How Managing Challenges Has Influenced a Senior Investment Manager's Career
Vasant, a Senior Investment Manager, advises social science students struggling with detail-orientation to develop "coping mechanisms," such as to-do lists for task prioritization and checklists for specific tasks, highlighting the applicability of these methods across various professions, demonstrating the value of structured approaches even in a detail-intensive field like investment management. These strategies help manage the "million different things competing for attention," ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
Overcoming Challenges, Achieving Goals, Practical, Actionable Tips, Problem-Solving
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Vasant Mehta
Senior Investment Manager
Global Investment Management Company
U.C. Berkeley
Johns Hopkins University : M.A. International Economics and European Studies
Political Science, American Studies
Finance (Banking, Fintech, Investing)
Finance
Honors Student
Video Highlights
1. Develop coping mechanisms for challenges like lack of detail-orientation. Don't ignore weaknesses, instead create strategies to overcome them.
2. Use to-do lists to track tasks and prioritize responsibilities, revisiting them daily and weekly.
3. Create checklists specific to tasks to ensure all key aspects are considered. This process can be adapted to various jobs and industries beyond investment management.
Transcript
What advice would you give students with a major in social sciences who are not detail-oriented about finding their first job?
We all have our challenges, no matter where we come from. There's always going to be some kind of soft spot. If this is your particular challenge, don't get discouraged.
What you need to do is not ignore it, but come up with coping mechanisms. So how do you go about that, and what are some potential coping mechanisms?
One is maybe a to-do list. I tend to forget things sometimes, particularly because there are a million different things competing for my attention at any given time. It's impossible to keep them all in one's brain. So I do to-do lists religiously. I have a to-do list of what's on my task list, and what the priority is to get done first.
I'm revisiting it daily and certainly weekly in terms of what's going higher up and what's coming down. It's never a zero list; there's always something there. But the to-do list helps you keep track of what's out there. If you're having challenges with details, a to-do list can be very beneficial.
The other is related to that: processes in play. This is maybe a bit more specific to investment management, but if you're looking at a company and trying to look at a business, you can have certain checklists associated with that. You can probably have this in any other job as well.
So you can think about what are the key things that it needs to do in this particular situation. It's a slight variation on the to-do list, which is looking at tasks. The checklist is more specific to the task at hand. Once you're going into a specific task, what are the things that you need to look out for?
I think these are very useful. Like I said, I use them in investment management, but I think the same can be used across other jobs and industries. They are definitely a way to help address this point.