Breaking into private equity from consulting

I wanted to tell my story to this forum as WSO was a great source for me when I made the difficult journey of going from consulting to private equity. To give some context, while keeping my anonymity, I am a EU national who studied in the UK. While I attended some of the typical IB feeder universities, I wasn't one of those lucky ones to be offered an internship programme. Upon graduation I still had no FT IB position and the only offer I had was for a graduate programme in an audit firm. 

My first role in above audit firm was far from ideal. It was in a location that at best could be described "as up and coming", but even that would be an exaggeration borderlining a lie. In addition, my graduate role was not very finance focussed but more towards the less attractive area of consulting. After a few months of doing very menial graduate tasks I was ready to resign and accept that the business world would not offer me any interesting career. As I was setting a deadline for the day I was going to leave, a team working closer to M&A deals in the firm wanted to take on board juniors as they were short staffed. Without hesitation I raised my hand and shortly after I was shipped to this new team on a secondment, which was also based in a far better location. 

This new team was for consulting standard working hard, it wasn't unusual to work until midnight and weekend work wasn't unheard of. Nevertheless I worked hard to impress my new team with the hope that the secondment would be converted into a full time position. After three months the partner told me that he wished to bring me into the team full time. I was extatic to feel that I finally had climbed up a notch as I had, compared to my university cohort, started at the bottom. 

While my new team was only doing certain areas along the transaction process, it still gave me a good view into the work of private equity and M&A. Any IM, finance model or due diligence material I could get hold on I would read and try to gather as much understanding as I could. It was here that my interest to join the buy side emerged as I preferred to work on the buy side and look at investments more holistically than my current job offered. The problem persisted though that few, if anyone, had made a move from my team to private equity so moving out of this niche team would be difficult if not impossible. 

I stayed with the audit firm for quite some time and began seeing the ugly side of internal politics, lack of career progression and endless work with below industry standard compensation. By that point I knew this firm and team was not my long term career ambition and I began planning my strategy to break into private equity. