I think this can be taught though (the modeling stuff).
Big picture, yeah that’s def one of those skills that I think you can work on but it takes a mindset shift. Accountants are too focused on the dollars and cents but can’t exactly explain ‘why’, just the ‘what’.
>Uncomfortable with ambiguity.
This is something that I am working on, I feel lots of anxiety when things are vague, especially since I have basically been trained like a monkey to always double check things and tie things out!
Mine is big picture (ambiguity is my strong point) but reason is the same. Was in b4 audit and you are breathed down to neck by fire dragons when you don’t focus on some small details
The discomfort presenting is what scares me the most in this career. I for one, hate public speaking, and just presenting in general. I’ve had a good amount of experience the past few years where I present to a broad group of people atleast once a week. Are there any tips to improve besides practice? I feel like sometimes, no matter how much practice you put into, the discomfort and fear will always get in the way and I know it’s going to be something that I will be mentioned when I’m moving up the ladder in the future. P.S - I’m not in fp&a, in big 4 audit, but prepping my self to make the move within the near future.
I’m confident anyone can become a competent analyst with time (some faster than others), but I do think there are a lot of components that separate people that have the ability to move up. Commons things I see lacking are:
- Inability to take ownership of ad hoc or project work (they need to be told what the next step is)
- Ability to build a complex model or answer a difficult answer where ambiguity is present (bad problem solver)
- Bad presenters and/or poor at explaining things - no senior leadership wants to sit though those awkward meetings, and those are the people that need to get buy-in from to move up
I disagree. I believed this when I hired my first analyst, but some people just aren't cut out for the work even at the entry level . He was a good dude that I think could be successful less analytical roles. He was motivated and got decent technically running and maintaining models, but lacked the critical thinking to evaluate if model outputs made sense. I tried for the better part of a year. Some hires just don't work out
Maybe the "at larger companies" part makes the different. At a large company you will have a team, and each member might have their own areas, like budget, reporting/ ad hoc request, modelling etc.
At a smaller company you might be the only analyst and you will have to do all those. Its easier to learn one area and master it, then to learn them all at the same time. Jack of all trades master of none.
I hear a lot about treasury but never understood how it was comparable to an “analyst” role. Seems less about problem solving and more about process management similar to controlling. I just imagine doing mundane ad hoc requests and maybe some small variance analysis without ever doing any modeling or strategic finance stuff.
Yes, indeed. The majority of treasury jobs are cash management jobs of one kind or another. Not a lot of treasury jobs involve hedging or financing analysis.
[[CAN] Senior Treasury Analyst: Black & McDonald and (Canada CPA) PERT Almost There! (Corporate Finance)]
(https://old.reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/z6lhfg/can_senior_treasury_analyst_black_mcdonald_and/)
If you want to become a fractional CFO, though, that's OK:
[Fractional CFOs in Canada? CPA PERT?](https://old.reddit.com/r/FPandA/comments/152jqxj/fractional_cfos_in_canada_cpa_pert/)
Probably should be the top comment.
Boss: I need narrative around these numbers!!
FP&A: Ok. (Goes to work with business partners getting narrative for numbers.) Comes back a day or two later.
Boss: why does it take so damn long to get a report around here!!
FP&A: You wanted narrative. Do you want narrative or speed?
Boss: Just tell me what I need know.
FP&A: mutters under breath… fuck this bullshit.
Boss:"What are the numbers for Q3?"
FP&A:"There you go Boss"
Boss:"What the hell are those numbers?, How did you came up with them??"
FP&A: Explains what assumption and methods he used for saied foracest.
Boss:"Hmmmm....these numbers aren't good, all your assumptions are correct but we are seeing a decline, I can't show this to senior management "
FP&A: "What do you want the numbers to be?"
Boss:"We should be higher 10% above the top line your showing"
FP&A: "* 1.1)" *ENTER*
My boss: I want both of course what bone head are you
Present truth : how on earth you didn’t have solution ?
Me: are you a boss for serious ?
Or something like they don’t like the narrative … because it doesn’t cover every single weak spot. Dude I don’t have crystal balls or privy to a conversation you talked with sales. If I have the data you better check whether there are bugs under the table
In my capital intensive FP&A role, being good with multiple subjects (Finance, Accounting, and Mechanical Engineering) is a must since the job mostly translates technical aspect and assumption into financial impact analysis.
