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Hi Everyone I have joined FIS one month back only, I am just Okay with my current project. I see here everybody is leaving FIS and telling it's not good. I have changed Infosys within 7 months.Now, I don't want to switch this early. Can somebody tell me about the good points, pros in FIS. I really want to change my mindset so that I feel happy here and can give back something to organization.FIS Global
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Why is the ad community in London so cliquey?
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So we are f’d at 2 ?
How do I check my utilization?
Bain & Company Can someone recommend a good starting point on how to go around solving case interviews? What frameworks should I follow? I am kinda new to case interview and want to develop skills to solve them. Any books, online sources would be really appreciable. Deloitte EY-Parthenon Strategy& McKinsey & Company Boston Consulting Group Bain & Company
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Most firms have a color scheme or a style deck that you can follow. And yes you’ll typically get better with that stuff as you do more of it.
My go to’s are typically dark blue and navy fill ins with white font for tables/graphics and dark blue and navy font for bullets.
Deciding the script font is also important. Rule of thumb is to follow precedents set by your firm. My client however asked for everything to be in Century Gothic.
Op I would suggest mocking up a slide on a blank piece of paper and walking your manager through your ‘vision’. This helps mitigate churn and aligns your objectives
Flaticon.com is your new best friend
Googling flaticon. :-)
Been in your shoes OP. Worked with a very demanding manager who was also the most visual person ever. Read articles about how to make slides look better. Use company template, try to keep the color scheme to 3 color across the entire deck. Align objects, look at graphics online, save the ones that you like. Look at what's posted on knowledge exchange site in your company, note what you like and what you don't like. Ditch shadows and glow. Forever. Keep not more than 7 objects on 1 slide (this is brain science). Make sure your whole deck tells a story. Delete notes and comments on final version. If you use some other graphics - make sure you have the right to do so and include the source. Use dividers. Include the purpose of the document on a cover page. Proof read. Proof read again.
Will I just get better as time progresses? Frustrating when it comes time to send my managers something that I know it’s not the best I can produce but all I know how given my lack of experience
One of the hardest things in consulting is knowing what good looks like. From experience, folks are often figuring it out as we go. You can do a couple things- very regular checkins to see if you're on the right track, and ask for examples of what good looks like. The manager or SM should have some deck from the past to work off of. 90% you dont have to start from scratch.
All tips for resources above are good. That said, “make this pretty” is not great feedback especially for a new joiner. Ask your manager what he means- better alignment? More logos? Different layout? They need to coach you on this front, it’s part of their job
That I spend way too long going thru old decks that have been sent for inspiration
Put yourself in the shoes of the client or whoever is going to read your slides. How would you want the information presented. What flow makes the best sense. How do you eyes naturally progress through each slide. Certainly leverage what has already been done but bring “you” to it as well.
Look into Slidedocs by Nancy Duarte. Also, you don’t just have to look at old decks for inspiration. Any document (or website) that you like the look of can give you ideas—just mimic what you see. All it takes is looking at something and thinking “hmm, I kinda like that.” I often think about decks as a single printed brochure—the whole “booklet” has to look nice as a cohesive unit rather than a bunch of disjointed slides. Align everything obsessively. Everything. Left edge of table to slide title, header text to body text, etc. Put less space between things that go together and more space between things that don’t go together. Make sure Text in an object has enough breathing room - shouldn’t crowd the edges of a box and should have enough line space to easily read. You can also get away with 1 or 2 font sizes per slide. Download EY ProEx and use the slide library. And if you’re also looking to edit content, be on the lookout for people using a way too many words and not being clear. If anyone ever has to say “well by saying X, what I really mean is Y” then they should just be saying Y to begin with
Nounproject for icons. Makes slides look less wordy and easier to follow
Alignment goes a long way towards making slides look clean. Make sure everything is starting at same position ie. 3” from left side of slide 1” from top. Make sure titles are floating around, same with slide numbers. Eye dropper for color and format painter are also two of your best friends
As an SM when I receive a PPT draft that is ‘not pretty’ here is what’s wrong with it:
1. There is no coherent flow. The first slide should tell the whole story and then be supported by the following slides, in order. I should be able to tell by your first slide what the title and flow of the next slides are going to be
2. They didn’t know their audience. PPEDs and clients have short attention span. Make it punchy and relevant
3. Not enough pictures/ graphics. No one wants to read long paragraphs
4. Use internal margins for text boxes
5. Divide the slide into boxes that encapsulate key ideas. The organization of the slide should make it so the reader is following your train of thought to conclusion. Top of slide should be your punchy message, middle box is supporting data, last box is recommendation based on supporting data
6. For proposals, make it clear what the baseline recommendation is and what the extra ‘options’ are
7. Be consistent in spacing and margins!!!
8. Use lots of pictures/ graphs/ process maps
9. Download Visio (not the basic one, the advanced one). Great library of images and makes creating process flows so easy. Just call the EY help line and they’ll walk you through submitting the request
I hate that advice too but it's definitely something you get better at with time and practice. Essentially you have to build up your own mental inventory of quality slide structures to be able to pull them out at the right time.
Huron 1 makes a great point about trying to understand the aesthetics of who you’re working with. Eventually you’ll develop your own preferences and someone will be looking at your old work to conform. People like it when you “tell them back to them"
And nounproject, iconfinder, et al are great. But don’t just use icons for the sake of it. Icons are like any other visuals schemes (e.g., color coding) and should have meaning. It’s great if you can repeat an icon to mean the same thing throughout
Also we have a really nice add in EY Pro ex that makes life easier (but potentially might make your PPT a bit slower). For me, it’s very worth it
I have a folder called “good powerpoints” that i save from every incoming company email. I then proceed to borrow those templates/formats for my own client work
Not necessarily the font and stuff rather when I’m given data and told to put it into process flow charts or something and “make it pretty” i just don’t know where to begin
Go to our discover site, keyword search and find some decks to leverage
I asked for other old decks to look at for reference