PJT Partners Investment Banking Summer Analyst Interview Guide

PJT Partners is an advisory-focused investment bank, and its investment banking summer analyst interviewers ask about distressed capital structures whether you applied to M&A or restructuring. Expect a technical question first and little time on behavioral ones, so prepare accounting, valuation, and the merger and LBO math until you can talk through the numbers out loud. You choose one PJT business when you apply, and that choice determines which loop you'll interview through.

This guide breaks down each stage of the IB summer analyst interview process, what PJT Partners interviewers look for, and how to prepare with real example questions, actionable tips, and resources.

PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview process

The PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview process runs as a separate application for each PJT business, and the loop that follows is short: an assessment, one or 2 interviews with junior bankers, and a Superday. You choose the business at the application stage, so you're committed even before your first interview.

Here's an example of what the interview process can look like:

Application and Suited Assessment: Resume, any written response the business requires, and a required AI psychometric assessment
First-round interview: 30-45 minutes over video with an analyst or associate, technical from the opening question
Second interview, in some loops: Another analyst or associate conversation mixing behavioral and technical questions
Superday: 4 to 5 back-to-back interviews of roughly 30 minutes in a PJT office, with analysts through partners

PJT Partners IB summer analyst recruiting timeline

PJT Partners runs US summer analyst recruiting on a rolling basis with no application deadline, and Restructuring & Special Situations interviews weeks before Strategic Advisory. Apply in the first week a posting goes live, because the class fills while applications stay open.

PJT describes its US applications as opening in the spring of the year before the internship. Recent cycles have run months earlier, with postings live in November for the 2026 program and in January for the 2027 program.

Key application dates

Applications open, US: November through January of the year before the internship in recent cycles
Applications open, Europe and Asia: September, closing in October
Application deadline, US: None published
Recruiting policy: Rolling review, with seats filling before postings come down
RSSG first rounds: Early January for the 2027 program, 3-6 weeks ahead of Strategic Advisory
Strategic Advisory first rounds: Late January into February for the 2027 program
Superdays and offers: Rolling through winter and spring, scheduled separately by business

Typical response times

Application to Suited Assessment prompt: Immediate, since PJT treats an application without it as incomplete
Suited completion to first-round invitation: A few days to 2 weeks
First-round invitation to interview: A few days to one week
First round to Superday invitation: Same day to one week, fastest in RSSG
Superday invitation to Superday: Several days to 2 weeks
Superday to offer: Same day to a few days
Application to offer: Roughly 9 days on average

The 9-day average reflects the fastest loops, where a first round, a Superday, and an offer all arrive inside 2 weeks.

Application and Suited Assessment

The PJT Partners investment banking summer analyst application has 2 parts: the documents you submit and a required AI assessment called Suited. PJT begins its review once you've completed both.

You apply through PJT's careers portal to a single business posting, and PJT asks for your documents in PDF format. Check your posting for a written prompt before you submit, because PJT's London applications have asked for a short written response alongside the resume, including a few sentences on someone who inspires you.

Recruiters and bankers evaluate applications together and decide who advances to a first round. Build relationships through coffee chats and PJT campus events as well, since a first-round invitation can follow a conversation by a few days.

Suited is an AI-powered psychometric test measuring workplace traits, values, and stress response, plus a section on problem-solving and cognitive reasoning. It builds one candidate profile and shares it with every firm in its network, so other banks using the platform see the same assessment results.

Assessments are calibrated to investment banking recruiting, and Houlihan Lokey, Moelis, and William Blair screen candidates through the same platform.

The psychometric section takes roughly 20 minutes, uses Likert-scale and forced-choice items, and isn't timed. You don't have to finish it in one sitting.

Suited times the cognitive section at 15 minutes, testing attention to detail, logical reasoning, and pattern recognition. The full assessment takes about 35 minutes, and you get one attempt at it.

PJT describes the Suited results as one input among several in its review, and the assessment doesn't override your resume, your interviews, or your networking.

PJT evaluates:

Academic record: Whether your coursework and results compete with a strong applicant pool
Demonstrated curiosity: Evidence you've expanded your industry knowledge through classes, extracurriculars, or prior experience
Workplace traits: Suited data across more than 50 measured traits, including problem-solving, collaboration, effort, responsibility, ambition, and independence
Values and stress response: How you prioritize across 10 measured values and which coping style you default to under pressure
Cultural alignment: Whether your motivations match a small-team, high-accountability advisory model

First-round interview

The PJT Partners IB summer analyst first round is a 30-45 minute conversation with an analyst or associate that opens on technical questions. Interviewers spend most of the time on accounting, valuation, and merger and LBO mechanics, and they push into applied questions like building a merger model. Some ask behavioral questions a few minutes at the start, and some skip them.

