Top 12 Investment Banking Analyst Skills to Put on Your Resume

In investment banking, attention snaps to the analysts who show they can think sharply, move fast, and build numbers into stories that stand up to scrutiny. A resume stacked with the right skills makes doors swing open. Make it focused. Make it real. Let it signal you can handle the pace, the detail, and the stakes.

Investment Banking Analyst Skills

1. Financial Modeling
2. Excel
3. PowerPoint
4. Bloomberg Terminal
5. Capital IQ
6. Valuation Techniques
7. Mergers & Acquisitions
8. LBO Modeling
9. DCF Analysis
10. PitchBook
11. SQL
12. VBA Programming

1. Financial Modeling

Financial modeling means building a structured, transparent view of a company’s performance and prospects—usually in Excel—so you can value the business, test scenarios, and guide decisions on deals and financing. It turns raw statements and assumptions into a living tool for judgment.

Why It's Important

It anchors valuation, lets you pressure-test strategy, and translates messy reality into numbers people can debate. Deals live or die on the strength of these models.

How to Improve Financial Modeling Skills

1. Own the structure: Separate inputs, calculations, and outputs. Color-code. Label clearly. Consistency beats cleverness.

2. Go deep on accounting: Master revenue recognition, working capital drivers, stock-based comp, leases, and tax nuances. Models wobble when accounting is fuzzy.

3. Build from scratch: Recreate three-statement models using public filings. Add schedules (debt, PPE, equity comp). Then layer DCF, comps, and sensitivity tables.

4. Audit relentlessly: Use error checks, roll-forwards, and balance sheet balancers. Hunt circular references. Stress bad inputs.

5. Scenario and sensitivity: Best/base/worst. Data tables on growth, margins, multiples, and rates. Show the levers and the risk.

6. Speed and hygiene: Keyboard shortcuts, named ranges, clear formatting, version control. Fast and clean wins.

7. Peer review: Get models torn apart. You’ll learn faster than any course.

How to Display Financial Modeling Skills on Your Resume

2. Excel

Excel is the analyst’s workbench. Models, analyses, cleansed data, quick checks, and crisp outputs—all in one place.

Why It's Important

Speed, accuracy, and clarity. If you can move quickly without breaking things, you’ll outpace the pack.

How to Improve Excel Skills

1. Advanced formulas: XLOOKUP, INDEX/MATCH, SUMIFS, OFFSET, dynamic arrays, LET, LAMBDA. Fewer helper columns, more readable logic.

2. Data handling: Power Query for cleaning and reshaping. Power Pivot for large models and measures. PivotTables for instant insight.

3. Shortcuts and navigation: Minimize mouse use. Build muscle memory. Format fast.

4. Error-proofing: Data validation, named ranges, consistent units, and transparent assumptions.

5. Charts that speak: Clean axes, tight labels, sparing color, clear callouts. No chart junk.

6. Automation basics: Record macros for repetitive tasks. Tidy them up later with simple VBA.

How to Display Excel Skills on Your Resume

3. PowerPoint

PowerPoint turns analysis into a story clients can digest. It’s where numbers meet narrative.

Why It's Important

Great decks sell ideas. They frame the decision, highlight the edge, and keep attention where it matters.

How to Improve PowerPoint Skills

1. Start with the story: Executive summary up front. Clear sections. One message per slide. Flow that builds.

2. Design discipline: Consistent fonts, grids, margins, and color. Use master slides. Align everything.

3. Data, simplified: Choose the right chart. Label directly. Show comparisons, trends, and deltas cleanly.

4. Reduce text: Short bullets. Impactful headers. Notes for detail, slides for signal.

5. Visual hierarchy: Bold what matters. De-emphasize the rest. Guide the eye.

6. Pressure test: Present aloud. Trim ruthlessly. Fix pacing. Ask, “Would I buy this?”

How to Display PowerPoint Skills on Your Resume

4. Bloomberg Terminal

Bloomberg delivers market data, news, pricing, and analytics in real time. It’s the market’s pulse—wired to your screen.

Why It's Important

Speed to insight. You can pull comps, scan news, track events, and validate assumptions—without lag.

