Attention to Detail

I just want to comment on what "attention to detail" really means. I thought that I understood it coming in, but that's something that I've actually learned a lot about.

At the start of the internship, and back when I was interviewing, I figured that I had good attention to detail. I could pay attention to things, double-check numbers, and make sure that things looked right. I figured that I was good at getting things right and that I would be just fine.

I guess I just never actually thought about what it means to have attention to detail until I got out here. Watching the other analysts, I've learned what they think it means. For example, every bank has a certain format that they use for everything they do in Excel and PowerPoint. We always have "Total" cells double underlined and single overlined, bold, and the lines are in grey. The first cell in a column of many cells will have a dollar sign, while the others won't. When we are listing multiples, the "sales" multiples will have two decimal places, while the margin multiples will have one. These little things are easy to miss, and I've made many formatting mistakes since I've been here. But these analysts don't miss a thing - they take one look at a slide and immediately see when things aren't in the right format. This is attention to detail.

I was working with an analyst on making a chart and putting it into a presentation. Before the formatting, the analyst checked every cell's formula to make sure the correct cells were referenced. He checked the data in the cells against the data in the 10-K. It was crazy - it was like re-doing the work, just faster. After he had gone through cell by cell to format everything correctly, he put it into Powerpoint, printed it out, then went back through and checked everything again. For some reason when you print out pages and look at them, mistakes pop out a lot quicker than looking at it on the screen. He changed a few things, re-read the slide a few more times, then printed it out again to check it again. When he was satisfied, we put it into an email to send out to everybody.

It took him a minute to write out the email, and then he re-read the email probably 3-4 times to make sure it was ok and nothing was misspelled or out of place. He put the people he was sending it to in order of seniority and alphabetically. After all of this was checked, he attached the slide. He then opened the link to make sure the slide opened ok when it was clicked. Finally he sent off the email.

Before the internship I would probably have just put the slide together, thrown together an email, then sent it off. More than once I've sent emails to my friends before where I am supposed to attach something and I send it without attaching it. This just wouldn't fly out here. That's what it means to have attention to detail.

You don't make those kinds of mistakes because you double and triple-check everything before you pass it off to somebody else. You print it out and look at it to make sure it doesn't print weird. You make sure that if you say on Slide 3 that LTM EBITDA is $245.9, that on the comps page it also says that LTM EBITDA is $245.9.

All of this is vital to doing well as an analyst. You don't get a ton of responsibility on deals, so the parts that you "own" need to be perfect. It's almost like everybody out here has OCD and they are almost paranoid to turn something in that has a "bust" in it. It's funny, but also good to get to that level.