In London and across EMEA, a recruiter screen covering competencies and commercial awareness often comes before the analyst conversation. Some first rounds shift into exercise format, where you build a simple DCF or work through debt ratios while the interviewer watches.

Interviewers look for:

Accounting mechanics: Whether you can walk a change through all 3 financial statements and get the arithmetic right
Valuation judgment: Your ability to defend a methodology choice and explain what drives a multiple
Capital structure fluency: How you reason about debt capacity, leverage, and creditor priority
Commercial awareness: Whether you can discuss a live deal or distressed situation in specifics
Composure under follow-ups: How you hold a position when an interviewer presses on your first answer

Recently asked questions

Here are some real interview questions reported by candidates:

Walk me through your resume, and tell me about yourself.
Why investment banking, and why PJT Partners?
Pick a company you follow, walk me through it, then walk me through its 3 financial statements.
How does an increase in depreciation affect the 3 financial statements?
Which valuation methodology do you think is most reliable, and why?
If 2 companies have the same EV/EBITDA but different P/E, why might that be?
How would you value a growth-stage B2B software company, and how would you advise it on financing?
Walk me through a merger model, and calculate the exchange ratio.
What are common signs a company is heading toward distress?
How does debt get used in a transaction, and what happens to debt ratios?

PJT Partners Superday

The PJT Partners IB summer analyst Superday is a set of back-to-back interviews of roughly 30 minutes each, held in a PJT office. Superdays commonly include 4 to 5 interviews, occasionally 6, and interviewers include analysts, VPs, MDs, and partners.

Some Superdays split evenly between behavioral and technical interviews, and Strategic Advisory days often add a markets round and a case study. RSSG tests the same ground through exercises inside the interviews, working through waterfalls and simple models out loud.

PJT varies the composition by business and by cycle, so prepare a technical answer and a motivation answer for every interviewer.

London replaces the Superday with an assessment center, pairing a modeling case with competency and technical interviews. Prepare to build something on paper if you're interviewing there.

Senior interviewers focus more on fit and motivation, and they'll ask "why PJT Partners" more than once across the day. Your answer needs to name the business you applied to and what its work involves.

Interviewers look for:

Consistency across interviewers: Whether your motivation and your story match each time a new person asks the same question
Technical range: Your ability to move between accounting, valuation, and capital structure topics in a single conversation
Market fluency: How you discuss a recent transaction and what made it complex
Fit with a small-team model: Whether you'd contribute on a small deal team with direct senior exposure
Response to pushback: How you handle a partner disagreeing with your answer

Sample questions

Here are questions reported from PJT Partners Superdays:

Why PJT Partners, and why this business?
Walk me through a recent transaction you've followed and what made it complex.
A company is in distress. Walk me through its options.
How would you value a company, and what changes if inflation stays higher?
Why might 2 companies with the same EBITDA trade at 5x and 10x?
Tell me about a time you managed a tough deadline and managed expectations.
What's one thing you wish had gone differently today?

How to prepare for the PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview

