Breaking down the headhunters - avoid, engage, ghost
The common question today is - what to think about the larger PE headhunters. Having worked with most on both sides (being recruited and now hiring) here’s the breakdown. Would love to get other thoughts.
1. Mercury Partners - next to worthless. Tag as many names as possible to ensure they get paid and do not have any strong candidates. I wouldn’t send them my resume.
2. SG Partners - the least professional/sloppiest and most incompetent of them all. My two firms had to fire them for poaching our own employees for other clients and on the candidate side - expect bullies, leaked confidential information to your current employer, and false advertisements. When hiring I was told that they need me to say I’m a diverse candidate to get to the next round. It’s a shame they are hired by anyone. BX certainly needs to move elsewhere.
3. HSP - I think these folks have been the best I’ve interacted with on both sides by far. While it’s clear that others either have a legacy in with clients and treat candidates horribly, HSP isn’t exceptional, but they are professional. I’d recommend all to engage.
4. DSP - mostly professional, until you receive an offer. Expect expletives and demeaning/offensive comments to ensure you accept what you earned and don’t ask for a penny more. If working with these folks, shift your engagement to the company itself and cut them out as soon as possible.
5. Oxbridge - not the smartest, but quite professional and all interactions have been splendid. The team is not “nice”, but they not offensive, unethical, or unprofessional like others (looking at you SG). They keep winning great clients, I’d engage with them and certainly be open about opportunities.
Thoughts on others?
Would second the above on Oxbridge. Amity is decent too
Likewise good interactions with Oxbridge.
Amity is good to the extent that they get you reads and are generally friendly, but not so good if you’re trying to pull out of a process that you have an offer for or are competitive in. Similar to DSP in that sense.
Because it’s not mentioned, I’ll also give a shout-out to CPI. They were much sharper/more demanding in the beginning, but very good at 1. Ensuring looks, 2. Guiding processes, 3. Not being pushy and even helping to negotiate minutia with firms (if needed).
My experiences with CPI have been mixed. It really depends on who you are working with there. One person there entered my recruiting preferences incorrectly and I didn’t get emails from them for a year until she called me one day and we got it figured out.
Maybe for Europe, have made quite good experience with PER at least on the candidate side. Have heard mixed things on Darthmouth but not too sure
LMFAO DARTMOUTH
Dartmouth is literal garbage. They don't even know the actual job description for the role they are hiring for. Pretty sub-optimal IQ people in there overall, I still don't get how they get all these mandates.
Man if you have a high IQ, you don’t work in headhunting to start with 😂
PER have always been good in my experience.
+1 for Oxbridge. I also enjoyed working with HSP, Carter Pierce and Odyssey Search Partners.
Horrible experience with SG.
Same
Great experience with Ratio Partners
Has anyone successfully been able to unsubscribe to Pinpoint partners distribution list?
To add - Long Ridge partners is pretty decent for HF recruiting
Yes after many years of trying I did finally get off of Pinpoint’s email list since their unsubscribe button didn’t seem to work. It involved multiple emails and calls trying to politely tell all the people there who contacted me to stop emailing and calling me until eventually I wrote an email that I tried to keep in a friendly/nice tone to Stefan or whomever the head guy is or called him or something and told him that they were meaningfully bothering me and that I was contemplating calling the police to ask them to get Pinpoint/Water Street to stop emailing/harassing me with those unwanted emails and calls if Stefan or whomever it was didn’t have his firms stop emailing/calling me. I believe after that they stopped
good luck
Can someone anonymously post Stefan and all of their emails and phone numbers so the rest of us can call them for years of incessant spam? It's only fair. The people at Pinpoint / Water Street should be in jail, full stop.
how do i get on the distribution list?
Madison Hunt (Ash Hunt / Nana Teng) are pleasant to work with and have a good list of clients if you're in Infrastructure PE.
Recommend Bellcast as well. In London, heard that Pearse Partners are really good.
