I’ve heard deal experience is the number one thing for PE recruiting, but I’ve also read that lots of analysts don’t get much deal experience due to bad dealflow or unlucky staffing. Can people share their experiences with this? Is it common not to close any deals in your two years? I feel like that would suck
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I don't think I was that lucky with my staffings -- I was staffed on ~5 deals during my 2 years, but one of them died, I was brought in near the end for a couple of them (these deals had already been in process before I hit the desk), and one was really small (so it was a quick and simple process without much work). So I think I really only got to see one deal from start to finish as the main analyst staffed on the project, which I guess is not that impressive. But I don't think this is that uncommon, deal processes can drag out and if you're only there for two years, you might not get to see a lot of deals in their entirety.
For PE, I think it depends on when you decide to recruit. If you do on-cycle, it'll be so early in the year that deal experience won't play that big of a factor. However, if you decide to recruit later, it will definitely matter more. But that's not to say you need to have closed deals to recruit successfully -- you can gain good experience and learn a lot even if you don't end up closing.
That's really helpful. Thanks, dude. Would be cool to hear from other current people in PE, too.
Bump
Deal experience is different from closed transactions. You need the former, not the latter, for PE recruiting. If you're not getting deal experience at your bank, there are bigger problems.
To answer the question, I closed 11 deals (around $110bn in transaction volume). Worth the caveat that I was an Analyst when M&A was very hot and was involved in a few whales.
Wow this is top-tier. BB or EB? 2 years?
BB M&A, 2 years. Bank I was at leaves most of the client service work to the coverage teams, so the M&A group mostly works on live deals exclusively with a bit of pitching here and there. I ended up getting involved with some very large transactions, and you always had 4-5 deals you were working on concurrently.
Thanks for the input.
2 M&A deals but we didn't do much M&A modeling. My firm is also pretty not known so don't' know how releveant they will be for PE. I'm sure a lot of analysts esp first years are getting screwed because of COVID and won't have any deals closed to talk about because they died or are stalled
People call you a troll, but I appreciate you when you contribute, Richard. :D
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