How to Build a Deal Sheet for IB and PE Recruiting

A deal sheet is a one-pager of transactions you worked on. It is common in banking recruiting for PE and in lateral IB moves. Inflated ownership claims get punished in interviews. Clear metrics and honest role language win. Think of it as evidence, not marketing copy.

The short answer

"A deal sheet lists live deals with company description, enterprise value or size, your role in plain language, and 2 to 3 bullets on what you actually did. I keep confidential items high-level. I practice a 90-second talk track per deal that matches the sheet."

What to include per deal

Keep formatting boring and readable. Fancy graphics do not help. Consistent columns do. If size is confidential, use a band ("mid-market industrial, EV mid-hundreds") rather than inventing a number.

Bullet quality

Weak: "Worked on the deal."
Strong: "Built the 3-statement and operating cases used in the CIM financial section."
Strong: "Owned the comps and football field updates through management presentations."
Strong: "Built the debt schedule and returns cases for lender materials under associate review."

Each bullet should name a deliverable or workstream a PE associate would recognize. Avoid soft verbs like "helped with" unless you immediately name the artifact.

Confidentiality

• Use anonymized descriptions when required ("Project Falcon, Midwestern manufacturer")
• Follow your group's rules
• Never disclose MNPI in recruiting conversations
• Do not paste CIM exhibits or client names into a public Dropbox link

If your bank has a standard deal sheet format, use it. Recruiters and PE associates have seen thousands of them. Novelty is not the goal. Clarity is.

Talk track structure

Practice until the talk track and the sheet use the same verbs. If the sheet says you built the LBO and you cannot walk sources and uses cold, fix the sheet.

Undergrads without closed deals

Use:

• Intensive case projects
• Club deals / training deals labeled honestly
• Public deal studies with "personal analysis, not billeted"
• Course LBO / merger models with clear labels

Do not invent staffing. Interviewers would rather hear a clean training deal than a fake closed mandate. Label status explicitly: "academic case," "club sell-side exercise," or "personal public-comp study."

PE readers care about

1. Modeling complexity (three-statement, debt, returns, not only formatting)
2. Whether you touched debt / returns / working capital
3. Whether you can discuss judgment, not only slide production
4. Whether your role language matches analyst reality

Banking readers for lateral IB care about process ownership, client exposure, and whether you can staff cleanly. Adjust emphasis by audience, not invent different deals.

Layout tips that reduce risk

Put your strongest, most discussable deal first. Cap the sheet at roughly 4 to 6 deals unless you are very senior. Thin bullets on eight deals look worse than three deep ones. Include dates or years so chronology is obvious. Separate closed vs live carefully; some shops hate "live" on recruiting materials.

Common fail modes

1. Claiming you "ran the process" as a first-year
2. Listing every pitch you touched for one hour
3. Putting client confidential names on a public PDF
4. Metrics that change every time you tell the story
5. No judgment line, only formatting chores

How to practice

Pick your top three deals. For each, write the sheet bullets, then record a 90-second answer. Have a friend ask two follow-ups: "What was hard?" and "What would you do differently?" If you freeze, narrow the bullet until it matches what you can defend.

Analyst vs associate framing

As an analyst, emphasize models, materials ownership, and process support. As an associate or lateral, emphasize workstream ownership, junior management, and client contact you can prove. Same deal can support both frames if the verbs stay honest.

If PE asks "what would you diligence differently now?", give one concrete answer: customer calls, quality of earnings on addbacks, or a working capital peg fight. That follow-up is often more important than the sheet itself.

Metric hygiene

Only put numbers you can defend: EV, proceeds, EBITDA, leverage, or IRR ranges that appeared in materials you touched. If you cannot remember whether EBITDA was $42m or $48m, drop the exact figure and keep the workstream bullet. Wrong precision is worse than no precision.

Related

Tell Me About a Deal for the verbal, and PE Case Studies if they pivot to a live case. For group-specific framing, pair with Why This Coverage Group?.