SVS #3: The Job Hunt
Hey guys, sorry I missed my post last week, but I have a valid excuse…I made the jump to the buy side! That’s right – I’ve got a much-needed week off, and then I’ll be diving into the thick of things.
Why did I make the move after only a year? Well, it’s a combination of 4 factors:
- Getting contacted by recruiters makes you feel special! I started to get pinged by recruiters about six months into my first year. I respectfully declined their invitations to chat at first, but once I had a decent amount of transaction experience under my belt, I started taking their calls. I threw them all into Excel, kept track of who I’d spoken to and when, and tabled the idea of transitioning for a while. Around March, however, I heard through the grapevine that a number of firms had started their on-cycle recruiting for summer 2013 already. I realized I needed to get my ass into gear.
- In banking, you are the bitch in the transaction, and it gets old fast. In a transaction process, you are not only at the mercy of your client, but you are also at the mercy of every buyer. This can become especially irritating when, for example, you enter exclusivity with an international buyer and your data room fucks up all your uploaded documents. It is much more fun to be one of those interested parties calling the shots rather than the middle man sitting on conference calls at 3am.
- Finding a job while you are already employed is a VERY different experience than doing so while still in school. Ironically, you discover once you fully commit to finding a new job that it is very much like a sell-side M&A process. You’re basically selling yourself to all potentially interested parties, and more often than not, they are ALL interested at least to the point of having a 1st round interview. Unlike in undergraduate interviews, you have a honed skill-set and relevant work experience to speak about. Interviewers are interested in the transactions you have worked on, and they expect you to have a degree of industry knowledge that is an order of magnitude higher than anything you would have had while still in school.
- The grass is always greener on the buy side. I was recruiting for summer 2013 positions, but one of my options was for an immediate start. The interviews with that particular firm advanced rapidly, and I would say that that is reflective of the interview process in general. I went from starting my recruiting process in mid-March to accepting my offer last week – absolute craziness how quickly the process went. Also, things get really interesting when you negotiate your compensation and have multiple interested parties. In that vein from a pure compensation standpoint, making the jump now was a no-brainer.
All in all, it was a wild ride filled with many “dentist” appointments, “dinners” with potential clients, and sick days, but in the end I feel it will have all been worth it. Feel free to PM me with any further questions about my process.
Comments
buyside...PE, HF? middle
buyside...PE, HF? middle market, mega-fund?
Thanks for sharing
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^ interested as well
^ interested as well
Apologies, I should have made
Apologies, I should have made that clearer - its a middle-market PE fund. I'm being brought on as a 2nd year analyst to help round out the tech investing side of the fund given my background in tech M&A (the fund has a generalist focus overall). In terms of the other places I was interviewing, it ran the gamut from growth equity/late stage venture capital, to a few random hedge fund opportunities.
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Congratulations man! So it
Congratulations man! So it started Mid march and went till the end of May? How many rounds were there? How does it break down compared to campus recruiting (for instance: 1st stage--> On campus, then office visits and finally decision)?
Funkfreed: Congratulations
Congratulations man! So it started Mid march and went till the end of May? How many rounds were there? How does it break down compared to campus recruiting (for instance: 1st stage--> On campus, then office visits and finally decision)?
It depends on the size of fund you are interviewing with, but I found in general that there are multiple rounds and they tend to be far more "fit" focused. For example, the fund at which I ended up accepting an offer had a phone interview with a principal, then a phone interview with a VP, then a superday, and then a final interview followed by drinks, etc. Most of the other funds followed that format - interview with junior person, interview with principal/VP, interview with partner(s). Nothing too technical anywhere, although I did get grilled a bit on industry knowledge. There was less of a focus on my ability to model rather than my understanding of the drivers behind the model and how they factored into the bigger picture of whether or not a company would make a good investment over a particular time horizon.
I would say the biggest difference between campus recruiting and finding a job when you're already employed is that you don't really have to "prove" yourself as much - you breathe, eat and sleep finance every day so your transaction experience speaks for itself (so long as you aren't exaggerating on your resume - and they WILL grill you on that)
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What made you choose PE as
What made you choose PE as opposed to HF? Could you describe the HF interviews? I am interested in moving to a HF from banking.
Were you M&A product group or Tech coverage with M&A deals? just wondering...
Thanks for sharing and congrats!
Congratulations. Thanks for
Congratulations. Thanks for sharing the story, want to hear more.
A lot of people do certain things to add days to their life. I do things to add life to my days.
Congrats, very interesting to
Congrats, very interesting to read about.
How does the compensation
How does the compensation compare? You mentioned that it is higher but could you give a range or the percent increase.
Answering the questions as
Answering the questions as they came:
-Honestly, the HF interviews were very early stage. My primary focus was to land something in PE/VC, so I wasn't gunning for the positions as intently as I was for the PE/VC ones. Additionally, and this is a point everyone should consider if considering a buyside jump, you have to realize that while the sky's the limit in terms of HF compensation, once you hop out of the principal investing world, it is difficult to jump back in. To clarify: the position I was looking at was for the alternative investments arm of a fund of funds - ie: making VC-like investments through a subsidiary. So if, for example, I would have wanted to jump back into PE in the future, it would have been difficult to spin that fund of funds experience and make it relevant to principal investing. This was a point one of my VC buddies raised to me, and it certainly made sense.
-I was at a boutique bank focused solely on technology Mergers & Acquisitions
-As for the compensation question, it will be higher in terms of a total compensation package. Directly comparing year 1 at my bank to year 2 (year 1) at the PE fund, it's about a 60% increase. Compared to what year 2 would have been if I had stayed at the bank, the increase is more in the neighborhood of 30-35%. The key here that I would emphasize, however, is how important it is to negotiate. It's not a matter of trying to squeeze as much as possible out of the firm, but rather knowing what you're worth and what your alternatives are. I basically outlined my situation highlighting what my comp would have been if I were to stay at my bank, what the range was if I were to accept an offer for summer 2013, and said meet me halfway. The process was obviously more involved than that, but it was a fun little exercise, and I am more than pleased with the comp package.
Hope this helps!
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