HF Case Studies: Outsourced Work?

yes, many vicious PM (usually the young ones) do exactly that, not sure if they can really make money by doing that

In my experience, no. Case studies are names we already know. Give zero credence to candidate work. 

There is no shortage of idea generation or reports from the sell side, apart from internal screens. 

In my experience, here are some signs for fake HF recruiting:

1) the process is taking too long: case study after case study, taking several months etc

2) HR is never involved: the PM did not let the receptionist know about the interview and let you enter in back-door/side-entrance not the front-entrance

3) your gut-feeling: you just feel that something is not right or the PM's behavior/tone looks strange, he/she does not seem to be interested in knowing you better

4) PM's requirement for the role is unreasonable: for example, require the candidate to have experience in multiple sectors, asset classes, markets etc

5) the interview time and date looks strange: Sunday afternoon

Tangentially related, but I’ve heard that a good number of funds will always have an open analyst role just to source ideas.

bump

Confirmed - I mentioned this on another thread, but this is the exact situation that's panned out with my friend who's trying to make a jump to buy-side. Sometimes you'll see a posting that will ask for a cover letter, resume, and 1-2 page idea sent to some iteration of "[email protected]"; I'd venture to say that these are empty mailboxes that are simply set up to aggregate ideas. I tend to (still) believe that the best way to land roles in the HF space is to network, network, network. 

Haven’t heard of this in my personal exp

The answer is: it depends. The above posters covered the subject matter, so here's some incremental info.

If you're applying for a junior position or you have 1-4 years of experience, unless you're at rentech, it's probably a legit job process. No one respects what juniors have to say about a stock, usually it's the worst part of the interview for the employer since we have to listen to you ramble on a stock we know 10x more about.

If you're in a more mid level to senior role and you're getting asked to do case studies on your own stock ideas or portfolio, then that's a red flag. Try to figure out how long a position has been online and if they are giving you an algo/stock that they would know more about, or you would know more about. If the latter, that's another red flag.