How to Improve Bloomberg Terminal Skills

1. Build muscle memory: Learn core functions for quotes, financials, news, ownership, and credit. Use keyboard shortcuts often.

2. Launchpad and alerts: Custom monitors, watchlists, and price/news alerts to surface what matters fast.

3. Excel Add-In: Pull time series and point-in-time data into models. Document tickers, fields, and parameters.

4. Dig into analytics: Explore functions for estimates, analyst recommendations, event calendars, and peer screens.

5. Integrate your workflow: Export cleanly, annotate, and keep audit trails. When possible, pipe data into Python or Excel models for repeatable analysis.

How to Display Bloomberg Terminal Skills on Your Resume

5. Capital IQ

Capital IQ aggregates company data, filings, ownership, estimates, and market information with powerful screening and Excel plug-ins.

Why It's Important

It saves time and sharpens accuracy—especially for comps, precedent deals, and recurring data pulls.

How to Improve Capital IQ Skills

1. Screen like a pro: Build precise screens for comps and investors. Save and reuse. Document criteria.

2. Excel Plug-in fluency: Use formula builders for financials, estimates, and identifiers. Parameterize so refreshes don’t break.

3. Audit to source: Trace figures back to filings. Note adjustments. Keep confidence high.

4. Custom tearsheets: Create and standardize snapshots for sectors and clients. Fast to read, faster to update.

5. Watchlists and alerts: Track coverage names, key events, and estimate shifts.

How to Display Capital IQ Skills on Your Resume

6. Valuation Techniques

Valuation blends art and rigor. Core methods include DCF, trading comps, precedent transactions, and LBO analysis—each with assumptions you must defend.

Why It's Important

Everything rolls up to value: fairness, pricing, terms, and strategic choices. Better valuation, better decisions.

How to Improve Valuation Techniques Skills

1. Triangulate: Don’t trust one method. Cross-check DCF with multiples and deals. Reconcile gaps explicitly.

2. Sector nuance: Use the right drivers and metrics by industry (unit economics, subscriber churn, reserves, same-store sales).

3. Quality of assumptions: Tie to market data, historical patterns, and credible scenarios. Document the “why.”

4. Capital costs: Estimate WACC correctly. Reflect leverage, risk, and tax effects. Test a range.

5. Normalize and adjust: Non-recurring items, leases, stock comp, seasonality, FX. Clean inputs mean clean outputs.

6. Backtesting: Compare past models to outcomes. Learn where you were off and fix your biases.

How to Display Valuation Techniques Skills on Your Resume

7. Mergers & Acquisitions

M&A spans strategy, valuation, diligence, negotiation, and integration. Analysts turn chaos into clarity—numbers, risks, synergies, and pathways to close.

Why It's Important

It’s where banks create outsized value: growth, scale, market entry, and shareholder outcomes—compressed into deal timelines.

How to Improve Mergers & Acquisitions Skills

1. Diligence rigor: Financial, legal, tax, commercial, and operational checks. Use structured checklists and track issues to resolution.

2. Valuation under pressure: Triangulate across methods. Sensitize synergies, costs, timing, and financing markets.

3. Deal structuring: Understand cash vs. stock, earnouts, collars, and regulatory constraints. Build SPAs and term sheets with precision.

4. Integration thinking early: Identify owners, timelines, and synergy capture plans before signing.

5. Process management: Data rooms, Q&A cadences, stakeholder updates, and clean workstreams. Momentum matters.

6. Negotiation prep: Define must-haves, guardrails, and trades. Anticipate the other side’s pressure points.

How to Display Mergers & Acquisitions Skills on Your Resume

8. LBO Modeling

LBO models test whether a sponsor can buy with debt, run the business, and exit with attractive returns—without the wheels coming off.

Why It's Important

It forces discipline on cash flow, leverage, covenants, and exit math. No hand-waving, just mechanics and risk.

How to Improve LBO Modeling Skills

1. Sources & uses first: Get purchase price, fees, rollover, and financing right. The cap table depends on it.

2. Debt engine: Model tranches, rates, amortization, PIK, revolver draw/sweep, and mandatory prepayments. Covenants too.

3. Operating realism: Tie growth, margins, and capex to industry context. Add working capital seasonality.

4. Returns bridge: Build entry-to-exit value drivers: deleveraging, multiple change, EBITDA growth. Show contribution clearly.

