Best Practices For Recovering From Poor Reviews?
I'm a second year analyst and joined an EB in NY about a year from ago a MM shop in Chicago and have gotten some mediocre / poor reviews (and was compensated accordingly). The feedback was that I was hard working but had poor attention to detail. I'm not going to give any excuses, I messed up, but how can I best recover my reputation and standing? I don't have a buyside gig locked down yet and would like to spend another year here so I want to get better and improve.
Does anyone else have experience recovering from a bad review to become a solid / top analyst?
Thanks
How did you get that poor attention to detail remark ? sounds serious
At the risk of being overly reductive, I'd say your best bet would be to pay better attention to detail... If that's your problem, the only way to "recover" is to eliminate the issue. After a couple of months people will notice that you're doing a better job and start to trust your work product more.
Can you please tell us What exactly does lack of attention to detail entail in practice ?
does he copy paste earnings wrong? forgets to calendarize ? skips reading the footnotes ?
Fair question.
Probably all of the above. Typically if I think of an analyst as one with poor attention to detail, it'll be things like screwing up model linking, putting things in the wrong year, missing certain adjustments that are common in our team, etc... In powerpoint, it will typically be things like forgetting to do one of things that we needed to do, not noticing that a chart output doesn't match the back-up data, things like that.
In my eyes, poor attention to detail ultimately boils down to two things - making mistakes that no one should make, and guessing how to do things.
The best counter to being told you have a poor attention to detail is being relentlessly willing to flag any assumptions you made that you aren't sure are the right way to do it. This accomplishes a few very positive things: It makes it clear that you're not doing something wrong just because you totally missed it, but because you need guidance on how to do it correctly. It shows you are actually thinking about what you are doing instead of mindlessly grinding through. And it helps the person above you focus their attention when they are checking your work.
When you're working on something print it out, typos tend to pop out when printed.
This may not be perfect advice for everyone, but has worked well for me. I keep a 'mistake log' which is just an excel sheet where I record every time I've made some type of error, whether it is not double checking a number, misspelling words in emails, etc. Make sure to include all the ones you find, not just the ones you get called out for.
This way you can see if you are constantly making the same mistakes over and over again and by reviewing it you become significantly more conscious of where your weak points are. If you don't keep track it is very easy to get complacent and think your 'one-off' mistakes are just that when in reality you are repeating mistakes.
A very nice trick - thanks for sharing! +1
That's an awesome trick, thanks for sharing.
That's an excllent idea - I'm giving it a try. Thanks.
Good idea. Thanks for this.
There are many different types of "attention to detail". My advice: 1. Mark-up mark-ups. Make sure you don't make any simple misses like forgetting to make a change. 2. Check your own work. Make sure balance sheets balances, net debt Y+1 = net debt Y - LFCF Y+1 3. After you're done your work, ask your Associate to walk through it with you. Learn what they look for so that you can pre-emptively catch mistakes before it gets to them. 4. Take more time. Not to encourage face-time, but slow down and walk through everything a few times before you hand it in. Think if what you are showing makes sense. Are numbers moving in the right direction? Are there any numbers that look weird? Read it slowly. Pretend you have to present to the client. Does this make sense?
Agree with this, especially number 4. There are no awards for quantity of work, something that my firm's entire analyst class does not seem to appreciate
Spot on. Love the highlighter method for each mark in a markup! :)
Had a similar experience in my first year in banking. In my first review, I was in the bottom bucket due to poor attention to detail - I felt like I had been put through a meat grinder from the year. Banking is difficult initially due to the steep learning curve, pressure, long hours, etc. However, in my second year I was in the middle of the pack, and in my third year I was at the very top of performance and compensation. My MDs gave me great reviews and were exceptional advocates for me when it came time for references for my current PE gig.
Some guiding principles I would give that helped guide me to consistently improving:
1) First and foremost, attitude is very key. You need to maintain a positive attitude - this shows that you are still passionate about your position and willing to learn / improve. Also, you need to have the right attitude when your mistakes happen - the last time I had an inconsistency between the Excel model and a printed number in a final pitch book, I had to go sit outside for 20 minutes to clear my head, because it bothered me. It's critical that work be error free, so you can't act laissez-faire when you make a mistake. Now, don't go and blow some acting scenario out of proportion, but your mistakes should bother you and you should apologize and move on.
2) Learn how to catch your errors. You can build check calculations into your models for key numbers - make sure they tie throughout and to the printed materials. When I would check any number in printed materials, I would have the pages printed and referencing to the model on on screen; I would highlight every single number as I cross-checked it with the support file - sometimes twice. When you read a page, think to yourself... "how can this page possibly be wrong?" and really THINK about what you are reading, rather than just glossing over it like a Harry Potter book. So, read critically rather than just read to repeat in your head.
3) Be more focused. Stop checking your phone so frequently for text messages, ESPN, Facebook updates, Intagram, Snapchat, etc. Every time you stop what you are doing, your mind breaks focus and it is more difficult to regain and maintain focus. So really limit this kind of stuff. Also, if you listen to music, try listening to music without lyrics (or lyrics in a different language) so that you can't focus on what the singing is about while you are trying to check work - can be very distracting without you even realizing.
4) Proactively ask your associate how he checks work and what he did to develop his attention to detail. This will show your willingness to improve and you may learn some cool tricks.
5) Take full ownership of your work product. Have the frame of mind that you are the last person to touch the work before it goes to the client - more responsibility on your shoulders to ensure accuracy.
Best of luck!
apart from the tips above, I would suggest deleting the facebook account. it will massively improve your focus, you will save a lot of time and will become more productive. at least it worked for me
Print out any work product in word or ppt and triple read everything in full. In excel there are ways to compare only a few rows across multiple tabs that can help confirm that things check out. The next level step is to also sanity check everything. Do margins remain consistent? Are there spikes in cash balances or other similar categories? Are there odd fluctuations across any line items? Analysts often do basic checks but then fail to do sanity checks.
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