Trending Content
Career Resources
WSO Free Modeling Series - Now Open Through
May 31, 2024
9 Free Financial Modeling Lessons
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
+Bonus: Get 27 financial modeling templates in swipe file
Up!
It's going to be an uphill battle. In general, you have the best odds for private equity after school if you did it before school. There are some exceptions to this, but from what I've seen the odds for that are best at Harvard and Stanford.
I think this will be a function of your networking. No surprise there. To do it well, look for alumni of your school who were also military-to-MBA. Email them now and introduce yourself, get on the phone, and see if you can get some kind of 'pre internship' where you spend 6-10 weeks kicking around the office from June to August before starting school.
Your options are going to be a lot better if you can demonstrate anything to show you know the basics of the private equity game. This is a bit unorthodox but it's not impossible. While it's most common for people trying to switch within finance, I know several people who were able to do this while coming from technology (FANGA), non-profit, MBB, and general corporate backgrounds.
From what I can tell, that military community is fairly small and very supportive. You ought to be able to get decent traction, especially by leaning on the fact that you had a strong analyst experience. Your best bet is probably with someone who did military to MBA to banking to private equity. That won't be common to find, but it does exist, and the benefit is that you have all the same ingredients, just in a different order.
One easy thing would be to reach out now to the career center to ask them for introductions to alumni that fit this profile. A lot of people fail to utilize that office until they get to campus. There's nothing preventing you from leveraging it earlier.
Also begin reaching out to all the alumni of the school's student club for veterans you can find. Be careful to not inundate the current MBA students who are leading it, you don't want to come across as eager-beaver before the first day of class.
Lastly, don't underestimate the power of brute force. Your school's general alumni roster is going to be hard to exhaust and you never know how people will react to your story. You can get great reps for pitching yourself in future interviews just from half-hour phone chats you begin doing now with alumni. If you're going to Wharton, you're obviously in the best position given the breadth of the school's alumni network in private equity.
Lastly, keep things in perspective. In general it's hard to move to private equity as a banking associate, but if there is ever a statistical trend to counter that, it's with military guys. People are understanding. Don't feel like you're striking out if you can't get private equity and have to return to banking after school.
Good luck.
Thank you so much for this detailed response. A follow-up question if I may. Do you know if big PE firms like Blackstone or Apollo typically have PE summer internships for MBA students or veterans ? A path I am considering is trying to get a PE summer internship during my MBA and then join FT. What is your thought on that ?
I've come across LinkedIn profiles for summer VPs at Warburg with no prior PE experience so they definitely exist.
I know Blackstone has one. That's the only one (MINT - Military Internship program) I'm aware of, which makes me believe it's probably the only one that exists. Intuitively, a big firm would publicize the hell out of an opportunity like that because of the PR benefits it brings.
Light Googling says that TPG, Carlyle, Apollo, and KKR joined Blackstone in hosting a hiring summit in 2016 and a smaller group did in 2017. This one seems to be geared toward their portfolio company needs and thus isn't what you're looking for.
The best way to explore this is to contact your career center and the relevant clubs on your campus, the veterans one and the private equity one.
Yes, that's the exact thing I'm recommending. It's mandatory, you will not get a job for after school without doing an internship. It's effectively impossible to intern at one place and get a full-time offer somewhere else.The place you intern is the place you will end up, unless they don't want you, in which case you're sore outta luck. The exceptions you may find on LinkedIn are sponsored candidates who worked at the fund before school and can do something interesting or fun for the summer because they know they're returning to the same employer after graduation.
There are some rare cases where someone interns at one fund and goes to another. It will be at small shops, and it's usually a scenario where someone begged, borrowed, or manipulated a social or family connection just to fill the space on their resume and it was explicitly understood there was no long-term option.
Moral of the story, you have to do an internship in order to make it after school. I could have been clearer in my prior comment - I assumed you were operating under this assumption and was going a step further to recommend that you add an internship for the summer prior to matriculation. It's a differentiator that's becoming increasingly common, especially for candidates trying to make the move to the buy-side without full-time experience in it prior to school.
If you spend a few hours looking through the current classes of HBS and GSB on LinkedIn, for example, you'd see this. Find one who interned at a great fund or who lists the 'PE/VC' club or whatever, then jump through all the 'people also viewed' profiles on the right. You'll see many of them have an internship listed for the summer before school began. Some will have a winter one too for the gap between terms.
Accidentally double-posted.
If you’re still in the military take advantage of skills bridge/hiring our heroes etc.
Nothing tips the scales like working for free.
Military who went to top MBA here -- it's going to be very difficult, but it is a possibility for you because you have the IB training, so you won't be starting from ground 0. You also already have some exposure to finance and PE, you know that it truly interests you, and you can use that to drive you to really hustle. A lot of people will really respect your service, but at the end of the day, PE shops just need junior people who know how to do the work (e.g., modeling), and don't need hand holding. Networking for military is really difficult in PE, because there just aren't many vets in well known PE firms, because vets were not able to do the typical pre-MBA background because they were in the military: top school->IB->PE->b-school. It's dumb, and a self-fulfilling prophecy, but that is what I found.
As said above, do anything you can do get pre-MBA experience and then get a summer internship, and you will have a shot! People will give you a chance because you're military AND you actually know how to model, 'speak finance', etc.
Thanks for the encouraging words. When you were doing your MBA, did you find if PE firms often come to your school to recruit for their internship/FT job ? Or is it more like you have to reach out to people on LinkedIn and do the legs work to get in touch with them ? I know IB/Consulting is a lot more structured, not sure about PE.
I know someone who did IB (GS/MS/JPM) post MBA business schools">M7 MBA and then went to a MM PE fund so it's possible to do it later but yes it's going to be an uphill battle from what he tells me
Voluptatem ut eum ipsa error qui voluptatum quis quasi. Ut asperiores incidunt esse sed et placeat et. Iure ut occaecati esse facere provident qui vero. Aut esse molestiae ut non.
Sint id necessitatibus blanditiis commodi molestiae aliquam. Expedita eligendi nemo aperiam quia tenetur consequuntur.
Quia rerum et eius voluptas. Sit aperiam aliquid qui id esse modi alias. Inventore et sit ducimus repellat. Velit praesentium sunt quasi adipisci. Facere corrupti enim et facere repudiandae alias optio. Nesciunt quia rerum temporibus atque et.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...