Point72 Recruiting is AWFUL
I’ve read in some other P72 threads about terrible experiences with their BD/recruiting team, but thought “they can’t be that bad.” Oh boy was I wrong. I recently recruited for 2 roles at P72 and am amazed how shit their recruiting team is:
First role was for a public seat. Was invited to interview with the PM. Scheduled the call FOUR times over 2 months that all got CANCELLED before being ghosted. 2 of the calls they didn’t even give me notice - i.e., I showed up to the interview and had to email them as to why the PM wasn’t on.
Second role was for a different investment team. Completed the case study, which took me 10-15 hours, turned it in, and then was ghosted by BD. No follow up. Not even a rejection. Like why waste time inviting people to case study just to ghost them and not even do the debrief????
Absolute shit
Yeah this sounds familiar... least positive experience I've had of interacting with any of the MMs.
I’ve found Balyasny BD to be pretty bad too
also had a not so great time with BAM
ty for saying this cause BAM treated me v poorly as well, guess im not alone here.
FWIW just went thru the ringer with one of the MMs for a PM role - case/portfolio/many convos and got ghosted at the 11th hour, so sounds like it is not just a P72 issue. Good times.
Similar experience - did many round and was ghosted twice after very long processes. Would not try again lol
Simply ghosted? Nothing further?
My friend went through the interview process recently. Not sure if this is completely accurate, but he told me based on his experience that they cast a wide net and send that same case study/model test to like 100 people and will maybe select 1-2 out of that, effectively wasting the time of the other 98 people. They just have zero regard for people's time, think my friend just got an automated message afterward too.
P72 came to its success primarily through highly successful and well planned insider trading. Not a knock on them - it’s hard to pull off as successfully as they did it as a large institution. Its execution that matters and they did a great job with it. However it’s worth noting thst you might be a shitty person if this is how you succeed.
Note that given their historical success was primarily through improving the science of cheating they actually weren’t really among the all time greats per se.
It’s not surprising this firm would hire ahitty people is it? In my experience I have never had an interview with a single person who worked a meaningful time at p72 who I did not think was a horrible person.
There’s one person who I thought was ok who previously worked at SAC that was ok but his dad was a senator so I mean he comes across as a nice (honestly sincerely the most down to earth pm I ever met) since I guess comes w territory but generally most of them are among the most horrible humans I have ever met.
Doesn’t p72 have the rep for best culture of the big4 mm? Surprised to hear
Don't understand the MS given how my friends in MM do agree it tends to have some of the better culture out there. Ofc pod to pod will differ, but across the firm P72 does have a better culture/more flexibility (HIGHLY DEPENDS) relative to the rest of the 4.
That said, their SA to FT Academy Associate to Analyst thing is a bit of a joke, and their IPD team has lowkey been hollowed out. The teaching staff have impressive credentials on paper, but quite surprised at how they kept their jobs with how poor the turnouts from recent classes have been.
As a business, market netural L/S equities is difficult to scale, and it's kind of a "duh" point that their first few classes were objectively pretty decent because they were small too. When recruiting keeps getting shifted earlier in the hunt for talent, how on earth can you reliably weed out the cream of the crop/those that are actually suited for the job.
Not to mention an 8 weeks internship and a 10 month training course def doesn't prepare the average college grad (even if they are good) for the rollercoaster and shit show that is public markets - not a diss against it as I don't have the intellectual capacity, but it's one that's highly dependent on the right temperament, attitude, mentality, hard work, talent, and a good dose of luck. How many people actually do have that?
*Objective source and neutral standpoint because close friends (my banking class etc.) are in the industry, I'm not part of public markets
Same awful experience with P72.
Much better experiences with other MMs albeit limited sample size.
You don't get it, they are just keeping optionality. Gotta generate that alpha at all times. True geniuses, leveraging the massive asymmetry of power between employer and prospective employee to their advantage, ah that is one to marvel at. Oh to be one of these masters of the universe.
Why don’t you lick their nuts harder
Someone’s sarcasm alpha is quite low
Did 3 cases, 10+ interviews, was supposed to meet somebody from senior mgmt as the final round…and when I showed up at the office I was told something came up and the guy needed to reschedule. Little peeved (but didn’t show it) bc I used a dentist apt excuse at work so had to uber there and back for no reason to make the timing work. Was then ghosted for a couple weeks (I would reach out once a week for updates) and then they told me they weren’t hiring for that role anymore.
