Blackstone to sit out on-cycle and change recruiting model

WSJ: Blackstone to Bypass Scramble for Investment-Bank Talent in Bid to Diversify Hiring
Looks like Blackstone will be fully building out their on-campus recruiting to promote from analyst to associate and will be hiring less people from IB.

 

This has been a long time coming and most large funds have started analyst programs. This move will only accelerate it as BX competitors don’t want to miss out on the best talent if BX just siphons it off before they make it to banking.

Smaller funds I’m sure will continue to primarily hire banking analysts. Just my 2 cents

 

I wonder how this will impact the perceived prestige of the top banks. The allure of goldman/jpm/pjt loses significant value if they are no longer the gatekeepers to the bx/kkr's of the world

 

If students went to Harvard to go to GS and saw it as nothing but a stepping stone then yes, if Harvard could no longer get kids to GS then the calculus on it would change. Two very different situations in reality though. Small % of Harvard is interested in finance and wants GS vs 90% of IB analysts want to get to PE

 

I also posted on this (mine didn't get any attention though :( )

Perhaps the biggest change is that they will now be recruiting at 44 schools! They only recruited at 9 in 2015. 44 schools must include some non-targets. Does anyone know what 9 schools they previously OCR-ed at?

 

If you're not already at atleast a semi- target, I wouldn't get your hopes up. I imagine it will look something like this

I'm not sure about their previous 9 schools, but I imagine it closely matched KKR's analyst drop-down menu available schools (something like Harvard Wharton Stern Dartmouth Duke Stanford Cornell Notredame)

Still ivy tier - Ivies, Duke, MIT, Uchicago, Stanford, (13ish)

Maybe 5-6? international schools total, 3 from UK 2 from canada or something

Other targets - Northwestern, Stern, UVA, mich, Georgetown, 2-3 LACS, Vanderbilt, WashU, Notredame, CMU, some shit from cali, (15ish)

Already at 31ish schools

Add in semi-target and non-target undergrad bussiness schools (As someone from a semi-target, most of these schools honestly don't seem "prestigious" enough for BX, and have maybe sent 1 kid there ever, but Filling the last 14ish holes seems like a strech, but what do I know)

Boston College, Villanova, UT Austin, IU Kelley, USC, Emory, Baruch, Rice?

Add in some random schools who might have some people batting for them during this school selection ex: Wake forest, Tufts, Bowdoin?

Keep in mind that student selection per capita is still likely going to be largely better at classic top schools.

 
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Posted this on the other thread but here it is again:

Lol this is lip service in a number of ways. The most apparent one, which would be clear to anyone that is familiar with Blackstone's PE analyst program, is that none of their analysts stay on to be associates. They have a three year program (one of the sweatiest analyst programs on the street) that's known to be a accelerated jumping board to the best hedge fund opportunities out there; logic being, instead of spending two years as an IB analyst, then two as a PE associate, then jumping to a blue chip hedge fund, I'd rather spend 3 years as a PE analyst, and make the jump to a hedge fund after that, shaving a year off the time it takes to get there. If you want to be a PE associate at a megafund, then taking the Blackstone analyst offer is ironically dumb because a) you'll be a year behind your peers who'll be an associate their third year out of college when you're still an third year analyst, b) you don't get headhunted for a wide variety of PE associate positions like your peers because you're already at a PE shop (headhunter logic being why would you leave blackstone pe if you want to work in pe?) and c) Blackstone has a historically awful rate of internal promotion of PE analysts. What all this means is that the Blackstone PE analysts spend three years getting grinded being forced to work for less money than their peers at EBs, while wearing a tie every day, and in exchange get the best brand name in finance stamped on their resume and the best hedge fund looks of any analyst program on the street, and all of them take that opportunity and bail ship after the analyst program ends. So long story short, on-cycle recruiting isn't going anywhere for Bx because their analyst program doesn't result in pretty much any associates so they still need to go to the IB pool to find them. Note that this isn't true for most PE MF analyst programs -- Ares, Vista, and SLP all have had analyst programs for over a decade like Bx and all of them have strong rates of internal promotion to the associate level, and decent retention. Long story short, that's a clickbait title that makes it seem like Bx is just gonna hire a bunch of analysts from ASU and stop on-cycle recruiting when in reality they're still taking 3 PE analysts a year from the summa cum laude pool at Harvard and hiring a bunch of other interns/analysts out of undergrad for their other less competitive (secondaries, fund of funds) / middle/back office (portfolio operations, investor relations) business units.

 

What is the WP promotion vs exit record like? Noticed you mentioned the other ones but not theirs, curious if it's more like BX or if someone who goes there has a decent change of being promoted

 

Fully agree. Nowhere in the article did it say Blackstone wasn't going through on-cycle. My money is on them going on-cycle 2020 and 2021

 
:
The investing giant and its private-equity peers have long engaged in a yearly race to pluck junior investment bankers already trained in spreadsheet and PowerPoint wizardry from firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley. The prize for those lucky enough to make the jump: entry-level jobs that can pay as much as $300,000 a year at some firms. Now Blackstone officials say the firm plans to sit out that contest in favor of on-campus recruiting, already its main source of talent and one that it is expanding to bring in more candidates directly from schools, including historically black colleges and universities and women’s colleges.

Would you not say the yearly race to pluck junior investment bankers is on-cycle? It clearly states BX plans to sit that out. Whether they do it is another story, but the article definitely says it.

 

Yes this is true but also nothing new. KKR promotes analysts to associates in 1.5 years

 

Two of my friends were very recently headhunted by Blackstone HR through LinkedIn (literally like one month ago).

Both my friends are female first year IBD analysts and one of Blackstone's HR/recruiting members messaged them on LinkedIn asking if they'd be interested in a call. Over the call the HR representative said how they're aiming to increase the number of women within blackstone to boost diversity and asked if my friends would be interested in interviewing for an associate position next year once they've had more IBD experience. Ofc my friends both said yes so now they're going to be having a catch up call every six months with the HR person until next year associate recruiting cycle where they'll have their first round.

HR also has also been sending them practice materials to prepare them ahead of their interviews.

Seems like now's a pretty good time to have a sex change and become female.

 

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