Is CarterPierce still mostly West Coast?
+1 on Madison Hunt. Great team, very direct (but not brash) and great connectivity in real assets. Ash & Nana are rock stars at what they do
.
In the U.K. schools normally require you to do some kind of work experience for two weeks at age 13/14, basically you’re just the office bitch for the company. At one point I asked my gf where she had done hers:
“Oh yeah it was this really unprofessional firm in the city, basically we all just had this software we had to feed email addresses into that would spam analysts asking them if they wanted to switch jobs. Probably became illegal after GDPR. Think it was called something like Pinstripe?”
Pinpoint Partners is very prestigious
CPI? The clear leader and very professional.
I absolutely loved the people at Carter Pierce
Amity cares a ton about prestige
Have had really good experiences with Gold Coast and HSP but I get the sense that they’re very prestige and relationship driven in that they’ll ghost you unless you really impress them or have a warm intro. Back when I was doing oncycle recruiting years ago, I specifically remember getting stonewalled by HSP until I told them I had an interview with a MF and then they conveniently had a bunch of other interview slots pop up.
Gold Coast - treat candidates like shit. PRESTIGE DRIVEN x10
Will name drop fake clients they’ve worked in their past roles. Would avoid at all costs. Their GTM IS to push diverse candidates on to potential clients and then try to build a relationship that way.
will second this. You can be at a top bank and top group and tell them the exact list of firms on their client list you want to interview along with great reasons for being interested and they will ghost you unless you are diversity or top undergrad.
Pinnacle for FoF / allocator jobs
Have they been good to work with? I've gotten pinged by them a few times
Nothing particularly bad to say - helped show me a few interesting opportunities.
I personally think CPI is head and shoulders above the rest, by far my favorite in both recruiting and being recruited.
They’re the definite largest (in terms of UMM/MF names) and just have a better pulse on the market than anyone else in terms of insight into on cycle process / timing.
They can definitely be a bit callous / cut through the BS vs others and aren’t as nice, but I’ve found theyre straight shooters who are trying to be efficient with everyone’s time. I.e some of the smaller names listed above might be way nicer in the intro call, but then when they are actually dealing with recruiting they aren’t as responsive or straight forward about what’s going on. CPI will call you at 3am to tell you that you got rejected and should prioritize other funds, which is infinitely better from a candidate perspective vs the other HHs who will just vaguely say “heard good things, fingers crossed!!” and then ghost you
When I spoke with CPI, I found the recruiter (from their West Coast team) to be somewhat condescending. During my elevator pitch, I mentioned my undergrad - which is a competitive T20 university in the U.S. -and she responded, “What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.” She made a similar comment when I referenced my investment banking group. For context, I worked at a reputable global bank, though my group is smaller and more specialized within the broader platform.
CPI reached out to me a few months later with several associate roles; they also continue to email me new roles but never follow up when I respond. Many of the roles they sent also didn’t appear to be exclusive mandates - another headhunter sent me the exact same posting, and I ultimately went through that other firm instead.
I’ve worked productively with several other reputable firms without issue, so I’m not sure why my interactions with CPI were handled that way. In contrast, I’ve found CarterPierce to be much more professional and responsive, and I’d recommend working with them or other firms over CPI.
Can anyone share CPI email format?
Does anyone recommend a recruiter with secondaries / fund of funds clients.
Winston & Roark is the only recruiter worth talking to in secondaries
Thanks for the recommendation. I never heard of them… but will shoot them a note
Do you recommend any of the 3?
What HeadHunters are most receptive to non targets / non top group candidates?
Infra specific - TERRIBLE experiences with Spencer Ogden
Pinpoint partners. I blocked all their emails then they started calling me daily………
Don't be SCGC Search Partners....
My interaction with them was really poor.
Recruiter was totally not prepared and screened for a Sr.AS2 role but had sent me an email for an AS1 opening. Sloppy.
