Hey guys, so I'm looking at making a career change after about 6 years as a semiconductor engineer. Recently got a masters in finance from Harvard extension - ive been told repeatedly that PE will definitely not work for me as it is hard to even get into PE directly with awesome grades and an IVY league degree with GS internship. So I'm focusing on boutique PE firms investing in ~50 million or so revenue companies. My question is - how much more of a chance will a person with no finance Work experience like me , but finance degree and lots of engineering experience, have in a boutique firm? Anyone with similar experience working at a new (ish) and small (ish) PE firm
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Pretty much the same - going to be almost impossible. You'll need more than just an internship. You don't even have an MBA. Your best bet is to get a FT job at an ibank to get real transaction experience. Even then, the odds are slim because you'll be older and will be competing against people that have a lot more actual PE experience.
Never say never, but you're facing a tough uphill climb. The best thing you can do is work hard and network like hell.
Currently interning in the lower middle market (~50M in revenue) and from what I've seen a lot of the PE guys still have traditional backgrounds of top school, IB, Pre-MBA PE, etc. even if they're not doing big deals. Would be next to impossible for you but I have seen some guys at lower middle market firms break in with non-traditional backgrounds like yours. The only thing is they're usually much older and have 20+ years of experience in an industry (a lot of engineers) and join as operationally-focused guys. Not sure how interested you are in PE but I suppose this could be a viable (and really long-term) way for you to get in.
by operationally focused do you mean in areas like portfolio analytics and risk management or do you mean IT jobs within the PE firm? When I've talked to people from PE firms, they always say engineering is great to have these days but I guess they always mean software and coding skills and I'm a hardware engineer :/
We have Operating Partners at my firm who broke into PE after 15-20 years of industry experience. They all had some type of M&A or venture experience when they were in industry roles however, but never worked in banking or PE previously. These guys have operational experience running a business unit, startup experience, P&L responsibility etc.
As mentioned, it will be difficult but certainly not impossible. I see a lot of non-traditional backgrounds when I look around at other small shops in my area.
Engineering skills are fine but it's not going to trump transactional or modeling skills. You need to have that as a baseline. You have none so your first step is to go get some.
Small PE is the same as MM PE, which is the same as MF PE. A deal is a deal. Firms aren't going to hire someone with zero experience just because they're small.
Boutique PE (Originally Posted: 03/24/2008)
I was wondering how a two year program at a boutique PE firm looks compares to doing two years at a BB?
Any insight would be great!
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