A step-by-step guide on making a critical career move to land the Wall Street job of your dreams

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Investment banking interns are just over halfway through their stints on Wall Street, and it's time to start thinking about the next step.

Many interns will receive full-time offers in the coming weeks, which can be a make-or-break moment in your career.

If you want to leverage a full-time offer at your current firm into a job at another bank, you need to be super prepared.

Fortunately, a former banker at a bulge-bracket firm has laid out how to do that, step-by-step. He managed to turn an internship at a middle-market bank into a full-time offer at one of the top firms on Wall Street.

Here's what he had to say:

1. Get the offer

First you have to get the offer at your current firm, regardless of whether it's the firm you want to end up with. Not getting the offer after your junior-year internship is basically a death sentence for recruiting in investment banking, the former analyst said.

So make the most of the internship while you're there — work hard and prove yourself.

2. Take notes on your experience

In investment banking, typically your internship will go one of two ways: You'll be working on a deal that gets announced, or you'll be working on a deal that doesn't get announced. Either way, you want to know the ins and outs of that deal so that you can frame your experience in a job interview.

"Go through the press release and investor presentation and make sure you understand every single metric that's been disclosed publicly and the deal rationale so that you can speak intelligently about the deal," the former banker said.

If your deal isn't announced by the time you take interviews elsewhere, you'll have to describe what you did without disclosing any confidential details. Think about the strategic rationale for the deal and plan for how you can talk about it without naming it.

Consider the deal as a study guide for your interviews, the former banker said, because that's what the recruiters will want to hear about.

3. Have a clear plan for when you get the offer

If you receive a full-time offer from the place where you're interning, it will likely happen in one of three scenarios. In the first scenario, a group head, staffer, or human resources person will sit you down during your last week and give you the offer without a lot of pressure, telling you to think about it and get back to them.

Alternatively, you might have that meeting — but with a lot of pressure. They may try to get you to sign a contract on the spot, and if you do that, you won't be able to shop around afterward without burning bridges.

A third option is you might get the call with a job offer a few days after you've finished your internship. In that scenario — over the phone — it's a little easier to say "let me think about it."

Regardless of how you get the offer, you don't want to be caught off guard. If you're planning to use the offer for leverage elsewhere, be ready to negotiate some time to think before giving them your answer.