Not saying they owe me a job, but they owe people who have put in 100+ hrs into a process a base level of respect — which I didn’t get.
What do they owe to you? You’re trying to use them to make more money bcs you can’t come up with a way to do so on your own. They’re trying to use you as a cheap asso/jr analyst assuming you’re from the sellside. Never amazes me how you guys think ppl at corporations are your friends and are going to give you some human decency when they have no use for you. It’s how the process goes in most places and ppl are still lining up to potentially work there so nothing’s gonna change.
What a terrible take and depressing way to go through life. The absence of negative repercussions isn’t a green light to treat people like garbage.
It’s possible to express frustration while not being in denial of corporations having your best interests at heart.
If you call someone in to for an interview, of course they owe you. It’s just human decency!
you sound like a tool with very little self respect.
I had the same thing happen to me. Their BD team really misrepresented the process and totally wasted my time. The PMs and analysts I spoke with all seemed really respectful of my time, so I'm not really sure what's going on here, but the BD team needs to be replaced. Would be extremely cautious of the information you give to them during the process.
Got the exact experience as OP's bullet no.1. Completed a week-long case and the debrief was rescheduled four times (twice the PM just didn't show) till more than a month later. Took another month+ to get dinged. Painful painful...
Pretty sure the lesson is don't spend too much time on the case. Straight to the point.
Finally someone with common sense
hope one day all those who are seeking jobs just wake up and stop tolerating all this bullshit
it's just dehumanizing
People will go through 4 additional years of schooling and take on huge amounts of debt for a job, and you think the line is drawn at a 20 hour case study?
Just look at how they treat their Academy kids and that’s all you need to know.
My roommate was in the Academy… they fired two people two months into the job. One of them was from the UK, they revoked her Visa for failing an accounting test (she was an Oxford classics major). Sickening behavior imo.
I did the summer academy around 3 years ago, didnt take return and can confirm what OP said. Absolutely miserable place to be (academy, not p72). Some teams there are great but either way never, ever worth sacrificing a year of your early career for. Honesty think a sell side seat would teach you more than the fake theses and models Jean and Jaimi have you build. It’s a complete joke
I was in the Summer Academy a few years ago, and I recall some rather rigid requirements - such as not being allowed to copy sell-side models and needing to hard-code everything entirely from scratch. One of my batchmates was even called out for this and had to redo their entire model.
Given the placement rates over the past couple of years, I must say, in hindsight, I’m actually relieved I didn’t receive the return offer.
This is pretty wild but felt - so many unprofessional recruiting in HF
At one point some years ago their cubist side was notorious for predatory quant PMs who would just hire quants from other firms to get their alpha code, then keep running the alpha after firing them. I heard the firm's management eventually caught on though and banned solo quant PMs.
By "banned solo quant PMs" do you mean Cubist does not have pods consisting just of one PM without any analysts etc.?
Yes that is my understanding, but not sure. So a PM cannot operate with zero analysts at any time.
Anybody heard of stories of academy trainees who dropped out successfully pivoting to different funds? All the ones I know left the industry after
bump
LOL - I have so much to complain about here - am someone that went through the Academy (but will not disclose anymore to not be doxed. Am not in the industry as of now)
It's quite cathartic to see some people sharing about their Academy experiences too. Like I'm not the only one on crazy pills. Sure it's a good firm, good pay, good opportunity, but it leaves so much to be desired especially in terms of what they are selling you: a fast track route to an investor seat. Unfortunately, there's more fluff and filler than an IB MD pitch sometimes.
Back to your answer: Not in my limited knowledge - most just do something else entirely, but if their career is optimised for ER (or not relevant to other fields like IB/PE), the transition ain't really happening. The overlap and skillset and how competitive the IB/PE pools are make it such that it's not possible.
For US: I only knew 1 person who successfully made it to another MMHF, 1 (or 2, can't rmb exactly) more that had the opportunity to re-recruit and went to ahem C ahem.
And I had friends that knew the others in global offices too - US seems like paradise relatively - in Asia there hasn't been a summer intern to analyst for the past 5 years? No clue if that changed but heard it relatively recently. London's been fucked as well and headcount always been low.
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