Practice defining restructuring terms: Be ready to define Chapter 11 vs. Chapter 7, a cram down, the plan of reorganization, DIP financing, the absolute priority rule, and a 363 sale. PJT asks for these terms by name, so give a one-sentence definition first and explain the mechanics after.
Practice finding the fulcrum security: Start with a capital structure and an enterprise value, then name the tranche where value breaks. Say what the holders above and below it recover, because the follow-up asks who ends up owning the company.
Do the capital structure math out loud: Work out how much cash a company can reach, counting what's in the bank and what's left to draw on its revolver. Say every step as you go, because the interviewer is following your reasoning and your arithmetic at the same time.
Pick one tax rate and one order of operations: Choose a rate you can apply instantly, then walk through the net income effect, the closing cash figure, and the balance sheet change in the same order every time. Interviewers check the arithmetic, so give them the figures at every step.
Prepare one distressed company you can talk about: Name the parties, why the capital structure broke, which creditors matter, and how you expect it to end. PJT worked on STG Logistics, Marelli, and Spirit Airlines through their Chapter 11 restructurings, so pick something close to the work PJT does.
Have a market view you can defend: Be ready to explain why restructuring work continues outside recessions, covering higher rates and companies fixing their debt before they default. Paul Taubman has also pointed to AI disruption driving take-privates and mergers, which gives you a second topic for a markets interview.
Read PJT's investor presentation before you answer "why PJT Partners": PJT's own recruiting materials point candidates to it, so use it to say what kind of work each business does. All 3 businesses set revenue records in the first half of 2026, and Strategic Advisory won more than 20% more assignments than it did a year earlier.
Answer "why investment banking" through the business you applied to: PJT only advises clients; it doesn't lend them money or underwrite their deals, so build your answer around the advice itself. Name a type of deal that business works on, since every Superday interviewer asks you the same question.
Prepare the personal follow-ups behind your resume: PJT interviewers ask about interests and coursework from your CV, including how you follow the news and what you took from something you read or listened to recently. Prepare a specific answer for every item you list on your resume.
Practice with mock interviews: Run a 45-minute technical block that skips behavioral questions entirely, matching how PJT first rounds open. Add a second session where someone asks your motivation questions 4 times over, since a Superday repeats them with every interviewer.

About the PJT Partners IB summer analyst role

The PJT Partners investment banking summer analyst program is a 10-week internship that opens with an accelerated training program. Strategic Advisory interns start with accelerated M&A training, and additional modules continue through the rest of the internship.

PJT Partners IB summer analysts typically work on:

Live transactions: Multiple assignments at once, alongside senior bankers on the deal team
Pitch preparation: Materials for active mandates and prospective clients
Company and capital structure analysis: Research supporting deal teams across the business you joined

PJT runs its summer analyst programs as generalist programs and doesn't place interns into sub-groups within a business. You'll work across whatever deals your business is running, so you don't pick a sector or product focus before you start.

PJT Partners IB summer analyst experience requirements

PJT Partners recruits students who have one academic year of school left after the internship ends, and Europe also accepts recent graduates. Applications can open more than a year ahead, so you may apply as a sophomore for a program you'd join as a rising senior.

Application review favors well-rounded candidates with strong academic backgrounds who've made an effort to expand their industry knowledge.

Class size varies by track, and PJT doesn't set a fixed number of hires. Every summer analyst is eligible for a full-time offer based on internship performance, and PJT fills most of its full-time analyst class from its intern programs.

Additional resources

FAQs about the PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview

Is the PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview technical?

The PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview is technical from the first round, and 30-45 minute first rounds in New York and London include almost no behavioral content. Expect accounting, valuation, M&A mechanics, and distressed capital structure questions whichever business you applied to. Behavioral content increases at the Superday, where senior interviewers focus on fit and motivation.

Does PJT Partners require an online assessment?

PJT Partners requires the Suited Assessment, an AI-powered psychometric and cognitive reasoning test, and an application isn't considered complete without it. The psychometric section takes roughly 20 minutes and isn't timed, and you can't retake it. Every PJT interview is live, and the loop skips the recorded HireVue-style video round that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan run for summer analysts.

Does PJT Partners recruit separately for restructuring?

PJT Partners posts its Restructuring & Special Situations summer analyst role separately from Strategic Advisory, and you apply to one business. RSSG invitations go out earliest on a rolling basis, and the process is staffed entirely by full-time restructuring bankers. The technical bar in RSSG is the highest at the firm, with questions extending into bankruptcy terminology and credit documents.

Does the PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview include a case study?

The PJT Partners IB summer analyst interview includes a case study in some Strategic Advisory Superdays and skips it in others. RSSG loops test the same skills through exercises inside the interviews, so you work through a waterfall or a simple model while the interviewer follows your reasoning. Prepare to scope an open-ended prompt and defend your assumptions, without building your whole prep around a case.

How much does a PJT Partners investment banking summer analyst make?

PJT Partners investment banking summer analysts earn a pro-rated first-year analyst base salary, and PJT doesn't publish intern pay. Annualized figures for New York summer analysts run from $111K to $128K, according to self-reported salary data.

PJT's 2026 federal H-1B filings put its first-year analyst base at $120,000, which works out to roughly $2,300 per week. A 10-week program at that rate comes to about $23,000 before tax.

PJT doesn't advertise a housing or relocation stipend for the summer analyst program, so treat the base rate as the whole package when you compare offers.