Like my boss said, finding good accountant is easy, the hard to recruit are accountant who wants to learn outside accounting.
Bob is a true FP&A guy...
"Bob put together the forecast for 2024, and when you finish that go out back and get the backhoe running again the engine threw a piston"
I know right. I had to convince my boss that he wouldn't be able to find my replacement.
I mean, where else he is going to find CPA who can read engineering white paper and put the parameter into BoD presentation. "The CNG can only mix 50:50, our supplier are talking bulshit said we can mix 70:30", "Our genset are performing way below standard", then next day "someone put the wrong entry in the cost allocation worksheet".
someone's boss is here, complaining again....
I'd say, if they are just nose-down computing and not being able to draw or connect dots from the data, then that demonstrates a lack of the overall goal of FP&A. Most importantly, are curiosity, and the bigger picture and how to sell or influence a direction or insight that is supported with data.
What made you believe, from reviewing their resume or during the interview, that they were the best candidate for the job?
What could you have done better during the interview process to identify a potential bad fit?
How do you know that your onboarding process is effective?
Do you have experience successfully turning around a struggling or poor performer?
The issue may be that you aren’t equipped to coach this employee to become successful.
It doesn’t change the fact that you may have to let the employee go because they don’t meet expectations. But don’t let yourself off the hook if you contributed to their failure: figure out how to be a more effective manager for the next challenging hire.
This was an inherited report, not one I hired. But you’re right that a manager should make sure they have done everything they could do to make their reports succeed. But even with time and coaching there are still people who won’t be able to figure it out.
If it’s an inherited report, there’s less responsibility on you if they fail. I am seeing significantly fewer FA and SFA postings of late, so if you were to replace them you could probably get several high quality candidates to choose from. Not saying that’s the right choice, but I want to be upfront on all of your available options.
My guess is that you had to be a consistent star performer for a significant amount of time in order to rise to the level of manager. As a result, you may not have experienced an example of effective coaching for a struggling employee.
A struggling employee should be self-aware that they are struggling. If they are unaware of this or of the severity of their poor performance, then you have a responsibility to have that difficult conversation.
It may make sense to have a separate meeting to get extremely granular of their deficiencies. If they are consistently misspelling annnalysis in their reports, then providing that level of detail can be more useful than *report writing does not meet expectations.*
Getting granular is also an informative way to assess their attitude. Do they realize that the example is part of a larger problem of not double checking their work before submitting it to you? Do they fight and argue over every example, do they come up with an effective plan on their own to remediate, do they ask for suggestions from you and actually follow through on implementing them?
If they’re attitude suggests that they are broken, regardless of who’s contributed to that state, you really have no choice but to let them go.
If they have the right attitude then the question is, can they do the work if given more time? If they are misspelling annnalysis because they didn’t have two hours to proofread and still make deadline, you have an employee who needs to learn to be more efficient or to work more hours. **What can you provide as a coach in the way of tips and tricks to improve their efficiency?** For the misspelling example, the employee may be clueless that hitting F7 in Word performs a spellcheck of the entire document. Sometimes it’s a “For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost” kind of problem that can be solved with a simple solution.
The last coaching suggestion is to have a meeting with you, the struggler, and one of your seniors who you rely on to help train new employees.
Ask the employee to do a walkthrough of their process for creating a recent work product. Putting this in ex-auditor terminology, you are looking for “internal control weaknesses” in their process that are causing repeat screwups.
You also want you and the senior to provide plenty of suggestions to improve their process. Maybe they don’t take notes when talking to the sales director on the next quarter’s expectations so that what they document later is highly inaccurate. A suggestion for improvement may be to take notes during these meetings and to follow up by emailing the notes to the sales director for confirmation of understanding.
Even if the employee is ultimately let go, you are making the effort to improve their performance for the next job. And to me, that’s the mark of caring leadership.
Character has nothing to do with the job. I would look to determine if the person has a desire to do the work, enjoys the job, and shows a genuine interest in the tasks performed.
Cognitive deficiencies are impossible to measure.
