Problem-solving skills as an analyst?
I have often heard people say you need problem-solving skills as an analyst. Does anyone have specific examples of this on the job?
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Well, our firm's controller and I are trying to crack down on who keeps leaving a huge shit in the most-left stall of the bathroom. This is maybe in its 5th month of research. We have a few candidates on who it could be.
We've done our research to the point that we can determine when the frequency of said shits will increase but still can't pinpoint who it could be, but we have a few good ideas. I forgot the full acronym, but we had an acronym that we used to measure key pieces of the puzzle. Some of the gauges (in no particular order) were S, C, F, and D: Stress levels in the office, Consistency of the poop, Frequency of bathroom visits, and Diet patterns among suspects - when matched with candidates, it narrows down the suspect pool. Sometimes you have to solve for X. We'd measure these over time in an Excel sheet and pick up on patterns. Unfortunately, the primary culprit we believe the phantom shitter to be was frequently shitting before either of us got to the office in the morning, so we couldn't observe their trek to the bathroom and couldn't clock the time spent in the bathroom (yes, we tracked that too). That would leave us with inconclusive evidence (assumed innocent until proven guilty). And every once in awhile, there would be shits during times where our top 3-4 culprits weren't around the office, which would throw off the whole research.
So, while this isn't a closed case, our research efforts have greatly improved the suspect line up. The remaining loophole is whether we have more than one shitter. At the end of the day, we could probably solve the problem by asking everyone at company meetings to flush twice, but that just seems like a huge waste of company time and resources, now doesn't it? The research will continue.
As summer is starting and people begin to take vacation, I would suggest forcing everyone to stagger their vacations so you can isolate the shitter. Unless, as you've said, there's a second shitter. Or it's an inside job and your controller is playing you.
As summer is starting and people begin to take vacation, I would suggest forcing everyone to stagger their vacations so you can isolate the shitter. Unless, as you've said, there's a second shitter. Or it's an inside job and your controller is playing you.
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I would guess we have a second culprit. We all know the age old mantra "Correlation does not equal causation", but it seems unlikely that after significant research, the top 3-4 suspects are completely innocent given the timing of the new evidence. There is most likely a team, as little as two people but it could be a half dozen for all we know, purposefully pinching logs off at erratic times to throw off the investigation.
My God. I didn't even think of that. The controller is the only one in the office overnight usually (his preferred time to get shit done [not literally..at least I don't think]). It's funny because he approached me about it several months ago, which it wasn't me of course, but I was glad he did because I had noticed the increasing trend as well. I'll confront him and give an update.
I would expand this to critical thinking skills. Some basic examples:
-Your MD gives you pitch edits to turn, but after making the edits, you notice the formatting looks bad, so you create two versions of the slide one with exactly what the MD wanted and one with what you think looks better and let the MD choose.
-A VP in your group asks you to pull the latest 10-k, 10-q, and any equity research from the past year for Company ABC and create a PIB. While pulling equity research, you notice an initiating coverage report from 14 months ago that has a lot of good industry information in it. Although that falls outside the past year timeframe given by the VP, you include it anyway because of the breadth of information it contains.
-You are going through due diligence and ask a client to send over June 2016 financials to upload to the data room. You receive the file and notice that the June 2015 net income in the YoY comparison varies slightly from previously-provided financials. You point this out to an associate.
lol
REF errors at 2am
There is nothing worse than when you #REF out your model by accident late night
This is the #1 motive for suicide amongst investment bankers.
why you build a circuit breaker
REF errors are why the windows in skyscrapers don't open.
in trading, usually...this just means being an excel expert, and being able to respond to any question with "i can build that in excel...gimme a couple hours" and also, responding to any research related question with "let me ask around and see what i can find" and then you quickly scour google to get a basic understanding if you have no idea what the guy is talking about, then talk to people in research / quant groups and see if anybody has any ideas on the best approach for a quick and dirty solution that solves the immediate problem...or if it has already been solved. Knowing what data the firm has in its internal databases, and how best to access that data, as well as how to get streaming realtime data from a variety of sources into excel.
This is essentially a description of an analysts daily MO on a trading / sales desk.
Say you get asked to create a one page profile on a company; it'll be your job to gather all the information you can find and decide what works best on the page / what information will be most relevant to the overall book.
Basically, any tasks outside of doing exactly what you are told to do. These are the opportunities, especially as a first year/summer analyst, to show that you can maybe add some value and will hopefully lead to them giving you more responsibility than formatting the deck / updating comp sets.
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