2025 PE Recruiting (Post On-Cycle)

Just wanted to make a thread here for 2025 PE Recruiting, post on-cycle madness.

Given how ridiculously early the on-cycle weekend was this year, I'd wager that the percentage of us that didn't do on-cycle is much higher this year compared to the past. I could be wrong, just making an assumption based on common sense and the low number of people I know personally who have an offer right now. I also fall into this category.

If you fit this bill and are pretty confident that PE is what you want to do post-banking, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what the recruitment process will look like for 2025 roles going forward. Do you think that top MF/UMM firms are pretty much out of reach now, and that we should set our sights on MM/maybe low-tier UMM funds? Or do you think that given the insane timeline of this year's process, most of the top funds still have spots open?

If you're in PE right now, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too, and when you think recruitment will pick back up. Considering we're in the "off-cycle" now, not sure how intensely we need to be prepping for interviews that may come our way -- and whether to expect some sort of second wave soon or settle into the slow, long-haul, marathon grind of off-cycle recruitment.

Any thoughts here would be appreciated. Just wanted to get a collection of input here and hopefully make this a resource for anyone who's thinking about the same questions. As the process unfolds, if anyone has updates about which firms are interviewing/have seats open/filled, that'd be good to know too so we can get a better sense of the landscape.

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Prospective Associate Co'2025 here - from talking to headhunters and peers, there likely will be another wave around Labor Day followed by normal rolling off-cycle processes (Oct-Nov/break until New Year's). I've seen some sporadic info sessions/"getting to know candidates" emails through some HHs recently.

Lots of teams are OOO during Aug for vacation so I wouldn't worry if you're not hearing anything for a couple weeks. Also would note while a lot of MFs shut down their interviews with seats left to fill because of how unprepared kids were in July, definitely think there were enough hardos to mean a good amount of those spots were taken. I would be curious to hear other perspectives though I was more interested in MM to begin with anyway.

 

Anyone who didn't fill all their seats in 1st wave will have to resurface...but hard to say who that is. Definitely think only a very small portion of firms (and probably zero UMM/MM) have no spots left

 

Yea idk what ur going on about, headhunters still control everything

 

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