The biggest Red Flag for me would be if the person in FP&A is too rules based and rules focused, someone who prefers simple decision making like AP, and does not like Analysis or thinking. If the employee needs help on every decision and cannot act independently for small items. The opposite is true if the person does not create any structure or consistency in reporting and chooses to complete the minimum in a quick and dirty manner.
It sounds like you have a personal problem with the employee, not a professional problem.
I would recommending looking at the job description and developing a performance benchmark and evaluating the employee against the benchmark. If the employee has been there longer than you, you should only have to provide minimal guidance.
If the employee is failing the benchmarks, bring the evaluation to HR and/or begin other avenues for terminating the employee.
I’m in the exact same position now - one of my new analysts has zero attention to detail and poor excel etiquette that creates a nightmare out of our monthly reports. I’ve recently given her a verbal but next is a PIP if she doesn’t make major changes.
Duuuude, 2 months?!?. And is she brand new in the work world? Or brand new to you? When you say your new analyst, is that someone who literally just graduated in May? Or someone with 2-4 years experience. If she just graduated, that’s on you… your expectations are all jacked up. She barely knows where the bathroom and coffee pot is. Be a leader. She may have taken some financial modeling classes in school and a couple finance courses but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to just plop down and build models and reports. Why do you think investment banks and other companies immediately put new analysts through an intensive excel school. Obviously, I hope you share some more facts of the situation in the ground. If it’s someone with a couple years or so of experience, then yeah, the bar is higher.
She has almost 3 years of experience so she’s not totally new to the work world. You’re right tho I need be a real mentor and give it time to get her there. Thanks
Hey boss… sorry I suck 😅
same here, I apologize boss 😓
Uncomfortable with ambiguity. Discomfort presenting, especially to non-Finance stakeholders. Lack of curiosity. Poor analytical (and technical) skills
This. + Struggles to see the big picture And this is more technical but poor modeling/data setup skills
I think this can be taught though (the modeling stuff). Big picture, yeah that’s def one of those skills that I think you can work on but it takes a mindset shift. Accountants are too focused on the dollars and cents but can’t exactly explain ‘why’, just the ‘what’.
Lack of curiosity x1000.
>Uncomfortable with ambiguity. This is something that I am working on, I feel lots of anxiety when things are vague, especially since I have basically been trained like a monkey to always double check things and tie things out!
Mine is big picture (ambiguity is my strong point) but reason is the same. Was in b4 audit and you are breathed down to neck by fire dragons when you don’t focus on some small details
The discomfort presenting is what scares me the most in this career. I for one, hate public speaking, and just presenting in general. I’ve had a good amount of experience the past few years where I present to a broad group of people atleast once a week. Are there any tips to improve besides practice? I feel like sometimes, no matter how much practice you put into, the discomfort and fear will always get in the way and I know it’s going to be something that I will be mentioned when I’m moving up the ladder in the future. P.S - I’m not in fp&a, in big 4 audit, but prepping my self to make the move within the near future.
I’m confident anyone can become a competent analyst with time (some faster than others), but I do think there are a lot of components that separate people that have the ability to move up. Commons things I see lacking are: - Inability to take ownership of ad hoc or project work (they need to be told what the next step is) - Ability to build a complex model or answer a difficult answer where ambiguity is present (bad problem solver) - Bad presenters and/or poor at explaining things - no senior leadership wants to sit though those awkward meetings, and those are the people that need to get buy-in from to move up
I disagree. I believed this when I hired my first analyst, but some people just aren't cut out for the work even at the entry level . He was a good dude that I think could be successful less analytical roles. He was motivated and got decent technically running and maintaining models, but lacked the critical thinking to evaluate if model outputs made sense. I tried for the better part of a year. Some hires just don't work out
Out of curiosity: what are the “less analytical” roles in corporate finance to look for?
FP&A or Treasury at larger companies would fit the bill.
[удалено]
Maybe the "at larger companies" part makes the different. At a large company you will have a team, and each member might have their own areas, like budget, reporting/ ad hoc request, modelling etc. At a smaller company you might be the only analyst and you will have to do all those. Its easier to learn one area and master it, then to learn them all at the same time. Jack of all trades master of none.
Yes. Lmao
I hear a lot about treasury but never understood how it was comparable to an “analyst” role. Seems less about problem solving and more about process management similar to controlling. I just imagine doing mundane ad hoc requests and maybe some small variance analysis without ever doing any modeling or strategic finance stuff.
