PowerPoint struggles
Heya. I’m actively prepping for all things IB / PE. Through my prior internships etc. I have noticed that I do struggle with PowerPoint a fair bit, I’m good at excel and I like that it’s straightforward & rule based, yet PowerPoint is aligning & really just letting your creativity go.
I want to really enhance my skills in pptx, what are some suggestions? I was thinking to take company overviews / presentations and just start with recreating them or would you suggest any other ways of learning it in a way that would be useful for IB/PE? I can devote 1.5h per day for it
Hey there! Your dedication to improving your PowerPoint skills is commendable. PowerPoint is indeed a crucial tool in the world of Investment Banking and Private Equity. Here are a few suggestions based on the most helpful WSO content:
Recreate Presentations: As you mentioned, recreating company overviews or presentations is a great way to learn. It helps you understand the flow of information, the design aspects, and the technicalities involved in creating a professional presentation.
Storyboarding: Before jumping into making slides, it's beneficial to storyboard your ideas. This means planning out your content and visuals before you start designing the slides. It helps in creating a coherent and impactful presentation.
Alignment and Consistency: Make sure all charts and blocks of text align so that you can move from slide to slide without them jumping around. Consistency in fonts, colors, and styles across slides is also important.
Efficiency: Don't overload your slides with too much information. Remember, your slides should support your message, not overshadow it.
Practice: The more you use PowerPoint, the better you'll get at it. So, practice as much as you can.
Online Tutorials and Courses: There are numerous online resources that can help you master PowerPoint. WSO Courses and WSO Academy offer some great content that can help you enhance your skills.
Remember, being "good in PPT" is not just about the technical skills, but also about being a strategic thinker. So, keep practicing and you'll surely get there. Good luck!
Sources: PowerPoint Skills
bump
spend less time on powerpoint, and more time doing push ups and getting laid SMH? REALLY
No problem on those fronts - don’t worry about me! :)
Once you join you will see how little creativity is actually required. Most of the time it's just a matter of reusing pre-existing templates and updating them with new information. Your idea of taking old company overviews and presentations should be a good starting point.
PowerPoint is wild one. It’s definitely a skill that takes practice to get good at, but once you have it you have it forever. There’s really 3 tricks:
The shortcuts just make everything way quicker. Customizing this can make the whole thing less of a mess. A few I find critical: align, eye dropper, more options. If you are trying to align shapes and stuff by using the mouse, all your work will look horrible and janky.
Graphs, tables, and the more options menu are what can cause endless wheel spinning and situations where people just “don’t know how to fix” something and have a panic attack at 3am. If you actually understand how they work and know how to change axis’s or put labels for charts and stuff, it’s pretty easy to make graphs look the way you want.
You should never create a slide from scratch. It’s all leveraging someone else’s work. These institutions are big enough, someone has had the problem before. Spend a weekend creating a library of slides that have different graphics and layouts that you can use for inspiration or just straight up reuse them.
Thanks for this - you are my hero, stranger.
🤓
How is Power Point difficult? Most of the slides I have done were templates and I basically just updated the financials.
I actually think PowerPoint is exceptionally difficult. More than modeling.
Learning how to make something look pretty doesn’t have a set rulebook and can seem “artistic” and is more subjective than just the math of a waterfall or something. It’s kinda like checking for errors/ attention to detail, many people think it’s a mystical skill that you have or you don’t, but there’s really just a few tricks that people can learn then it’s easy.
Have seen many really smart people get tripped up and almost lose offers due to an inability to get their PowerPoint skills up to par.
100% agree with you. One of my offers got doomed because of lack of pptx skills. Especially as a junior - I suppose all or mostly all you do it PowerPoint.
You mentioned few tricks, the user above already shared some of the tricks, would you share as well which ones to you find to be the most important? Thanks!
Oh ok. I am also an artist and have designed and sold pieces. So maybe I have the artistic vision for PowerPoint. I know I have it for Excel. My models are always pretty and color coded.
I’ve spent far more time than I’ve ever wished to in PowerPoint but the biggest hack is ensuring everything is somewhat balanced in size on any given slide and relative to the entire deck.
Similar to modelling, you only get better at this with practice and the more decks you build / work on, the better you’ll get at acquiring this skill. Just my 2 cents.
does anyone know what the best way to copy and paste from excel to PPT is? everytime i paste i keep getting a lot of spaces before my number and it is very tedious to remove them.
Any chance you were using FactSet number formatting (Ctrl Shift 1)? That's what caused the issue for me. Instead of FactSet, I would just use the native Excel number formatting - that should solve the problem. Been there done that with the removing spaces... Hope this helps!
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