People on this forum constantly talk about how important it is to be in the top bucket in your class for PE recruiting but my question is how do recruiters and PE firms even know that you are top bucket compared to bottom bucket? Can people just say that their top whether or not it's true
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HHs will get in contact with senior bankers in your group (assuming you're BB/EB) and they will inquire about who the better performing analysts are in the office. A lot of the times on-cycle happens before bucketing even occurs for bonuses, so they may not be able to understand who is "top bucket," but they will have a gist of who are the rockstars and grinders.
But depending on the firm(if its not an analyst program) wont some senior bankers want to keep their best analysts. Wouldnt it be in their best interest to keep them on and avoid talking to HHs so they dont try to get them to leave?
Most senior bankers won't see it that way. First off, they know that 90% of analysts are gonna be gone after 2 years. They actually want their analysts to go to the best PE funds that they can get into. This is because not only can the bank build better sponsor relationships if their analysts are placing at quality PE funds and are moving up the ranks, but this can also bring in future revenue for the bank. Additionally, the bank can better its reputation by having analysts place at top PE funds, so it creates this cycle of stronger sponsor/bank relationships, more revenue, increased prestige, etc.
Yeah, they don’t really know. People can say they call MD’s in your group, but the process is so early at this point that’s not happening. Many kids see like 1 deal and need to recruit. HH’s aren’t getting a ranking of analysts in a group from MD’s that’s insane.
What does happen—before you get hired, it’s not uncommon for an individual in the PE fund to ask a banking employee if the hire is solid. Heck this happened for my internship like 5 years ago even. The world is small, so if you go interview for some PE fund, odds are one of those people is an ex-analyst or worked on a deal with someone at your current firm. Why they don’t just lie and say you are shit to keep you? Well it’s their professional reputation, that’s a scumbag thing to do, and they might want you to go to a good firm to be a future client. They also know as someone above mentioned, 90% of analysts are going to leave it’s part of the deal.
In my EB, the PE firms and HH gets a list of ranking from our team on request - not sure if this is unique to our firm. I used to think it is by word of mouth from MDs
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