Hey guys, i’m a few months into my IB analyst gig and have really struggled with attention to detail and organization. I’ve made a lot of small mistakes that are sloppy. I really struggle with doing things as fast as I can but then having multiple errors that must be corrected. I’m curious if anyone has any techniques for reviewing work, staying organized and being efficient.
Any advice would be helpful.
Print out decks; inspect documents in excel, ppt, and word for comments, external links, etc.; get up and walk around for 1 minute to review your deliverable for a third time to get a fresh set of eyes on your work; if you're leveraging old decks/documents, CTRL + F search the old company name and other old references to make sure the doc is cleaned up, insert many checks into your models (not just a net income or balance sheet check, I usually do checks for each major category (current assets, current liabilities, etc.) to make sure I'm copying client financials in correctly. Those are a few that I do, but I'm sure there are many more out there
Thanks for the response. My firm doesn’t reimburse for printing so I haven’t been able to take advantage of that. Would you say PDFing and then reviewing is my next best option?
See if you can use an iPad
Yeah, that works, or print preview. Just something other than editing view because you tend to miss things
Export to PDF in "final" format. Seeing decks or memos outside of PPT or Word can be helpful given the inability to make edits easily (excluding access to adobe pro but that's kind of a process). When you're reading your work as a check make sure you keep in mind the point you're trying to get across and make sure that each bullet, sentence or paragraph is relevant to that point rather than being a fluff or useless statement. This is obviously subjective but more often than not, this way of checking has helped me deliver more eloquent work.
What kind of cheap ass firm doesn't pay for printing?
If your firm isn't paying for printing... Find a new job. Same recs as Mr Toni but there is nothing that replaces looking at a piece of paper IMO. What's worth more, paying a few bucks for printing or not getting an offer? I struggled for a long time with attention to detail as well. The biggest thing I realized that I wasn't doing when I struggled with ATD: giving a shit. In excel, create as many checks as you can to source material and to your calcs.
Aderall
Underrated response.
Helps me to email it to myself as if I'm emailing the recipient (Or at least type it out and review the attachment). Definitely a bit weird but effectively helps me switch my brain to a reviewer's perspective. Think of yourself as your asshole nitpicking associate. To each their own but it works for me.
I used to email myself too. Very helpful way in seeing the “break” in work done.
Someone else mentioned taking a 1 minute break as well. I can’t stress how helpful that was to me. To switch gears I’d go down the building to our lobby and grab a decaf americano and then start reviewing with fresh eyes. Having little routines like that helps.
While you're doing the work, spot check any data pulls and formulas with actual sources. Once you're done, go for a quick walk or coffee break then come back and see if what you have makes sense then send.
From my experience, people are fine with it if you're a little slow but have no mistakes. Once you stop making as many mistakes, you can worry more about speed.
I typically ask my analysts to give it a quick flip/read through before sending up for review. We try to turn it in parallel.
Really appreciate all these tips, definitely will try them out to see what works best with my work style.
Beside all the helpful tips others already mentioned, I find it helpful to summarize the “story” when I’m “done” for the first round- similar to a smell test. It doesn’t help identifying the errors directly, but if the numbers look off, something is probably off. I usually find a few stupid errors e.g. not locking my rows/columns through this method.
Even if your firm doesn't pay for printing, still worth it IMO. We spend 10+hrs/day staring at screens so doesn't hurt to switch it up and get a different perspective
Spot checking is very underrated. Pick random spots in your data and walk all the way through that one point to make sure it makes sense. Cross reference your deal sizes and market caps, etc with outside data sources to see if they match
edit: also, read your prose to yourself out loud, actually speaking it. If you read silently your mind is subconsciously skipping over words because you already know what the sentence says, because you wrote it. Speaking it out loud forces your brain to actually read what is there vs anticipating and filling in gaps with how you're saying things in your head, if that makes sense.
How about when you’re tired AF? At 2am I miss very glaring errors
smelling salts, brah
Would be lying if I said I've never hit myself in the face. Smellies could be a chemical alternative 😂
Two indirect answers:
1) Do your work correctly the first time. I always have to fight the urge to crank through work as fast as possible "thinking I'll come back and catch any mistakes I'm making". Prevention is better than the cure. It's less popular politically (your bosses think you're slower), but I promise you'll save time in the long run.
