How do I develop better attention to detail?
Incoming IB analyst at a pretty rigorous group next summer. Interned at the same group this past summer and got good reviews. Was told I was at the top of the class in the group and in general all round good things.
However, if I am being honest, I personally don't think my attention to detail was as good as some of the other interns and obviously definitely not as good as the analysts (ik they have a lot more exp.). I am scared that when I start FT I'll drop the bomb and am worried about it. Made some careless mistakes and also took A LOT of time to do simple tasks which my analysts do in like 1/10th of the time. I spoke to one of the analysts I worked with and he mentioned that attention to detail was the only catagory where he dinged me.
Sorry for the rant but how can I take the next 10 months to make sure I can improve my attention to detail? Any tips? I really just want to make sure I can do well enough because I know my bonus at the end of the year won't look too good if my work is subpar lol.
I'm sure you can find a ton of stuff via google but here is my two cents. I receive the similar area-for-improvement feedback as an analyst. Try to articulate (orally) details of things such as a painting/portrait or a hobby you may have. For example, if I was standing next to my bookshelf I'd try to describe it and the books on the shelves in detail (how they look, feel, type of literature, etc.). Once you become an adult you schedule becomes hectic with adult stuff e.g. a job, running errands, etc. so it can become routine to glance over details which may not be important at the moment at hand. Hope this helps.
Kinda hard to do outside the job, but do you skim news articles or do you fully read every word? I would practice reading dense articles and read. every. word. Force yourself to do that, and I think you'll get better on finding the details. There's a million tricks on the job we can give to analysts (print markup and highlight), but the biggest thing is actively taking ownership of your work. The worst analyst is someone who just processes and chucks it up to the associate/VP with the assumption they'll catch anything wrong. The best analyst is thoughtful about what is going on the page, as well as thinks about (annoying) things like firm standard formatting, colors, etc.
I received the exact same feedback when I was getting started in banking. I recommend that you read "The Checklist Manifesto". I've always thought that making lists was for 12-year old girls, but this book completely changed my mind. After reading it, I started making a list that I checked for each proper deliverable. Everything from titles and subheadings, to fonts and footnotes. It also gets easier with time, and even though it doesn't come naturally for you now, it most likely will in 12-18 months.
This is easily solvable.
1. Make an excel sheet list with things to check (Logo alignment, page #, whether page 12's EBITDA matches page 68's EBITDA, etc)
2. You will eventually make mistakes. Add that mistake into the excel sheet
3. After 6 months, you will literally have a bullet proof excel sheet list in which if you go through it once, you know you are 95% confident that you have a flawless material
In banking it is all repetitive in terms of what to check. Easily mistaken ones are non-correlated financial metric (different EBITDA for the same company but different pages), page number because MD asked you to add more pages, etc.
Slow down. Analysts are always rushing around. Take a second to slow down and go slide by slide using a zoomed view/print things out. Cross reference any number that appears more than once. Sound out every complicated word to ensure you didn't spell something incorrectly (especially if the text has come in via an excel link since it may not have been spell checked).
The way I learned attention to detail was being belittled for all my mistakes until I was sufficiently traumatized to not make them again at the cost of my mental health. Not sure I'd recommend this method though.
Oh yeah - the phone call from your VP (while he's sitting 30 ft away from you) w/ the "hey - what the fuck is going on? Why are there different 2021E leverage metrics on pages 4 & 38? Send this back to me when you've checked your work"
Sending an email to the CEO of a F500 company cc multiple advisers to subsequently receive an email from your VP highlighting that you misspelled the name of the company and need to get your shit together will significantly improve your attention to detail
Develop autism
Something that really helped me when I was summering was printing out decks, going through them with a pen, and marking any mistakes. You catch a lot more of them on paper vs on your screen. Also whenever there were a lot of edits I would print out the email too and use that as a checklist. I think physically marking things with a pen helps a lot
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