guiding the process. And so from that you have a much better chance of getting in just from applying online, and from networking with the HR side. As Canadians we are at a disadvantage given that we aren’t a “target school” so to speak, they’re more focused on European schools, and so it’s a matter of making your name more known to HR through informal channels.

Once you make your way into the process there are a couple of differences. You might typically have a statistical assessment test before you get to do a first round interview. Where it’s just assessing your ability to work with numbers and scenarios — it’s honestly quite similar to a case, maybe a FinFun case, where you get a paragraph or a table and you kind of elucidate what’s important and what’s not, and then use that to answer the question. The phone interviews are quite similar to what you would experience in Canada and the US. The final interview is different though: it’s called an assessment centre. With that you come into the office for 4 or 5 hours of interviews with a variety of individuals. This can be quite varied — you’ll have your typical behavioural, technical, motivations, but you could also be doing a case on your own or with a group, or working through current events and how they will impact the business, clients, and company. So there’s a ton of stuff you’ll do that’s outside the box at these assessment centres. But I think Ivey students are quite well prepared given that you’re doing cases non stop at school, and that gets you much more ready for this scenario based work.

Timeline wise — it’s typically you recruit in the fall for the next summer. Applications will probably open around the start of September or end of August, and interviews will run on a rolling basis through November and into December a little bit. That’s how the process generally works from my understanding, but it’s always good to generally continue to network with these people so that you can understand the different intricacies of the process every year — because it’s always changing.

Interviewer: Great. So you’ve now made the jump to exit banking and enter private equity. It would be great to hear about what motivated that choice.

Looking at where I was in investment banking, I was an Analyst which obviously means there is still a ton more to learn in investment banking — but my choice was motivated by the idea of looking at companies through a different lens. Looking at projects and companies from the perspective of ownership and operating versus from the perspective of the impact of a transaction, and really getting deep into diligence and getting to work with management on an ongoing basis were things that I was excited about and saw myself engaged in moving forward. There’s definitely a lot more to learn in investment banking as you move up the levels, with client relationships, managing transactions, valuation, and working with other banks, but I think the skills that I was getting excited about, like working with companies and owning and operating, seemed a lot closer to what we were learning at Ivey holistically. And that’s kinda what drew me into the business and finance world in the first place in HBA1. So when this new opportunity came up, I thought, this is really interesting, it aligns with what I like best about my current role in investment banking, its healthcare focused, and the team will be an exceptional group to learn under — let’s fully jump in and spend some serious time digging into something that will be very engaging.

Interviewer: For the first years, second years, WCM body, broader finance community at Western, reading this, and going through the stress of recruiting, any final message or advice you might have?

People talk about the stress of recruiting — if you let it get stressful, it gets stressful. Try to take control of this emotion! Obviously it’s challenging to watch your friends or other people get the jobs that you’re competing for, but at the same time you need to just put your head down and you keep working. It’s a process, and you keep grinding, and keep slogging away at writing those emails and finding more people to reach out to at different places. And to be honest, sometimes the more time you spend looking at it, the more you figure out what you really want. So I think it’s about saying hey — here’s what I’m struggling with — let’s try and turn it into a positive. Obviously it hurts, but you’re learning more about yourself. And you’re learning more about different places, you’re building out your network, and you’re learning more about what the opportunities available are. And maybe you didn’t get what you thought was your dream opportunity, but you’ll be able to test another avenue and test another option. I know I had to go through a bit of that when I was in HBA1 — I went through a ton of processes and met with a lot of different places and thought one door would be my top choice, but it ended up closing, and so another door opened. And because of that, I was able to finish my Medical Sciences Dual Degree, which I was super excited about. This opportunity has also allowed me to work in Toronto, New York, and London and I just turned 25. Looking back, I’ve been very lucky and blessed to have these opportunities. It takes a ton of work, and the struggle you’re going through is normal, but in the wise words of Joel Embiid, you just gotta trust the process.