Bad Analyst

There are four arenas here imo: technical competence, resourcefulness, attitude, and perfectionism.

Below is what I think the standard for “middle bucket” is, for someone who is in their first year of IB.

Technical competence: You should know how to build the models your group uses regularly (LBO, DCF, accretion-dilution, anything industry-specific that comes up often) fluently, and know where to find templates / precedents for anything else, and at least get those started. It’s fine to use templates where expedient, but it’s important to know when and how to modify them, and when you really shouldn’t be using a template. You should also know how to do basic analyst tasks, like spreading comps, performing EBITDA reconciliations on illustrated business plans, and mastering CapIQ / FactSet such that price updating slides is routine and easy.

Resourcefulness: You should be able to find things in the team’s folders that are analogues to assignments you’re being assigned; there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. This included, but is not limited to, model output slides, company profiles (both one-page and extended), market overview slides, comps / benchmarking slides, and “takeaways” slides. It should not be that an analyst does something that’s been done before “in their own way” and then needs to be told “this is how we usually do it.” If an analyst is given an ambiguous task, there is a 99% chance (at least on my team) that it has been done before, and that the analyst simply needs to find an example. It’s fine to ask. The need to be resourceful extends to technicals; there is zero shame in researching how to do something you “should know” how to do as long as you figure it out.

Attitude: Put in a genuine effort, stay as long as you need to each night, don’t hand wave and say “eh, good enough” on important work, and don’t claim to be “at capacity” when you’re working 65-75 hours each week; that’s not “at capacity.” Raise your hand to take things on rather than deferring. Make every effort to go to happy hours and become cordial, if not friendly, with your team. Take a “can do” mindset on projects, rather than a “can someone help me” mindset. Affirmatively ask for feedback rather than passively waiting for it.

Perfectionism: The “easy things,” like footnotes, spacing, indentation, stylistic conventions, and, of course, arithmetic, need to be perfect. I understand that it’s 1am. That doesn’t matter. They still need to be perfect. Yes, I know that checking footnotes for trivial discrepancies can make a 12am into a 2am, but it’s imperative if you want people to trust your work without “babysitting,” which needs to be the case in order for you to “hold pen” on anything, which is required for you to make associate in this “up or out” world. You need to proceed as if nobody is checking your work. There’s no way around this.

If you can do the above, you’ll probably get a perfect review and be on track for promotion.

MBA associate first-years and lateral second-year analysts from something other than IB should think of themselves as an analyst one. Congratulations on the higher pay, but don’t go about delegating work to first-years or pretending that you’re more of a “reviewer.” You are a de facto first-year, no better than they are. In addition, to justify your higher pay, there’s an expectation you bring something else to the table - either you’re an MBA who is more technical than the current analysts, or you’re a lateral from industry who knows a sector better than the current analysts, or something else.

All this being said, there *are* things that it isn’t fair to expect from first-years. You don’t need to be a “modeling machine” and to be able to build anything too complex from scratch, as that comes with experience. We don’t expect 100+ hour weeks (barring emergencies), we don’t want you to work until 3am “just because we had to” (that’s hazing, and it’s wrong), and, at least in the very early days, first-years are owed some guidance and preliminary “hand-holding,” which is in the interest of everyone.