Portfolio Analysis Group

Got the interview opportunity from the 2-day externship program hosted in January. Had the opportunity to apply to 3 business areas (compared to the 2 that reg applicants have), and chose Private Credit in SF, NY offices + Portfolio Analysis Group in Newark. Started with back-to-back 20-minute first rounds for all three offices late Jan ~3 wks following externship. First rounds were 90% behavioral with 1-2 technicals, Private Credit one featured three-statement questions while PAG focused on market knowledge and current events. Remaining questions were all resume-related or "tell me about..."-style. Moved to superday for SF PC and PAG.

Scheduled superdays for early Feb, same week, three 20-minute sessions with a Senior Assoc, Analyst, and Director respectively, for each office. Both superdays took the fit-behavioral-technical structure with one 20-minute session being dedicated to each section. More "tell me about..." and similar behaviorals across all three sections. Technical section for PC consisted of a mock "case study" analyzing risk for a particular business from the bal sheet perspective, then considering how to quantify risk using data; PAG technicals revolved around basic fixed income knowledge such as duration, convexity, and yield curve.

PGIM has one of the best work environments I've seen in finance. One key word to describe everybody would be "chill," in the best way possible. Analysts and associates know their stuff, but are also lax and efficient with the way they work. For PAG, Days are <10 hours from 7-5PM, with untouched afternoons and evenings bar days when the market goes to shit. PC sees much more volatility depending on whether it's a deal week or not but also get to travel extensively and take good breaks inbetween deals.

Career progression is heavily openings-based (average time to PM is ~5-8 years), but given a big recent effort to restructure and combine the entire investment wing, opportunities could be much more plentiful in the next few years. Analyst training program is highly structured, and often known as one of the best. 3-year rotational program for PAG produces well-rounded analysts that get poached by other HF's. Rumor has it that BB's (GS/MS) sends people to PGIM for training, but unsure whether this is true.

The tradeoff for all of this, of course, is pay, which sits at median for street. SA pay isn't great but FT pay improves significantly since bonuses scale fast with tenure. Also not a lot of perceived "prestige" the same way that all the large BB's and EB's have, if that matters to you at all.