Currently applying for IB internships and afraid I’m going to get dinged for being colorblind. I know that bankers do a lot of formattjng pitch decks in powerpoint and I don’t want to be a poor performer if for example someone tells me to make a text box navy blue as opposed to black.
Should I consider getting eye surgery to better position myself for a summer analyst offer or will they be forgiving of my disability?
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Whoa, eye surgery may be a bit much. I feel technical understanding, critical thinking, and personability are more important than color vision. Although formatting may be difficult, being a knowledgable and high level candidate should be enough.
But who knows, I don’t have an opinion on whether you could be dinged.
In excel, setting a custom color. Set Red, Green, Blue all to 0. Problem solved without wasting an enormous amount of time or money.
Speaking from experience - doesn't matter.
The desk I interned has a manger who is colorblind and I don’t think it ever really mattered? He was a manager so he obviously made it through analyst years.
Also when it comes to banking, from what I’ve experienced, banks have standardized RGB codes you’re supposed to use for it to be presentable to a client with the right company hues anyways, so when creating a deck you can always just use the guide the bank provides as a cross check.
the colors have codes, do not mention this in any interview though.
Eye surgery is very risky. It would be foolish to risk going blind in an eye just for a career move
First off this isn't true, eye surgery is extremely safe and has an astronomically high success rate (speaking about basic surgeries such as Lasik, PRK, etc.)
Second off there is no surgery to correct color blindness at this time, so that's not even an option.
My bad
If it comes up, bluff and tell them it's protected under the ADA, even though you know it's not.
Now I'm looking forward to testing people for colorblindness next time I'm running an interview
delete
Agreed to not bring it up in interviews. But when you hit the desk, I would be open about this with your team. (and especially HR). Like others said, color code helps. Also, the color palette of the bank is different (some just different shades of blue / brown) - might not be as bad as you think
Each master template should have the color code #s.. you should be using specific RGB numbers even if you aren't colorblind.
I’m red/green colorblind and have worked in finance including IB for 10+ years. It’s legitimately never been a problem just hotkey typical colors. Usually makes for good water cooler chat if anything.
The colors on excel and powerpoint all have codes, so you should be fine. Also, the paint formatting tool can help you with this problem too.
Btw, getting eye surgery for this seems WAY too much of an overcorrection for something that shouldn't pose too much of an issue if you do get into IB.
Couldn't you buy those colorblind adjusting glasses I have seen in videos?
Yeah hate to break it to you but Jake Paul’s been lying
colour codes + older presentations provide the templates / colours you need. so then just use the pipette thingy in the drop down when you want to select the colour and set it to the colour you need
How would they know?
Solid question, I usually didn't discuss my color blindness and leveraged color codes, eye drop tool, and preset templates (I'd make a color pallet for the PPT, have it in the margins of the Master, and use eye drop tool when making new objects). I think that's actually a "best practices" thing, but when I did it at new firms they seemed very happy I "professionalized" the process (ha!).
Now I just mention it as a joke, like "do you really want a colorblind person making those slide?"
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