Debt Fund/Direct Lending Recruiting
Hi all!
I was curious to learn more about the debt fund or direct lending recruitment process, if it's on the same timeline as PE, and what to expect in the process. Currently, I'm at a BB group that specializes in underwriting leveraged loans (mostly sponsor deals, acquisition financing, and recapitalizations), which includes a lot of work in exchanging and negotiating grids and credit documents with the client. It doesn't involve any modeling. Can anyone please shed some light on where I would stand or what the process looks like in general?
Having gone through one credit fund interview, I will say my experience was as follows: - HR phone screen: standard behavioral stuff surrounding why you want to be there etc - Phone interview with Principal: Asked 60% behavioral (our conversation ran longer than expected so I suspect that is why) and 40% technical (types of private debt, digging into my credit mindset as an investor, 5 most important things when looking at a private debt issuer and why - Superday: ~2.5 hours, 4 people. Surprisingly only one of technicals (though I suspect anymore than this and it's diminishing returns), other three were behaviorals, and an oral case study of an LBO debt financing ie. given a specific industry and a number of metrics, what could a potential deal structure look like, what kind of debt would I use etc etc - Case study: Fairly simply debt paydown model with IC memo then presenting it (got dinged on this part)