Networking with the buyside

The honest truth is that success in this is highly dependent on the candidate.

If you have the type of profile that would get any kind of traction at all in the standard formal recruiting cycle led by headhunters, networking with private equity associates can be productive because they'll make sure that when you come across in the headhunter screen, your resume gets pulled.

That then turns into the people on the other side of the table interviewing you walking into the room having heard your name from one of their team members, which makes it an easier conversation by taking your nerves down a notch and creating a (however much) warmer atmosphere, which means you'll probably be in a better mental state and thus perform better.

It does not work (on a replicable basis) if you're well outside the norm of what a fund is looking for in a potential hire. The stories where someone with a 2.9 GPA from a non-target who worked three jobs outside of the industry and met some guy at an event somewhere and spent six months following up with him before landing the dream role of his life as an associate at a fund are not something you can expect to duplicate.

The unfortunate element here is that there's a bit of an unspoken phenomenon where some of the more 'prestigious' firms have the mindset that someone reaching out cold is the distinct sort of person they don't want, because the type of person they do want would (a) show up in the headhunter process / (b) be immediately socially proximate thanks to prep / college / family connections and thus able to get a casual or 'natural' introduction.

I ran up against this myself. All my early relationships and career steps were built on effort. I worked hard to learn things, get in touch with people, and demonstrate those learnings. That turned off some people, and it was a more common thing the more 'prestigious' the bracket of firm I found an entrée to.

Turns out there are two kinds of people in life. Those who value hard work because they are intimately familiar with it from having been through it themselves, and those who value hard work as a purely abstract or intellectual construct.

(There's nothing wrong with being in the latter category, and it doesn't mean such people don't have a strong work ethic or are incapable of working hard at a task. It's simply a difference between having to make sure your life doesn't fall apart and just having to make sure you do well enough at whatever happens to be in front of you.

A great analogy would be the Montana ranch hand fighting for his life when his horse broke a leg and he's caught by three wolves versus the Managing Director doing an hour of Equifit boxing instruction. One day later, both know what sweat feels and tastes like: one has a far graver depth of knowledge though.)

I closed a few doors on myself before I identified this and made the appropriate adjustment. There were a whole bunch of people who didn't value how hard I tried to demonstrate interest.

The best advice for networking for your first job in private equity is to talk to (a) the analyst class above you at your current firm / (b) your friends from school who are two or more years ahead of you and have already started their private equity job.

(a) is tough now because the recruiting process is so damn early that you don't really have a strong relationship with any of the older analysts within the first 10 weeks where you can ask them for intros to people they know (e.g. former analysts from the group who were the older class when your current older class had just started) with enough lead time before the formal process kicks off in November.

(b) is the best because you don't even have to ask your older classmates for an intro to their place ... you can just ask them for a coffee chat with their banking analyst class. This takes the onus off them to help you with their current firm and gets you half a dozen intros instead.

For anyone who does come from the social stratum I described previously, absolutely reach out through your dad, uncle, pledge brother, etc. for that natural intro.

I know a guy from a top-three banking group who got himself a seat at Warburg by doing this within 24 hours of discovering he didn't get an interview through the headhunter process. That social capital got him the interview, and whether he got the seat through that same capital or his interview performance is irrelevant: he got the job.

Good luck.