So you’ve broken into the Street and are dealing with early morning phone calls, earnings reviews and everything else you expected to sign up for. Being extremely ambitious you’re already thinking about what you can do to exit the firm/group. You’re trying to make everyone believe you are smart. You’re already trying to figure out how to make it big and brush elbows with all the Senior Analysts/Directors. You’re also viewing everyone around you as competition. Stop thinking right now and read this article.
Mistake Number 1 – Over Ambitious Attitude
The need to leave for “exit opportunities” gives the worst possible starting impression, here’s why:
Impressions: You were hired by the firm to help them generate revenue and be an integral part of the team long-term if possible. Starting off by disclosing long-term goals on day one without showing any value tells everyone around you that you believe you are much better than the job you just landed. Instead of people wanting to show you the ropes and help you become productive, you’re burning bridges already. Instead of focusing on work related topics, find hobbies people enjoy, talk about stocks that are not controversial and generally show an interest in the financial markets. Do everything you can to avoid showing your extreme ambition regarding long-term career goals, your work ethic and help on the team should be the number one focus.
Mistake Number 2 – Selling Intelligence
Generally there is a saying that the people on the Street are either smart or hard working. The implied message here is that smart people find ways to work less hours and maintain a good impression and the hard working ones can’t figure out the system and instead work tons of hours. So what’s the catch here, why can’t I just make people believe I am smart?
The Catch 22: If you are an ex-Citadel employee who previously managed billions of dollars, please stick with making people believe you’re smart because there is no need to impress anyone. For the rest of us the catch is being smart implies that you understand how the office dynamics work and that you’ve given the impression that you’re smart. So it is always easier to come off as hard working. Come in early, leave late, learn the process and only ask questions that you absolutely cannot answer with a simple Google or Yahoo search. Slowly but surely you’ll be known as intelligent as well.
Mistake Number 3 – Brushing Elbows Incorrectly
Of course we all want to be senior analysts one day, manage a portfolio and generally move up the ladder. But this certainly doesn’t mean that we should become friends with every single person in the firm:
Relationships: While there may be some fun Senior Analysts on your floor, you really want to be well liked by the ones who are important and not be involved in the next round of layoffs by association. Of course it always helps if your group is strong, but if you’re constantly talking to an analyst who is disliked by important revenue generators, you’re in trouble. Instead of trying to immediately get to know the most social Senior Analyst, exchange pleasantries and slowly find out who has the best higher up relationship. For an associate, I would look at which Analyst is popular with Sales, popular with the head of research and is highly ranked by investment magazines. Ideally you are already working for a good group, but the worst thing to do would be to buddy up with a guy who your Analyst actually loathes.
Mistake Number 4 – Everyone is Competition
Finance is cut-throat but many people take it so literally that it destroys their personality. Similar to our assessment of the two generic long-term personalities in finance we advise people to take competition with a grain of salt to hold onto their sanity:
Setting Precedence: This is last as some rare personality types can actually do this, how they do it is beyond me. You go to work, zone in and focus on nothing but what you’re producing, shut off outside contact, never help anyone and only suck up to people that matter. If you’re able to do this that’s amazing, however, we suggest you try the personable route instead because you’re setting precedence. You remember the time you’re extremely reliable best friend flaked on you? When your high performance computer slowed down dramatically? When your new car got scratched up? The point is, you’ve set the performance bar so high that you cannot bring it down a notch when you’re extremely stressed out. Instead of trying to balance these unreasonable expectations of handling 17 primers and initiations, handle a strong but reasonable work load and don’t make mistakes. This will certainly save your sanity and give you a shot at staying in it for the long haul. The second best way to think about this is when its promotion time you can work like an extreme outperformer. During that year you exceed expectations rather than meet them and don’t want to kill yourself by year-end. If you were cranking hard with 75 hour work weeks all year and then went to 85 that’s not as impressive as a 60 to 80 jump because productivity certainly slows down as hours ratchet up.
The Conclusion: The best advice to remember when entering the Street “Perception is always reality. You are either hard working or smart, you can’t be both”. If you can convince the group you’re willing to learn, easy to talk to and genuinely interested in the market then you’re going to be labelled as a hard worker by default by showing up early, leaving late and never asking questions that Google can answer. As people believe you are a very hard worker, you slowly use your newly acquired “smarts” to lower your hours to a reasonable rate and maximize your free time to ensure that you don’t burn out.
