How big of a deal is producing zero error work?
Question is as I described. Let's say you have an associate that's willing to put in the extra mile in terms of hours, has great investment judgement, is capable of running some processes (e.g. dealing with Deloitte), and all of his "critical" numbers are accurate (e.g. model output always correct, P&L ties out, etc.). But his work is usually like 95% ready to go and will have some minor errors (excluding his investment committee work which is error free but more so the random portco work). Would think of it as in a 20 page deck, there may be 5 typos / sentences that don't make sense. Are you promoting this guy to VP or nah?
Yes, I know the tricks of printing out your work and error checking it. I do that, but when it's 4am and I'm double checking my work - there will be errors in it....
Just wondering if VP's see associates producing 100% finalized and ready to go work or if this level of errors are natural.
Totally fine if you ask me
I’d be mildly annoyed, but definitely not going to impact my judgment of their ability. If it’s riddled with mistakes, run-on sentences, etc - then we have an issue. And, as you flagged, if numbers are just materially wrong (forgetting to roll one slide forward from LTM June to LTM July isn’t the end of the world if it’s infrequent, telling me that our leverage cushion is 40% when it’s really 15% because your formula was broken is a bigger issue…)
Man that’s nuts 5 typos in a 20 page internal deck with everything error free incl models and ic memos is top tier
It’s pretty firm / team dependent. Team I was on in PE had a very high bar and 100% error free work was expected as table stakes. Ultimately to answer OP’s question, as long as the minor errors you are making don’t cause your seniors to not trust you, it shouldn’t be an issue. If you do mess up on something material (e.g., model bust affecting returns in an IC deck) then it’s very difficult to regain trust
NGL I'd rather have some of the numbers be a little bit off (small things like rounding errors) than frequent typos or totally misworded sentences. Numerical mistakes happen, but not proofreading the text is lazier to me since that's such a low-effort thing to catch. 5 text typos in a 20 page deck seems like a lot to me (unless you're including small math errors), but maybe your decks contain less pure math pages than mine. Especially when moving up the senior levels as your language and writing skills become a lot more important than math skills.
No one produces zero-error work, in the level of detail and length that finance goes down to it's just not possible to never make mistakes. But you clearly are aware and conscious that you make a decent number of mistakes. I'd take 5 minutes off after your deck is "done, ready to go" - get a coffee or something. Then come back and check the text. That's so much easier than tying numbers across pages etc, it's silly to just throw your hands up and miss on it.
Again, zero errors is not going to be possible and no associate's work is 100% final. If a VP/D sees an associate's deck and says "good to go, let's print" they are being lazy. Text just seems like an easy thing to be more alert on to me.
Fewer.
"pages etc.; it's silly..."
Couple mistakes in 2.5 paragraphs...how's the job search, coming?
OP - a few mistakes like this are normal. Obviously, everyone in this career should shoot for zero defect work, but ultimately 95% accurate with all the other intangibles & good investment judgment / ability to scope 3rd party work, etc., is all-in-all much more important than the additional 2% pts of accuracy/zero-defect work.
100% agree with what the most up-voted reply said above - if anything (minor) model/numerical errors are less concerning than constant/frequent typos. For one as the above poster says it shows lack of effort to detail - also it’s highly frustrating/perplexing as a VP as the hard work (ie modelling) is done, you’re letting yourself down with the easiest bit! If you send a document out to a client externally or investment committee, even if the numbers are spot-on then constant typos just looks unprofessional (obviously a single typo in a presentation doesn’t really matter).
Whereas whilst minor model/numerical errors are clearly an issue, they’re more “understandable” errors from a VP’s perspective, ie they can at least comprehend how these happened (plus if it’s a minor non-material numerical issue then the client likely won’t notice it so can be fixed going forward, whereas typos will definitely stand out).
I guess the context does matter here - eg if an associate is putting together a quick and dirty analysis for internal purposes (not going to IC but to other members of his team say) then multiple typos wouldn’t really matter if it was done under time pressure, as who in the team really cares about that? Plus your team will know the Associate so they’ll know that his typos don’t mean that the quality of his work product (models/numbers etc) are sh*t - whereas an IC/external client won’t know that, so may begin to doubt the whole work product (and purely because the Associate was too lazy to give it a proper once-over essentially).
Depending on who will receive your work, you'll generally could get away with some minor things.
Typo are easiest to fix so there are no reason to have one (except it's for a quick discussion deck internally with your team).
Numbers are probably the most forgiving IMO. But some numbers are more important than others, especially if that number would be used in a transaction document (this have to be completely sure and free of any doubts).
The riskiest are market research/"our understanding" type of stuffs. I once misunderstood a company revenue line (they would classify manufacturing and assembly separately even though the cost structure are blended together), the client would instantly notice it and would overall make your image a little worse. Market research from research companies/CIQ/BBG are historical stuff and while often useful, some C-level are more in-tune with the actual market than these sites/research. They would def. try to flex their networking and spout out borderline non-public info nonchalantly. That's why these types of content would be excluded from the deck every time if possible.
Depends on how much focus the higher-up loses as a result of these errors. Do these errors cause concern in the reviewer, reducing his ability to focus on the big picture (messaging, flow etc) because he instead has to be watchful of the little stuff? Is the reviewer, upon seeing these errors, now worried what else was missed, or is there confidence that each small error is only that.
Junior person's role is to save the senior person's time and allow senior to focus. So is that being delivered or not, is how I'd measure it.
Bump
To me, this is not a relevant concern for the VP promotion, but maybe my perspective is different being based in Europe. 75%+ of our deal team members (as well as management teams) are operating in their second / third language, so "approximate" English is pretty normal in business settings.
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