Do On-cycle PE for downside protection?
Incoming FT at top EB. I’m interesting in pursuing a career in public markets (L/S, LO, Credit) and frankly don’t think PE is interesting at all.
My dilemma is that I don’t know if I want to take the risk of skipping on-cycle to try to land a publics seat. Let’s say I don’t land anything, then i’m screwed bc all the good UMM/MF seats are gone and then i’ll have to take a MM PE seat.
On the other hand, I can recruit on-cycle and land a good PE seat and just grind it out for two years before moving to publics. In this scenario I’ll likely have the option to recruit for more HF seats since PE is a requirement for some of them (especially tiger cubs).
Any advice on what to do? Super stuck right now.
Go drink a beer man
thank you for the advice intern!!
Non-US based so sorry if this is wide of the mark advice, but what’s stopping you from doing on-cycle recruiting for PE so you have an option, and then recruiting for a public’s seat too? Best case you get an offer from both and you can choose which to renege on, worst case you get nothing but have a lot more interviewing experience? Just my 2 pence
idk, i don’t think i want to renege on something and burn any bridges. when it comes to on-cycle firms usually give out exploding offers, so I don’t think i’ll have much time to think about it.
why don't you first decide what seat you really want on the public side? Do you want to go do equity? credit? SM / MM? Top tier LO seats won't really hire you out of IB or PE directly anyways.
Sounds like you are too indecisive alone what strategy you want to pursue, let alone what type of seat. Maybe spending a couple years in PE will be good for you so you can figure out what to do
Plenty of people go directly from IB > HF. Likely won’t land an offer during the first month or two of the job like oncycle for PE but you can recruit for HF directly.
If you have no interest in PE why would you want to add a step to your process? Even if you don’t land the perfect HF seat seems easier to move to a better seat once you have some public market experience vs PE
headhunter i spoke to recommended to do PE before i try to pivot to a HF bc many firms still require PE experience. Correct in that I don’t like PE and you might say why try to do it, but my response is that I’ve generally been pretty risk-averse and that’s why I wanted to start out in banking anyway. If I have the PE experience as a fallback then let’s say my pod/firm blows up, I’ll still be fine. Idk, I guess if I want public markets I need to be more willing to take risk, but it’s currently hard to change that mentality. I’m def still trying to recruit for publics, but would also like something to fall back on.
Recruit on cycle and get a UMM/MFPE job so you have good fallback / pedigree if it doesn’t work out. Then, recruit for hedge funds once they start (usually mid-end of Q1/ early Q2). Doing this will prevent you from having to stay a 3rd year in banking (if u stay a 3rd year, ull be competing w MFPE assoc and have an uphill battle explaining why ur not in an investing role alr, u can j say u only wanted hf but it’ll always be a question). Most HHs don’t care as long as ur not alr signed to their client (in fact many will reach out to incoming PE Asoc asking if they’ve changed their mind). J remember, not every hf is better than MFPE (both in terms of career and learning opp).
thx, helpful
appreciate this advice, thanks. this is what I will likely follow through with.
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