BB Associate to PE / family office - off cycle recruiting

Family offices generally rely less on HHs than traditional PE firms. I also see Go Buyside representing family offices pretty frequently / they'll cut the middle man entirely and post jobs directly on LinkedIn.

You may have to do some research to find a solid list of family offices. I can't imagine that's the most difficult Google search.

Frankly, family offices are more open to different backgrounds because the associate role is less coveted than at an institutional firm. I think this is for a wide variety of reasons. A few pain points I can think of:

• comp is coming out of the family's pocket, so they're a little cheap
• there's no implicit push to get deals done as a result of evergreen capital base (less transaction volume)
• highly political environmnent in many circumstances where family members are working as investors and favoritism will be a natural headwind to career progression
• difficulty in moving from a family office to traditional PE fund given the differing nature in executing / evaluating transactions

Networking is probably more viable than in traditional private equity, particularly for funds that approach hiring directly vs through a HH.

There's a million threads on headhunters. I'd advise using the search bar for that inquiry.