I unconnected from everyone there after seeing this post this morning.
Similarly negative experience. Wasted my time by intro'ing me to firms that weren't even recruiting for the geography I was looking at (which they didn't even seem to realize)
Will champagne. Biggest loser in recruiting
lol he deleted the latter part..
i literally want to comment on his LinkedIn, where'd the latter half go
Will Champagne is a clown. Are they a real firm though?
A few years back Will made a post blasting people who need HB1/sponsorships. it was something along the lines of this post but worst. Wish I saved down the screenshot. This guy is an absolute clown.
Hope she sees this Will
Saw that too. I wonder who hurt him.
Reiterating what most everyone else said. Ratio is a place that it’s hard to get your foot in the door but working with them is great and they’re super open and direct. CPI is the largest and most willing to put you in front of people immediately. They’re also very direct and don’t lead you on. CarterPierce is probably the best combo of friendly / responsive while being direct on feedback. They felt the most like a partnership (though they obviously still work for the fund). Gold Coast likes to make you think it’s a partnership but later in processes I found them to be the least open and helpful. To their credit though, they have poached a lot of great funds from other headhunters.
On quality of clients I’d say Gold Coast has the highest quality clients but it’s a shorter list than a CPI.
Who would I hire to fill a role? Oxbridge or CPI. I am too far removed to speak about the candidate experience, but both of those have strong reputations with top GPs.
CPI
Who is good from a family office / endowment perspective?
CPI. They have Bonderman’s FO and other high profile tech execs, from opportunities they’ve shown
Ratio and Gold Coast are the worst in my opinion, very snakey and will ghost you until its convenient for them to reach out again.
CPI is very upfront which I appreciated
Avoid Alexander Chapman (also known as AC Recruitment). Scammers and no real opportunities. Only want to probe to see where you're interviewing at to screw you over.
Actually ended up getting an offer through them (but mostly because the fund didn't know better and wanted to be cheap, they admitted AC sucks). When I did end up getting the offer AC was very insistent that this was the best I could do and that the pay was street and I should sign the non-compete. Even went as far as sending me 4-5 paragraphs daily explaining how this was a great opportunity (seemed like it was GPT-conjured).
Quickly cut them out and spoke directly with the CIO. Not sure if they will even get the fee on me lol.
They are all unprofessional when you don’t pick them in my experience. Best oppty flow from hsp, amity, cpi, ratio. Opus and Oxbridge are weaker and also kind of rude.
Mercury is a joke — they actually did get me a random interview once with a half decent firm so I took it and then was like nah don’t like the geo and the guy either called or emailed me and said some crazy shit I don’t even remember now.
SG I have never come across in the wild
Gold Coast is good for California — worked with them on one process and they behaved as well as you can expect an HH to behave.
Avoid SelbyJennings. Absolute worst. None of their searches are mandated and everyone that works there is an absolute prick asshole
Definitely. Them and pinpoint and water street are not real firms. Think pp and ws are the same company
Talked with the CEO/Manging Partner at Opus, guy is very snakey
CarterPierce was very good to interact with. Ratio Advisors is solid.
Have had very negative experiences with SelbyJennings. They are clowns.
Does anyone have any good experience with Mondrian Alpha? Their roles look decent, but they ghost you hard.
Interested if anyone has experiences with True Search
What is the best way to get in touch with these headhunters?
Anyone with experience with Blacklock Group?
Avoid - not sure if they actually have any roles. Seems like they collect resumes and approach firms speculatively without being mandated.
Tangential to the original post, but I recently started in IB. Have received emails from several of the firms listed above but unsure how to navigate making a profile with recruiters and having intro calls... I don't want to initiate anything until I'm ready (i.e. have my story, technicals, modeling, and deal experience ironed out). Still, I don't have a lot of info on what to expect from intro calls and how the process works, in general.
Would appreciate any advice/insight thanks!
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