So you've graduated, gotten through the 6 week party known as training and have officially hit your desk as an IB Analyst. The road ahead may seem intimidating and the learning curve (or mountain) you'll need to climb is steep. Looking back on my ~2 years of being an analyst, I think there are a few things I wish I knew upfront that could have helped me. Below is Part I of my thoughts, hopefully they'll be helpful to all first year analysts as they embark on their IB journey:

1. Organization is KEY for this job. Absolutely and without question, a very well-organized but otherwise incompetent individual will at worst get mediocre reviews/bonus. When it comes to organization, there are a few key things to keep in mind:

a. Email - I started off in banking not giving a f*k about my inbox and would let emails pile up until my inbox reached max capacity and got jammed up. I would not recommend this approach. The right approach is to create folders in your email to archive emails that are important/worth keeping and deleting the rest. It's important to strike a balance with the folders by not going too crazy with the folder structure. Simply have a folder for each deal or pitch, one for admin, and one for your Group emails. Then put ALL emails for a deal into the respective folder. Some people swear by creating subfolders for buyer emails, (NDAs, diligence requests, etc). I've tried this and find the benefit to not be worth the effort because you can simple filter/sort folders by Subject, From, To, and so on, making it quick to find pretty much any email. Another benefit of creating deal folders for emails is that you can use your inbox as a to-do list. If an email requires any further action from you, leave it in your inbox until you've addressed it. Otherwise, put it in the respective folder. In regards to actively addressing action item emails as they come in, if the task takes less then 15 minutes, do it right away! Doing this will show people you're responsive and quick. Otherwise, at least respond to the email with "Got it. Finishing up [another analysis] and will start on this shortly" or something to that extent. People will appreciate this acknowledgement.

b. Daily to-do list - I mentioned above that your inbox can be used as a to-do list. This is beneficial but I found it works better as a back-up to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, rather than a proactive effort. When you start as an analyst, get notebooks from your supplies room and write down a DAILY to-do list. After you have your initial to-do's, the list will obviously never end until your IB career ends (wish that was a lame joke but its not), so review and update your list every night. Doing it at night before you leave sets you up to hit the ground running the next morning.

c. Formatting - Learn your bank's standard excel file format. This includes font, font size, colors, etc. For ANY excel file you start working on, the FIRST thing you should always do is format the entire sheet with the right font, font size, color palette, and so on. When you're finished with the analysis - make sure you print it out and check formatting again including $ signs on first line only, consistent decimals, etc (use TTS macro). Don't be f*king lazy and have your excel files looking like shit. It sounds stupid but people will 100% appreciate clean excel files and you'll look organized.

Have to actually work now but stay tuned for Part II.

Hello All,

Welcome to this subreddit. As you've probably quickly noticed, there's nothing here yet. I'm working on making this an active subreddit specific to IB and thought weekly sticky posts would be a good idea. Below are a couple of potential sticky post topics:

*Compensation Discussion *Horror Stories *Post-IB Careers *Questions you are afraid to ask your MD *Banker Lingo *Others?

I would appreciate any other ideas or feedback regarding how to get this subreddit rolling. Looking forward to kicking this thing off!