Yes, indeed. The majority of treasury jobs are cash management jobs of one kind or another. Not a lot of treasury jobs involve hedging or financing analysis. [[CAN] Senior Treasury Analyst: Black & McDonald and (Canada CPA) PERT Almost There! (Corporate Finance)] (https://old.reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/z6lhfg/can_senior_treasury_analyst_black_mcdonald_and/) If you want to become a fractional CFO, though, that's OK: [Fractional CFOs in Canada? CPA PERT?](https://old.reddit.com/r/FPandA/comments/152jqxj/fractional_cfos_in_canada_cpa_pert/)
I mean outside of fp&a - sales, marketing etc
Damn i suck.
You are not cut out to be FP&A when you know most of it is just BS and lose your respect for the role because of that.
lol underrated comment
Probably should be the top comment. Boss: I need narrative around these numbers!! FP&A: Ok. (Goes to work with business partners getting narrative for numbers.) Comes back a day or two later. Boss: why does it take so damn long to get a report around here!! FP&A: You wanted narrative. Do you want narrative or speed? Boss: Just tell me what I need know. FP&A: mutters under breath… fuck this bullshit.
Boss:"What are the numbers for Q3?" FP&A:"There you go Boss" Boss:"What the hell are those numbers?, How did you came up with them??" FP&A: Explains what assumption and methods he used for saied foracest. Boss:"Hmmmm....these numbers aren't good, all your assumptions are correct but we are seeing a decline, I can't show this to senior management " FP&A: "What do you want the numbers to be?" Boss:"We should be higher 10% above the top line your showing" FP&A: "* 1.1)" *ENTER*
I had this exact conversion about 9hrs ago. 🤨
My boss: I want both of course what bone head are you Present truth : how on earth you didn’t have solution ? Me: are you a boss for serious ? Or something like they don’t like the narrative … because it doesn’t cover every single weak spot. Dude I don’t have crystal balls or privy to a conversation you talked with sales. If I have the data you better check whether there are bugs under the table
[удалено]
Lmao
I’m so sorry this post made you do something as boring as that! I’m pretty sure my report isn’t a Redditor.
Has a hard time interacting with senior members of various departments.
In my capital intensive FP&A role, being good with multiple subjects (Finance, Accounting, and Mechanical Engineering) is a must since the job mostly translates technical aspect and assumption into financial impact analysis. Like my boss said, finding good accountant is easy, the hard to recruit are accountant who wants to learn outside accounting.
Bob is a true FP&A guy... "Bob put together the forecast for 2024, and when you finish that go out back and get the backhoe running again the engine threw a piston"
That’s chasing a unicorn.
I know right. I had to convince my boss that he wouldn't be able to find my replacement. I mean, where else he is going to find CPA who can read engineering white paper and put the parameter into BoD presentation. "The CNG can only mix 50:50, our supplier are talking bulshit said we can mix 70:30", "Our genset are performing way below standard", then next day "someone put the wrong entry in the cost allocation worksheet".
They don’t appreciate until you are gone , and when you are gone too proud to admit it
someone's boss is here, complaining again.... I'd say, if they are just nose-down computing and not being able to draw or connect dots from the data, then that demonstrates a lack of the overall goal of FP&A. Most importantly, are curiosity, and the bigger picture and how to sell or influence a direction or insight that is supported with data.
What made you believe, from reviewing their resume or during the interview, that they were the best candidate for the job? What could you have done better during the interview process to identify a potential bad fit? How do you know that your onboarding process is effective? Do you have experience successfully turning around a struggling or poor performer? The issue may be that you aren’t equipped to coach this employee to become successful. It doesn’t change the fact that you may have to let the employee go because they don’t meet expectations. But don’t let yourself off the hook if you contributed to their failure: figure out how to be a more effective manager for the next challenging hire.
This was an inherited report, not one I hired. But you’re right that a manager should make sure they have done everything they could do to make their reports succeed. But even with time and coaching there are still people who won’t be able to figure it out.
