Advice For Pursuing A Career in PE
Hello,
I am about to graduate high school next month and I’m extremely interested in personal equity, specifically as an associate. I am very aware that this is a very sought after field. Do you have any advice for an incoming college freshman? I am planning on going to UCI to major in economics. What steps can I take to prepare my self early on and is there anything that you wish you’re really told at this age? I know that I have a long ways to go, but my goal is to gain as much exposure as possible! Looking forward to your response!
and why do you want to pursue PE?
I find PE interesting for a variety of reasons. From my understanding, private equity allows you to take more of a hands on approach. You are able to see the full spectrum of business operations and combine that with the financial data. I also find it appealing that you are able to make a solid contribution to the company and, ideally, be a meaningful part of their their long term success.
there are few/no internships for undergrads. You need to do banking first. I cannot imagine anyone at a PE shop giving you any real work until you know the basics. No one has time to train you on the basics. Internships at the MBA level post-banking are competitive enough. An undergrad wanting an internship is going to require an act of God.
And if you don't know that PE stands for PRIVATE equity, then you're miles from being ready to actually do the job. Like literally you're years away - which is fine, because you're just in high school. But when I asked you WHY you wanted to be in PE you didn't have a rock solid iron clad reason. You didn't even know what PE stands for. Which means someone just told you "PE is cool" and you want to jump in with both feet. I suggest instead you start with reading books about it for a few months before you even start thinking about an ibanking internship, which is for sure what you need to do before getting into PE. I posted a PE reading list on this site before. Please start there.
Step 1: Don't call it personal equity.
Next steps: Read up a bit more about the industry. Your view seems to be formed by someone telling you it's great to an associate in PE. Your career goal should be based on things that interest you, and then you can build a path towards it.
The goal shouldn't be a level (eg. associate), it should be an industry or specialism. A career in private equity is not focused on seeing the full spectrum of business operations and combining that with financial data. If you want to do this, it sound more like wanting to be a COO or CFO of a company.
When students, MBAs etc. ask me about private equity, the key driver I tell them to have is to do private equity if you want to be an investor in businesses. Generally, you will not be helping companies operations (which is a smallish part of portfolio monitoring in PE), your focus tends to be more on finding investment opportunities, running the deal process and preparing/running the exits.
Thank you for the advice! Is there internships opportunities for undergrads? Or is it a field that requires a significant amount of schooling before taking that step.
There are internships for Undergraduate and the competitiveness depends on the size of the fund. For full time, I see most people work in Investment Banking for sometimes then join PE straight/ post-MBA. That’s the cookie cutter.
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