I'm currently looking at the exit opportunities from a Big Four Transaction Service Group, specifically Financial Due Diligence. I wanted to see the possibility/ likelihood of landing a job in a middle market private equity firm. If you are unfamiliar with Financial Due Diligence, we create Quality of Earnings reports (up-to-date, normalized EBITDA), debt/ debt-like reports, and NWC analysis. My days are spent in excel, scrubbing, analyzing, and formatting data but I do not do any modeling. I have one year of experience in the Big Four (in a major market), with a CPA and masters in accounting. My masters is in a top 10 MSA program and my GPA for both grad/ undergrad was above a 3.8.
I realize almost all PE firms require background in IB/ experience in modeling. I am planning on buying a training program to get enough knowledge to pass the entry modeling test in the PE interview.
If anyone has any insight, advise or comments that would be great.
bump!
Try to network in directly, if that doesn't work, try to network into investment banking.
You will get asked about deal experience, financial modeling, valuation, if you know CIQ or some other platform, and what you do at in your job. Will have to do a modeling test.
Ruskii, Thanks for the information. Would there still be a modeling test if I'm specifically targeting a growth private equity firm (basically half VC/ early stage private equity investing). If there is what would it be on? I'm assuming that lower/ mid-market early stage growth private equity firms don't use LBOs to finance as they usually don't buy the entire company and therefore the overall capital investment is significantly less.
Yes. Especially if you have no modeling experience. They'll need to know you understand the concepts and can do it. You could try a lateral move to IB first and then on to PE. You'll be behind by a year or two (vs analysts that started IB right out of college), but who cares? In the end it doesn't matter. This is probably the most "tried and true" way in
Exit opps for Big Poor:
Good luck and Godspeed child
Not true. I went Big 4 --> IB --> PE
Agreed it is not common but it is not impossible
As a TS person, I'm interested in exit opps as well, however I'm coming from a non-B4, middle market TS group.
I was in a similar group, and I now work in CorpDev at a high-growth F500 company.
Very slim I would say. You aren’t the ideal candidacy with that background. Frankly the work that you do is outsourced to outside consulting firms so that’s not really needed.
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