Experienced analysts: If you could pack all the talent you've built up after several hard months into a pill and feed it to yourself first day on the job, how much easier would your life have been? I am talking about shortcuts, formula auditing, knowing what to watch out for, etc. and not accounting knowledge. Would it have made your job 5% easier? 50%?
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As an SA last summer I can only imagine how much time I could have saved with better Excel knowledge-- a few weeks ago I learned how to use a formula that could have easily saved me a ton of hours on a project over the summer and I was kicking myself. Definitely worth getting as much Excel practice as possible at any point I wish I had known more and will definitely be thinking about it going into FT
Honestly - if you have access to it that magic pill can be found on Wall Street Prep's excel courses. They go through a lot of what you need to know very thoroughly and comprehensively. Am yet to see an excel course as well done. If your bank provides access to an excel course through a site such as that, just take the time and get er done. If not you can typically find a deal on one that isn't that expensive and its great investment if you don't know excel well.
That's a good point. I do think there is a bit of a difference between learning from a workshop or course vs. the practical on-the-job experience, but I am not an IB analyst so I could be incorrect about how much that matters.
Haha there is 100%
The nice thing about coursework though is it exposes you to tools you didn't know existed. That is overlooked.
The job is often just apply and practice what you know. If no one ever shows you index match match you'll just use a ton of different VLookups or index matches instead of building something to be dynamic. You may never use a lot of things coursework teaches you, but heck knowing it exists can save you a TON of time (as it saves you from reinventing the wheel)
There are a lot of posts of people asking about what are the most important things to know when it comes to excel and modeling, but the reality is as long as you have mediocre skills you'll do alright going into an FT position. In my opinion being proficient in PPT is far more useful and important.
What does "proficient in PPT" entail? There's only a couple shortcuts I can think of that matter, and formulas don't exist, so is it just using your mouse to click to the right things quickly without having to google how to do stuff?
Based on my experience this summer, it's getting really comfortable with the quick access toolbar (and setting it up to your standards) and shortcuts. Just like Excel, you are going to want to navigate PPT with as little mouse movement as possible (obviously, there are certain things that require the mouse though). Watching the experienced analyst's and associates work, I was blown away by how quick they are able to format a slide and make sure everything is aligned properly. It is also important to get familiar with the Slide Master and all the formatting/design options. The Associate 2 is spot on about PPT being more useful than Excel, I wish that was something I realized going into this summer.
ignoring the financial / accounting side, i’d say just straight excel skills help a lot. not just speed / shortcuts but the big thing is learning to do things with formulas you otherwise would do by hand. there’s things i can do with formulas now in 5 minutes that when i first started would have taken hours manually.
This is right. If you're synthesizing a data dump and only know very basic formulas, you're going to spend a helluva lot more time on it than you need to and increase the likelihood of user error significantly.
I would say compared to my first day on first IB internship, I’m probably 3x faster if not more. Say you’ve never done a company profile or spread comps, after 50 you’re easily 3x faster in comparison because you don’t lose time with formatting and you don’t lose your mind fearing you have made a mistake and double checking three times instead of one. Same apply to DCF etc.
Btw you can’t replicate the pressure that having to do something for tomorrow 9am puts on you at home.
Now compared to a point say 2month in first internship where you’re familiar with formatting and basic things, I would say you can still gain 30% efficiency within 6 month by 1) having to think less about what to do / automatisms and 2) trusting that you don’t make mistake so you spend less time auditing.
This is iterative until you plateau about a year in (but still progress, and I would say about a year in is also the point where you start being confident enough in basic things to free mental space to think about the big picture)
If you can think of how to phrase your question on an excel work around for a problem, that question has already been asked and is likely available through google. Also, youtube can help walk you through many complicated problems.
Also, if you have the time, aesthetics matter for excel worksheets and model. People are so much more confident in something that looks finished than something that’s a messy thrown together excel workbook.
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