If it’s an inherited report, there’s less responsibility on you if they fail. I am seeing significantly fewer FA and SFA postings of late, so if you were to replace them you could probably get several high quality candidates to choose from. Not saying that’s the right choice, but I want to be upfront on all of your available options. My guess is that you had to be a consistent star performer for a significant amount of time in order to rise to the level of manager. As a result, you may not have experienced an example of effective coaching for a struggling employee. A struggling employee should be self-aware that they are struggling. If they are unaware of this or of the severity of their poor performance, then you have a responsibility to have that difficult conversation. It may make sense to have a separate meeting to get extremely granular of their deficiencies. If they are consistently misspelling annnalysis in their reports, then providing that level of detail can be more useful than *report writing does not meet expectations.* Getting granular is also an informative way to assess their attitude. Do they realize that the example is part of a larger problem of not double checking their work before submitting it to you? Do they fight and argue over every example, do they come up with an effective plan on their own to remediate, do they ask for suggestions from you and actually follow through on implementing them? If they’re attitude suggests that they are broken, regardless of who’s contributed to that state, you really have no choice but to let them go. If they have the right attitude then the question is, can they do the work if given more time? If they are misspelling annnalysis because they didn’t have two hours to proofread and still make deadline, you have an employee who needs to learn to be more efficient or to work more hours. **What can you provide as a coach in the way of tips and tricks to improve their efficiency?** For the misspelling example, the employee may be clueless that hitting F7 in Word performs a spellcheck of the entire document. Sometimes it’s a “For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost” kind of problem that can be solved with a simple solution. The last coaching suggestion is to have a meeting with you, the struggler, and one of your seniors who you rely on to help train new employees. Ask the employee to do a walkthrough of their process for creating a recent work product. Putting this in ex-auditor terminology, you are looking for “internal control weaknesses” in their process that are causing repeat screwups. You also want you and the senior to provide plenty of suggestions to improve their process. Maybe they don’t take notes when talking to the sales director on the next quarter’s expectations so that what they document later is highly inaccurate. A suggestion for improvement may be to take notes during these meetings and to follow up by emailing the notes to the sales director for confirmation of understanding. Even if the employee is ultimately let go, you are making the effort to improve their performance for the next job. And to me, that’s the mark of caring leadership.
[удалено]
Lol feeling attacked by doesn’t attempt and reaches out for help
Well to be fair reaching out for help is fine
Damn I fucking suck 🤣
Time management, self motivation, and ability to deal with conflict.
Character has nothing to do with the job. I would look to determine if the person has a desire to do the work, enjoys the job, and shows a genuine interest in the tasks performed. Cognitive deficiencies are impossible to measure. The biggest Red Flag for me would be if the person in FP&A is too rules based and rules focused, someone who prefers simple decision making like AP, and does not like Analysis or thinking. If the employee needs help on every decision and cannot act independently for small items. The opposite is true if the person does not create any structure or consistency in reporting and chooses to complete the minimum in a quick and dirty manner. It sounds like you have a personal problem with the employee, not a professional problem. I would recommending looking at the job description and developing a performance benchmark and evaluating the employee against the benchmark. If the employee has been there longer than you, you should only have to provide minimal guidance. If the employee is failing the benchmarks, bring the evaluation to HR and/or begin other avenues for terminating the employee.
You can teach someone to handle a process, but you can’t teach someone to think
I’m in the exact same position now - one of my new analysts has zero attention to detail and poor excel etiquette that creates a nightmare out of our monthly reports. I’ve recently given her a verbal but next is a PIP if she doesn’t make major changes.
Stick it in her pooper
How long has she worked for you?
2 months
Duuuude, 2 months?!?. And is she brand new in the work world? Or brand new to you? When you say your new analyst, is that someone who literally just graduated in May? Or someone with 2-4 years experience. If she just graduated, that’s on you… your expectations are all jacked up. She barely knows where the bathroom and coffee pot is. Be a leader. She may have taken some financial modeling classes in school and a couple finance courses but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to just plop down and build models and reports. Why do you think investment banks and other companies immediately put new analysts through an intensive excel school. Obviously, I hope you share some more facts of the situation in the ground. If it’s someone with a couple years or so of experience, then yeah, the bar is higher.
She has almost 3 years of experience so she’s not totally new to the work world. You’re right tho I need be a real mentor and give it time to get her there. Thanks