Questions about HF recruiting

I'm a sophomore in college who just accepted an offer at an EB. My ultimate goal is to work at HF, but I don't know much about the recruitment process – so I apologize in advance for these dumb questions:

  1. Do I need an MBA, now in 2022, to be competitive for a HF position? I'm majoring in a nontraditionally finance/non STEM academic field in college. I go to H/W/P/S.

  2. Would I need to network with HFs like how I did for IB? How would this process look like and when should I start networking?

  3. How does the recruitment process for HFs look like? Do they all typically begin at the same time like how investment banking worked? When should recruitment typically begin prior to my start date? For example, IB recruiting started for me in the winter/spring of 2022 for my 2023 summer internship.

  4. How does the ranking structure look like for HFs? I.e. for IB you start as an AN > AS > VP > MD. At what age would I typically be for an MD equivalent in HF?

Reasons for me to pursue HF over PE are myriad, but like others on this forum have said, I like being in an intellectually stimulating atmosphere with really smart people that I can look up to and learn from. And the pay is also obviously a factor. Thank you!

 
Most Helpful

1. No

2. Yes

3. HF is unstructured. HF hires when they need (if they raise a big pot of money or someone left, etc.)

4. Ranking structure is: research analyst -> senior analyst -> portfolio manager -> god (god = CIO / founder). This is a performance-driven profession: If you are good at the HF game, you can become a 30 under 30 type. If you aren't that good or aren't that passionate (you need to be both), you will not be in the industry for very long. If you have to have a number: typically, should take you 3-5 years from analyst to idea-generating senior analyst, and then another 3-10 years to PM if an opportunity comes up. But as you see, the variance is big and somewhat in your control (how hard you work driven by how passionate you are) and somewhat not (it's a path-dependent industry, you can get unlucky and not perform for first 2 years on the buy-side, and how the market regime is like for the next cycle). 

 

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