by Kevin
As you might read in my recap of meeting #1, Jackson High has an ambitious plan to begin a career in investment banking. Or, as I like to articulate it, Jackson is High on Investment banking (hopefully he is successful as I am hokey)!
In addition to the full post, I thought it might be useful to summarize mentoring tips that can be found within each post to provide ideas for mentors to consider for their mentees.
Mentoring Tips found within this post:
- Help your mentee clearly articulate his/her purpose—or goal—with a mission statement;
- Identify mentee’s strengths and weaknesses, preferably with the use of a third party;
- Allow your mentee to access your personal network and help him/her develop appropriate questions;
- Gather feedback from your mentee to ensure expectations continue to be properly aligned.
My next mentoring meeting with Jackson focused on an action plan—or strategy—to delve into the world of investment banking. First, we felt that we should understand and define Jackson’s ultimate mission statement for these next few years to add clarity and purpose to this process. In addition, I wanted to identify Jackson’s strengths and weaknesses, so we could develop his weaknesses—if necessary—and promote his strengths.
In order to articulate a clear mission statement, we focused on Jackson’s roles and goals. After a series of back and forth questions about Jackson’s desires, we came up with the following mission statement to serve as our guide:
“I am a Finance student whose discipline, motivation, and collaborative mindset allows me to leverage the collective contributions of those around me into value for the organization as a whole. I aim to accomplish this by fully applying myself, by learning from those who have gone before me, and by emulating the virtues of the highest caliber of companies”.
I know I am inspired, as is Jackson!
Next we discussed his strengths and weaknesses in more detail. Jackson utilized a current trusted relationship to get feedback on his abilities, which I recommend for all mentees. Based on this feedback, as well as introspection on his accomplishments, we concluded that Jackson’s primary strengths are analytical/Insightful, work ethic, consistency and his weaknesses are work/life balance, lack of sensitivity, and overconfidence (at times). After discussing these in more detail, we felt like his strengths would fit nicely with our perception and observation of investment bankers. We also discussed some tools for overcoming his weaknesses, which were inserted into his mission statement as a mechanism for improvement, clarity and focus.
The obvious next step to learning more about investment banking—we believed—was to meet with “real” investment bankers. Thankfully, due to my current role at a commercial bank, I interact with many investment bankers on a regular basis. I have discovered that investment bankers, by their very nature, are gifted at building relationships...so leveraging these current relationships made sense, I surmised. Jackson and I discussed these relationships and determined that we would begin our meetings with two professionals: the first currently works at Goldman Sachs and the other began his career with Goldman Sachs but is now managing an investment fund. However, we discussed several more investment bankers we would meet with subsequent to our initial meetings, such as KBW, Piper Sandler, Infinity Capital Partners, Commerce Street, DA Davidson, JP Morgan, and others.
We then discussed questions we would ask each of these professionals, such as: how to obtain an internship, is it worthwhile to attend grad school or law school, advice on the recruiting process, how to make an introduction from a non-target school, what it takes to succeed as an investment banker, what is a desired GPA, advice for interviewing, and more. Ideally, we would have more questions than time allowed with each person.
I concluded the meeting by committing to set up the meetings with each of the professionals previously mentioned. I want to finish this post by sharing a comment that Jackson passed along to me—as the mentor—that I believe will be motivating to any mentors reading this blog. Jackson stated that, “this process has been a huge help so far. It’s so refreshing to get advice from someone with experience rather than someone who read an article online about resume creation.” I share that to encourage our mentors to continue meeting with young professionals. Your live interaction is valuable, and your experiences are worth sharing with the next generation.
Stay tuned to hear about our first meetings with investment bankers....