Feel free to ask me anything about working at MBB or the PE recruiting process. PE recruiting was a huge black box to me so I'm hoping this post helps other consultants looking to move to PE.
Background: I am a second year BA/AC/A at MBB who started in fall 2019. I did not participate in on cycle recruiting in 2019 because I didn't get any headhunter outreach before it started (and most 1st year consultants don't get on cycle interviews anyway). I did a LOT of off cycle recruiting in late 2020 and 2021 before finally getting an offer from an UMM (latest individual fund $10+bn) that does not typically take consultants (after getting cut in final/semi final round interviews by two MFs).
Some thoughts and tips:
- Off cycle recruiting is a massive time commitment. Firms think you have all the time in the world to do their 4 hour case studies and modeling tests. Headhunters will pressure you to do a 4 hour case study on a weekday at 5 AM or at 8 PM -- these kinds of requests got ridiculous and I just had to put my foot down and ultimately the headhunters relented and let me do the case studies on weekends. The firms also take their own sweet time in moving through the interview process and ultimately extending you an offer. However, it was very helpful that we have all been remote for the past year because I could interview without having to fly to different cities and I could easily hop on zoom for a 30 minute interview in the middle of the workday. Also, I was very lucky because MBB Managers and Partners literally don't care if you are interviewing for other jobs - I was very open with my teams that I was recruiting and my teams made it work.
- My interview hit rate was way lower than expected. You would think that being at MBB with a top rating and great college pedigree would get interviews at most firms but that's not the case. You NEED to network with people at PE firms in order to get interviews -- 90% of the time, headhunters are useless in getting the interview.
- Working with headhunters is unpleasant. Ultimately they work for the PE firm, not you, and they will do things like:
- Pressure you to do late night case studies on weekdays
- Call you every day when you're in the final rounds of interviews to test your likelihood of accepting an offer
- Guilt trip you and put you down for not accepting an offer
- Ghost you after telling you what a great candidate you are for an opportunity (I know I know, this is to be expected)
- Ghost you after you've done 2-3 rounds of interviews with their client
Basically these headhunters just have to be managed
- Start practicing LBO modeling NOW. Maybe I'm just not good at it, but it took my many months before I got the basics down. When I first attempted to learn the MIN MAX debt repayment formulas I just gave up because I couldn't figure them out (and then I attempted again to learn them 5 months later and it finally clicked). It's a huge time commitment to learn how to do LBO models from muscle memory.
- The headhunters might miss you in their initial outreach (several headhunters definitely missed me) so YOU need to reach out to them to get on their email distribution list
- If headhunters ask you if you are involved in any other processes, probably say no. Definitely don't tell them that you are interviewing at a firm that's more "prestigious" than the one that HH is representing because that will make the HH think you may turn down the offer you get through them
From a consultant's point of view, there are four categories of PE firms
- PE firms that exclusively or almost exclusively take consultants
- Charlesbank, Invus Group, maybe Golden Gate?, maybe Sycamore?
- PE firms that reliably take multiple consultants every year, but also take bankers. Often, these firms will have a different interview process for consultants that is heavier on consulting-style cases and lighter on finance/financial modeling:
- Bain Capital, Hellman and Friedman, Advent, New Mountain Capital, Berkshire, THLee, Onex, AEA, Cove Hill, AVALT
- I would also put Permira here but they hire consultants into a one year value creation role (with way lower pay) and then promote them to the investment team
- PE firms that are open to interviewing consultants, but do not take them every year (basically, you have to make sure your modeling skills are on par with those of a banker and the interview process is a level playing field - no special interviews for consultants in contrast to the firms in group 2):
- PE firms that will not consider consultants:
- KKR, Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle, Vista, Silver Lake CD&R, Kohlberg, Thoma Bravo, Providence LOTS of others
Details on Interview processes:
- Charlesbank: standard consulting cases
- Invus: standard consulting cases, though fwiw I found them difficult, even coming from MBB
- Bain Capital: first round is an Excel test (consulting-style though, no financial modeling) and a consulting-style case. Superday is 5 consulting style cases focused on ROI
- Hellman and Friedman: Not quite sure but have heard it's a lot of conceptual questions on what makes a good business (though bankers have a different process)
- Advent: Varies by group and by year - have heard very different things from my friends who interviewed here. I have heard of:
- Very behavioral/deal focused interviews with a difficult modeling test (Healthcare group)
- Intense technical interviews combined with verbal consulting-style cases (Generalist on cycle)
- Very behavioral interviews with a paper LBO (Tech group)
- New Mountain Capital: Behavioral interviews with a case study about two businesses that doesn't require financial modeling knowledge
- Cove Hill: Consulting style case followed by financial modeling test (though doable by a consultant) followed by 4 hour case study where you're given a CIM and have to make a presentation about the business
- AVALT: Lots of consulting-style cases with some finance concepts (though doable by a consultant)
Compensation (most recent figures I have. May be out of date):
- Advent: 150K + 150K
- NMC: 110K + 110K
- TA Associates: 300K all in (depends on how many deals associates source per year)
- Cove Hill: 200K + 125K
- Invus: 265K all in
- Permira: 175K for value creation year, 300K all in once you move to investment team
Headhunters (ranked):
- CPI: up up and away #1 for consultants. Has basically all the top consultant-friendly funds. Initial meeting took a deep dive into my case experience, motivations for doing PE, and what kind of firm I'm looking for. Prep hard for this because it's the most in depth HH meeting I had and they cover 60+% of the PE firms you would want to work at that take consultants. They seem to have a CRM system but clearly are not using it because I got asked for the same details by different CPI recruiters lol
- H&F, Advent, NMC, AVALT
- Ratio: Lots of pretty good opportunities for consultants. Weird initial meeting - it was conducted by an intern (I think?) via FaceTime. Got weird vibes at first but they have good clients.
- Golden Gate, Capital G, Cove Hill
- Amity: Easy initial meeting. Did not ask me to walk through one of my cases. Just asked about my motivations for PE. Was pretty annoying that they wanted to get on a call for every single little update that could have been done by email.
- Charles Aris: Time consuming initial meeting and time consuming follow ups when you want to be considered for a role they are recruiting for -- I guess they really want to screen candidates before they put them in front of their clients.
- Charlesbank, Invus
- Dynamics Search Partners: Easy initial meeting, no case walk through. Struck me as internally disorganized (seemed like they didn't have a CRM)
- Apax, GI Partners
- Gold Coast: TPG, other tech MMs on the west coast
- Bellcast: Seemed very professional to me but they only represent MM and LMM firms.
- Oxbridge: Easy initial meeting where they ask you to name firms you're interested in so find out who their clients are beforehand and name them. Represents MM and LMM firms in cities in that are not NYC/Boston.
- HSP: They have some great clients but most of their great clients only take bankers. Initial meeting took a deep dive into one of my cases.
- SG Partners: Don't remember this meeting but I still get their emails.
