Not sure how to fix mistakes from a lack of intuition
Just started on the desk and feeling really bad about my work. I did well during the internship and got only positive feedback, but now that I'm doing real work vs. random ad hoc tasks, I've realized I have good attention to detail but a total inability to see when numbers are off.
I came from a non-business background (studied political science) and never really involved myself with finance stuff in school, just learned the bare minimum to pass the technical interviews. I'm pretty quick with basic LBOs and DCFs but that's about it.
Beyond the basic checks of cfs and b/s I never catch if a revenue number is off or an adjustment is big even if I have directly observed that number. I asked others for help on how to make less mistakes and the common advice was to run everything through ChatGPT or Copilot for a pass before sending out and/or to print it, which I have been doing.
However, while printing and AI have helped with color matching and alignment, it doesn't help with where numbers tie in the deck, and I'm clueless with most merger models and other like spinoff stuff that we do. Anything even a little bespoke I'm so confused on and I feel really stupid when I have to ask for past examples or ask AI to basically do it for me.
I can tell the rest of my deal team has gotten frustrated too because now they even lose it on small stuff that I mess up. I don't often mess up the little stuff but even like one slow response (~20 min) had people on edge today and we didn't have anything urgent going on and I was in the shower.
I don't see other analysts having the same struggle, and even though it's early, they say your first few months set the tone and I just feel so disincentivized to keep trying since I don't even realize what mistakes I'm making. The issue is I genuinely am trying my best, and every time they point out an error I don't usually know why it's wrong and they get mad when I ask for a little more clarity on how to fix it, so now I've just stopped asking.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and work harder. Lots of people go through what you’re going through but what separates those who actually become useful vs. stay retarded and useless is the effort they put in to learn. Posting on wso fishing for sympathy isn’t going to get you where you need to be.
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