Based on what i have heard from friends one year older (i just graduated), PE recruiting seemed pretty brutal across the board for BB, EB, and MM first year analysts.
Just was wondering whether this year was especially brutual, or if it is simply a continuation of increasing competitiveness year over year.
Specifically interested in the middle market / lower middle market scene.
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It's brutal every year. Past 2 years have been more competitive than usual for a couple reasons: 1) banking class sizes growing, but not as much of an increase in PE associate seats, so more competition 2) recruiting main cycle earlier and earlier -- so bigger disparity (just by chance) across analyst experiences and preparation up to that point. The further out recruiting is pushed, the more this is given a chance to normalize.
I think this is spot on. I know myself and several of my peers were caught off guard by how early on-cycle recruiting kicked off this year, which was earlier than ever before, and that forced a lot of MM/LMM firms to start recruiting a month or two earlier than they usually do as well. That combined with a larger pool of IB analyst candidates made for a pretty grueling process. To me it looks like a trend that's only going to continue.
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