has anyone ever found an INTERNSHIP at a PE?

im pretty sure you should be able to find something if you cast your net wide enough. look hard and look at smaller places. im a freshman and i've been granted an interview at one (not in NYC, but in another very large northeastern city). if you've literally contacted every imaginable place you can find in nyc that you'd like to intern at and none of them will give you a chance, then look in other cities. that's all i've got. good luck.

Blackstone and KKR are two of the notable PE firms that definitely take summer interns from undergrad.

Blackstone and KKR only recruits at HYPW and you need a 3.8 or an internal contact right? Also, has the process for big name PEs already ended?

KKR takes undergrad interns? That's news to me. When did they start? Do they have full-time hires as well?

Posting on PennLink for summer interns. I'd assume they take full-times too if the former is true (which it is).

Lett, you're slightly exaggerating.

And yes, the process for big-name PE is mostly over.

definitely happens, but mostly through connections. I have a friend who's going to Barclays LA whose backup job was a $3 billion AUM PE firm for a summer internship. Lett is slightly exaggerating, but it is a pretty good idea of how selective Blackstone is with internships. They have taken people from Umich and Berkeley for the PE group i kno.

Don't respond to this tool's posts (or any of his other 27 screen names):

ananano32
bigbilly2312
bceagles57
Lett20087

I call him out on all his posts so that he ends up deleting them, which makes me happy. What kind of tool makes a billion user names on an internet forum so he can validate one identity's comments from a different identity...

There are still a lot of smaller boutique PE firms recruiting at the moment.

I actually set up a friend with an internship at a small PE firm... think it was only $200-300MM under management, but hey still a legit summer internship.

He got lots of FT PE offers, mostly from MM places like Audax. Not sure how well he fared with KKR etc.

My advice: use your alumni network and go for smaller PE firms that still need summer people. Many local places will still hire you because they always need interns to handle the day-to-day tasks and relieve senior people of work.

For summer analyst positions, Blackstone only hires from Wharton and Harvard. This coming from a friend who was an SA there last summer and is returning for full-time. For full-time, they do broaden then net slightly, though, from what I hear.

WHMD - false. They hire SAs from at least one other target that I know of.

I'm at a midwest semi-target and my friend got a SA job at Blackstone.

In their PE division?

I've heard of people with (undergrad) internships at Blackstone PE, Audax, Macquarie, and Goldman PIA.

I know firsthand that there was recruiting that last year (through job postings at Wharton/Harvard or special hires) for 1-2 undergrad hires at Blackstone, Audax, Cerebrus, Silverlake, Goldman, and Bain Capital. All in their respective pe arms.

I have heard there are no internships / undergrad hires at Apollo,TPG,KKR in their PE groups.

clarification

goldman pia has a few slots every year.

don't know how you found people at audax since they just started their internship this year (summer 09).

bain cap does not recruit for the pe arm. only for the ventures arm.

all this can be confirmed by others at targets who've seen these postings. etc.

Goldman PIA will be hiring its first analyst directly from undergrad for the first time in a few years. They do not have a few slots every year.

Sorry, I meant Audax for first year this time. Grouped it in.

Bain Cap was looking for one intern for the pe arm. i spoke directly with a recruiter after seeing a posting in the Penn school newspaper last year.

i think only some of the mega-PE funds offer SA/FT positions at analyst level. many BB have PE groups but very few hire undergrads. GS PIA, Leh Merchant Banking in London etc do hire undergrad. another route is to get into IBD and be transferred to their PE group.

i was an BB IBD SA but got transferred to my BB's PE group because of bad market conditions. we all know JPM is moving a lot of people around, and 1/3 of my class got moved. luckily i got a break and got PE.

Of course you can, I got 2 of them myself.

A good idea also might be to look at emerging markets. Slightly easier to get given that you are at a reputable school, plus really exciting, high-growth investments.

You can definitely get into PE. I actually got an offer from a PE fund that manages about 2 billion dollars or so in New York. Didn't take it though. I also know Blackstone recruits at UVA and UT-Austin (all the BBs recruit there as well i think). Not sure about KKR though. I know some PE firms that recruit at UF but they are all local and are not that large, i.e. AUM 300-400million. I also know CS merchant banking hires three or four every year, at least that's what the HR lady told me when i went for my interview.

How difficult is it to say, get a FT offer at a small-mid sized PE firm in NY, with just a MM banking internship under your belt? (from a well known MM) IE - jumping to PE straight from UG

I want to know this, too. FT in PE after undergrad?
Is it possible? Also does it make sense to go straight to PE, without banking/consulting experience?
In both funds I worked with, most partners and associates seem to be from banking or consulting background, and they actually suggested the same path to me.

indian-banker, i'm curious now, they said CS/DLJ Merchant Banking hired 3-4 per year? When I asked a post-MBA associate at DLJ Merchant Banking, he told me that they'd experimented with hiring undergrads but had canned the experiment a few years ago.