5. Sensitivity grid: IRR and MOIC across entry/exit multiples, margins, and leverage. Quick read, hard truths.

6. Add-ons and timing: Model tuck-ins, refinancing, and exit windows. Optionality matters.

How to Display LBO Modeling Skills on Your Resume

9. DCF Analysis

DCF values a business by forecasting free cash flows and discounting them to today. It’s intrinsic valuation—the long view, quantified.

Why It's Important

It isolates the economics of the business, independent of current market mood. Useful for decisions that stretch beyond a quarter or two.

How to Improve DCF Analysis Skills

1. Define FCF precisely: Start from EBIT(1–t) or cash from ops; handle leases, stock comp, and working capital with care.

2. Terminal value sanity: Use both Gordon growth and exit multiple. Cross-check with sector history and capacity for reinvestment.

3. Discount rate discipline: Estimate WACC with grounded inputs (beta, capital structure, country/size premia). Show ranges, not false precision.

4. Timing conventions: Consider mid-year discounting when cash flows are earned through the period.

5. Scenario design: Build coherent best/base/worst cases with drivers that actually move.

6. Sensitivity analysis: Data tables on growth, margins, capex, and WACC. Highlight which levers dominate value.

7. Reconcile to market: Explain the gap between intrinsic value and trading levels. Narrative matters.

How to Display DCF Analysis Skills on Your Resume

10. PitchBook

PitchBook tracks private and public company data, investors, deals, and trends—especially strong in private markets and venture activity.

Why It's Important

Deal sourcing, market mapping, comparable transactions, and investor targeting become faster and sharper.

How to Improve PitchBook Skills

1. Search mastery: Use precise filters for sector, stage, geography, and deal terms. Save searches and dashboards.

2. Comparable deal sets: Build clean comps with structured criteria. Export consistently and annotate adjustments.

3. Investor intelligence: Map investors by thesis, dry powder, check size, and portfolio fit. Track intros and outcomes.

4. Custom fields and tags: Standardize taxonomies so your team finds what you found—fast.

5. Alerts and monitoring: Follow companies, sectors, and investors. Be first to know, first to call.

How to Display PitchBook Skills on Your Resume

11. SQL

SQL pulls, shapes, and interrogates data in relational databases. When spreadsheets choke, SQL still glides.

Why It's Important

It unlocks speed and scale: larger datasets, reproducible queries, cleaner pipelines into your models and dashboards.

How to Improve SQL Skills

1. Query fluency: Joins, subqueries, CTEs, unions, window functions. Write for clarity first, performance second.

2. Performance basics: Understand indexing, query plans, and predicates that snipe or scan. Trim what you select.

3. Data hygiene: Handle dates, time zones, nulls, and numeric precision carefully. Validate before analysis.

4. Analytics patterns: Cohorts, rankings, rolling metrics, and de-duplication using window functions.

5. Toolchain integration: Connect queries to Excel, Python, or BI tools. Automate refreshes.

6. Real datasets: Practice on messy, multi-table data. Document assumptions and checks.

How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume

12. VBA Programming

VBA automates the grunt work in Excel and stitches complex workflows into one click. Quiet, powerful leverage.

Why It's Important

It eliminates repetitive tasks, reduces errors, and frees time for analysis. The right macro can save hours every week.

How to Improve VBA Programming Skills

1. Foundations first: Variables, loops, conditionals, and functions. Tight, readable code wins.

2. Excel Object Model: Ranges, sheets, workbooks, charts, and events. Know what you’re controlling.

3. Error handling and debugging: Structured handlers, breakpoints, and watches. Fail gracefully, fix quickly.

4. Modular design: Procedures that do one thing well. Reuse them. Document intent and inputs.

5. Data performance: Work with arrays, dictionaries, and screen updating off. Batch operations, not cell-by-cell edits.

6. Practical projects: Automate a model refresh, build a report generator, or create a comp fetcher. Ship tools your team actually uses.

How to Display VBA Programming Skills on Your Resume