Q&A: 1st year Equity Hedge Fund Analyst straight out of undergrad
Hi guys, I'm a 1st year analyst at a L/s equity hedge fund based in NY metropolitan area with around $400mm AUM in a very small office. I got this gig straight out of undergrad (target school, not the best GPA) after 3-4 internships during school.
Is it remotely possible to land an analyst role there if not coming from banking or pe? 1.5 years out in corp strat.
I'm not sure what you mean because I landed my job here as an Analyst WITHOUT full banking experience. I had 3 buy-side internships during undergrad (2 of which were part-time, 1 summer internship), applied to more than 300+ firms, interviewed for about 30-50 firms, and was able to finally get a full time position after undergrad. I was unemployed for about 6 months after graduation, the time which were spent on applying to firms and interviewing.
In the end, I'd say nothing is impossible if you just put in enough effort into it
How were you able to find 300+ firms to apply to
It's not remotely possible if you're the type of person that doesn't read the very short original post.....
Thanks for the sarcasm. I was assuming his 3-4 internships in college were either ibanking or buyside (which they were based on his comment), so that is why I was saying is it remotely possible without coming from pe or ibanking.
What's your comp and hours like?
My comp is base payment of 80,000 paid bi-weekly, with discretionary bonus paid out at the year end. Because I haven't had a full year worth of time here, I'm not sure how my bonus will be like (assuming it will be more than 20-30k).
Hours are very nice, I try to get to work at 8am and leave around 5, with an hour inbetween for lunch. It is very rare that I stay later than 6-7PM.
What does your day to day look like thus far? Are you actually expected to generate ideas or are they more getting you up to speed by working on already existing models/continuing DD on existing/fleshed out positions, etc?
to be completely honest with you, it hasnt been long since I've started FT at the firm. I'm currently in the phase where I takeover the stuff that my senior analyst has to do (from basic stuff like ordering stuff for the office to looking at 10Qs and Ks and filling out basic free cash flow model. I get to the office by 8am, and leave around 5-6pm. I come in and read the news on the market and relevant companies for a few hours, get an hour break for lunch, then help out with my CEO or my senior with whatever research they're doing.
How did you get into investing, how did you show them your passion?
Cheers.
I got into a target school (top-4 Ivy league) as a CS major. It turns out that I wasn't having that much fun with the major in freshmen year, and went into despair mode b/c i didnt know what I wanted to do. My peers kind of influenced me into the industry shortly after. I did not know a single thing about the financial industry, but heard that it was the way to make the most $$$, which got me interested. Since then, I've completed an internship every single year throughout college, and got a FT after looking desperately for months.
Is "top 4 ivy league" just saying Columbia or am I reading too much into this...?
Hi,
From your experience in internships and current job are data skills very sought-after and would you say that being a CS major helped with the recruitment and/or the actual job ?
Is there room for a more fundamental guy with some data/programming skills or is being an R/Python guru better?
What is the typical background for investment people at your firm? (e.g. IB, AM, etc.)
most backgrounds are sell side analysts at non-BB but named firms but do only have a few people in the firm (
I was also wondering, what is the research process like there?
What time horizons do you guys target and what does the promotion track look like by years?
time horizons: up to 2 year for long and up to 1 year for shorts
small fund so title doesn't really matter.
Does the firm normally hire people straight out of undergrad? And have you heard of other firms doing so? From what I've heard it is pretty rare.
Yeah. I've seen even big firms (like AQR) or other firms with more than 1bn AUM hire my friends out of undergrad. These were kids from top 5 ivy league with almost perfect GPA so it was pretty clear. I had to dig really hard and work really hard on my interviews to land full-time with my mediocre gpa (
In your opinion, what kinds of things should a student do in college to have a shot and landing a HF position out of undergrad?
read my comments above to see what i did ^
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