2) As commented above, put tons of checks in your model, or even in the margins of the deck. When your associates / VP's see these, they're less likely to dig in and find mistakes because they think (whether or not they're right..) that you have already checked everything. It's a virtuous cycle -- overdoing it on the checks makes the people above you dig less and find fewer errors. Then they trust you, and dig in even less in the future.
Take what this guy is saying to heart.
I can't emphasize #1 enough. There's no guarantee that you'll actually have time to "look it over" one more time before sending it out. Even when you do, you're likely to be too tired to actually catch anything. Don't fuck your future self over by taking a shortcut the first time around.
Another useful tip is to add some sort of a marker to the section of your work that you're not confident in. Some people prefer to write down notes, but my experience is that adding something like ** or @@ and doing ctrl+f to get back to them is way easier and seamless. This is especially useful when you're trying to ask your boss a question. Having this in place will get you to exactly where you need to be vs. you fumbling around like a buffoon b/c you're nervous in front of him/her.
A bonus for when you build some experience with your current VP or MD: know where your boss likes to look at when they're checking your work. My previous boss was fucking obsessed with the debt on the BS and how it feeds into the interest payments in the IS. I made sure to check these two sections several times during my model update to guarantee their accuracy.
One last piece of advice would be to keep a checklist. I had a checklist of everything I needed to do when updating a model or a deck. I would add to it whenever I made a mistake in order to make sure that I don't make that same exact mistake ever again. I can bet you a thousand dollars that if you follow this system and don't take shortcuts with it, you'll be in the 75th percentile at the very least.
Checklists are a great way to avoid behavioral psychology slipups. It's very easy to assume and convince yourself that you double checked something or that you've done it right, forcing yourself down a checklist (that you've presumably created beforehand with clear eyes) really lets the subjective part of your judgement take a back seat.
"My firm doesn't reimburse for printing so I haven't been able to take advantage of that. Would you say PDFing and then reviewing is my next best option?"
C'mon man. With your job on the line, not printing in your home office is surely a false economy. Printers are practically free (Canon PIXMA MG2525, $39.99 at Best Buy). Paper is $3.50 a ream at Office Depot. You can print 500 sheets a day for the price of a Starbucks Latte Grande. A professional is someone who doesn't make excuses and produces top quality work at all times, whatever the circumstances.
I do agree that it is somewhat of a cop out, but ink would be the big cost associated with printing many pages a day not paper. I guess i’m looking for alternatives to printing which have been provided by many.
lmao this is among the most boomer tier things I've ever read on this website
Printing is expensive af. Get an iPad and use that. Not as good but will help
It is all about the process, the minority are people who are just good enough to do it on the fly and turn stuff around without mistakes. Most people I've seen have a religious process of reviewing documents. They find what tools work for them, highlighters, stickers, notes, peer reviews, etc., and never deviate.
Above and beyond organizational best practices already mentioned in the thread. One thing that has helped me significantly, is developing a level of communication with my fellow team members (VPs, Associates, Analysts, etc.) that allow me to send them documents ahead of deadlines for a "penultimate review." It helps iron out any wrinkles before it gets to a stage where important people are looking at it, and sanity check the direction of the presentation or model.
not sure how much this helps but Grammarly for automatic spell checks
A very underrated tip that I got from reading the Checklist Manifesto is to make a check-list that you go through for each IM. If I have the time, I will go through each slide and physically check it off from the list I print out from Excel. If I'm a bit more pushed for time, I will flip through the pages and check the following:
I check the title, headings, and alignment first because they are usually the quickest to spot and fix. The last three are more important but also more time-consuming and exhausting to start on, so I like to take the easy things first.
This is fantastic advice. I will be making a checklist that works best for my different deliverable categories. I do really appreciate everyone’s advice though
This is very helpful and cuts out a lot of mistakes. Similarly, as you make other mistakes which may not have been caught by following the above, add that mistake as a new check requirement. Over time your list will become near exhaustive.
I think the key is caring about your work product. When you're working are you actually engaged? Like you're 100% focused on delivering a good product and not just finishing as fast as you can? No need to justify it to me, but be honest with yourself. If you legitimately care about delivering the best work possible, I bet you will make very few mistakes.
You have to be psychotic to care about delivering a quality pitch deck at 2am...
Then don't work in IB? That's the job. It's no secret you need to deliver work at 2AM so OP needs to either fix the problem or change industries if he(she?) is having trouble performing.
Deleted - posted in the wrong place.
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