First Year Associate Troubles
Hey Folks! I joined a MM fund last year and there has been very little to do in the past few months. I asked my immediate seniors to keep me involved but nothing substantial has come my way.
I am really struggle to come into work when there is nothing much to do. I have tried sending the MDs potential ideas but no traction. I seem to be stuck in a loop where I don’t have deal experience and no real mentorship and guidance to correct it. What can/should I do? Is this common? How was your experience in the first year?
Offering some outside perspective on this. There are a few potential explanations that I would urge you to think about:
1. The firm has deployed most of its last fund, so they're not in deal mode. The flip side to this is that your seniors "look at" every single deal under the sun just to give you reps, which is not a great situation either. You end up working crazy hours for nothing.
2. Your team just doesn't trust you to do any real work. This one should be easy to sus out - are other associates busy?
3. On the mentorship point - your immediate seniors might just not care about you or mentorship. The unfortunate reality is that your development and overall experience in PE is highly tied to the quality of your VPs / Principals. If they are checked out, you won't learn anything.
MM PE firms are a dying breed anyway. If you are not getting what you need, lateral asap. Careers are too short to waste even 2 years at a firm you don't like.
Just curious, what do you mean by this?
I have doubts about the health and future success of MM PE firms (~1-5B funds). I can not think of one firm in that size today off the top of my head that is not dealing with fundraising / LP issues brought on by poor investments
This isn't a unique situation as the last year has been extremely slow deal-wise. Need a better understanding of whether your firm has been looking at deals and they're just staffing the other associates, or if it's truly just a firmwide slowdown (which wouldn't be surprising given the state of the market).
I am the only associate on the team. It’s a weird construct there is only one other associate who has a 3 years of experience more than me. This is one of the other reasons I’m not able to gauge if it’s just me or a wider issue!
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