Your Investment Banking Internship is Only as Good As Your Investment Bank

...and your investment bank is only as good as its dealflow.

We receive a great deal of interest from those seeking 'internships in investment banking. They come from both undergraduate and graduate students looking to “get their feet wet” in the industry. Many such potential interns are looking for a place to hone their Excel modeling skills on current investment banking deals. In conversations we have we these interns, they are often asked what they wish to receive or gain by having an internship.

The answers are varied, but most of them revolve around the ability to work in Excel and get meaningful experience from what a typical investment banker would actually do with his/her time. Unfortunately, unless you are going to be interning at Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan, the quality and quantity of your dealflow matters enormously. The truth is, most boutique investment banking firms will do only a couple quality deals each year and the number of interns needed for each deal is extremely limited. So, when you are shopping for the right investment banking internship, take a look at those deal metrics carefully.

What “Dealflow” Actually Means for an Intern

Dealflow is the pipeline of active transactions a firm is working on at any given moment—and for an intern, it is the direct measure of how much real work you will touch. A firm doing two mid-market sell-side transactions per year may have room for one or two interns per deal. If you join at the wrong moment in the calendar, you may spend the summer building pitch decks for prospects who never become clients rather than supporting a live closing.

Before accepting an internship offer, ask directly: how many transactions closed in the past twelve months, and how many are active right now? The answers will tell you more about your summer than any description of “culture” or “mentorship.” Boutique firms that use structured capital markets workflow tools and maintain a transparent deal intake process tend to move more transactions from prospect to close—which means more live deal exposure for interns on the team.

The Soft Metrics

While the FINRA exams emphasize the fact that investment banking is not “selling,” they are wrong. Most of the work done in investment banking is hard-core selling. It’s selling with a technical edge. It includes the ability to not only bring in dealflow, land a new client and close a client’s capital transaction. Learning the hard metrics of Excel modeling and business valuations, while important, is not the most important component of what investment bankers do.

Business is about people. Investment banking is about people. In saying this, please do not misunderstand, the hard spreadsheet metrics, honed in your days as an analyst or associate at a bulge-bracket investment bank will serve you for years to come, but the soft metrics like negotiation, salesmanship and bedside manner are those that help investment bankers ultimately increase dealflow and close more opportunities.

How to Evaluate a Firm Before You Accept

Evaluating a boutique is harder than evaluating a bulge bracket, because the public record is thinner. Here is a practical checklist for prospective interns:

• Transaction history: Ask for representative closed deals in the last two years. Verify them independently where possible.
• Client industry concentration: A firm that focuses on one or two industries tends to develop deeper buyer networks and close a higher percentage of mandates it takes on.
• Technology infrastructure: Firms that have invested in transaction document intelligence and virtual data room workflows typically operate more organized processes—and organized processes create structured learning environments for interns.
• Active mandates right now: Ask whether a live deal is in due diligence or approaching LOI. That is where the real modeling and document work happens.

The Long-Term Calculus

An internship at a boutique with genuine dealflow—even a small one—almost always outperforms an internship at a larger firm where you are one of forty interns rotating through conference rooms. The goal is not the name on your resume; it is the transaction experience you can speak to in your next interview. A candidate who explains how they built a lender package for a live deal or supported sell-side preparation for a business going to market will consistently outperform candidates who can only describe pitch decks and financial models prepared for hypothetical prospects.

Choose the internship that gets you closest to real transactions. That choice compounds over the entire arc of your career.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if a boutique investment bank has enough dealflow for a meaningful internship?

Ask the firm directly how many transactions closed in the prior year and how many active mandates it currently holds. A firm closing fewer than two or three deals annually may not have enough live work to keep an intern engaged in real transaction tasks. Look also for indicators of structured process—organized data rooms, defined closing checklists, and disciplined client intake—as signals that deals progress to completion rather than stalling.

Are soft skills really more important than Excel modeling for an investment banking career?

Both matter, but they matter at different stages. Excel precision is the baseline requirement to be taken seriously as an analyst. The professionals who grow into senior roles—where origination and client relationships drive revenue—are distinguished by negotiation instinct, credibility under pressure, and the ability to build trust with founders and executives. The sooner an intern understands this, the more deliberately they can develop both skill sets in parallel.

Does it matter whether I intern at a firm that specializes in a particular industry?

Specialization generally helps, especially at the boutique level. A firm that focuses on a specific sector builds a deeper network of strategic and financial buyers in that space, which means higher close rates and more structured deal processes. Interning inside that kind of specialist network gives you genuine industry fluency—the kind that makes you useful to a future employer from day one.