Special Situations / Distressed Recruiting

I mean it's going to be the same process with headhunters reaching out and giving you opportunities to interview. Some funds I've seen hire out of banking, although most roles I've seen have people who have either worked previously at a distressed fund / have done a couple of years of PE before. The fund I work / worked at, and the funds I know of, mostly had people with the IB+PE / IB+previous HF progression. I was lucky to land a seat while skipping a lot of those steps, so it's possible to land a seat by skipping steps in some way I guess. As with other recruiting, being at a top group / fund would obviously help. However, knowing the right people will help more and might make it easier. I know people who jumped from mid sized funds to Anchorage / DK / Centerbridges of the world because their PM put in a good word and they had good networks (mine was similar to this).

Re interviews, it's very important you know why you want to do distressed / special sits investing. It's of course very relevant now so just walking in and saying that you got interested because of the environment isn't going to cut it. Have a case / idea you can discuss well - don't need a formal pitch but just some general situation you know or can talk about to show that you understand how to evaluate and talk about investing in the space. That will help you move on to the next stages. I did get some technical questions but those will usually be easy - you can do those well if you read and understand moyer / have previous IB / PE / investing exp. Hardest part would be case study - you have to show you can actually turnaround a case and come up with some recommendation. Again, focus is on how you think about and evaluate opportunities - what do you think about the biz / assets? would you buy now? why? If not, why / when? what are the risks / catalyts? upside / downside? You need to be able to justify your answers with conviction.

Happy to answer any specific questions but at the end of the day it all comes down to you being able to show interest in distressed / special sits, talk intelligently about the opportunities you see, and do well on the case study.