An1 keep making mistakes

Hit the desk a month ago, feel like I keep making dumbass mistakes. Seems like I’m making more than other first years. Worried this is going to mark me going forward. Group seems relatively understanding but who knows whats actually going on. Feedback has been generally fine, but lots of attention to detail commentary, noticing some off to the side remarks.

Is this normal. Do I have a grace period, or am i in the process of fucking myself over.

What are the signs that things are going south - trying to read the writing in the wall here.

9 Comments
 

You’re fine but starting printing out your work. Your grace periods ends after month 2 or 3.

 
Most Helpful

Keep your chin up - its early in the game. Everyone ahead of you has made plenty of mistakes so don't dwell and get in the negative wash cycle. 

Take good notes when you get comments, build yourself a checklist to avoid making the same mistake repeatedly. Also, agree with anyone saying print things out - its annoying, but it works and soon enough you won't need the extra check

Ignore the side banter (if its unproductive or petty), plenty of weird personalities that get their rocks off by acting like they've never made a formatting error. Focus on the long game, build it up day by day and when you hit a full year on the desk, look back and soak in how far you've come. 

We've all been there and plenty before you have made worse mistakes and come out just fine with some elbow grease and time

Lastly, your attitude matters most in the first ~6mo. Don't let this stuff get you down, just an opportunity to get better

 
[Comment removed by mod team]
 

Attention to detail mistakes are expected. Out of a first year analyst. The problem is when they keep happening over and over and over again. What are you really need to do is slow down. Slow down. Look at everything over and over again get your associate to review your work, make sure that everything is up to a standard your new so it’s OK, and overtime you’ll be a lot better.

 

Attention to detail mistakes are expected. Out of a first year analyst. The problem is when they keep happening over and over and over again. What you really need to do is slow down. Slow down. Look at everything over and over again get your associate to review your work, make sure that everything is up to a standard they’ll want to help you because you’re new so it’s OK, and overtime you’ll be a lot better.

 

Associate catches mistake and some mistakes are definitely expected but the issue when you cannot to anything right and every single thing you send has mistakes and severe delays is that the Asso lose trust in you. Only happened to me 2-3 times but in those case I would:

- In the first instance, give the benefit of the doubt and ask the analyst to dedicate 100% capacity on my project, and put aggressive deadlines and chase hard so we actually have time to fix the analyst mistakes 

- If that doesn’t work or is too time consuming, do most of the analyst work myself (when you see your associate doing that, it’s definitely not a good sign)

- Restaff or add another analyst to the team who I would give most of the relevant work to 

That said you have a couple of months before people actually hold your performance against you. I would say that after Christmas of your first year though people start being less tolerant

 

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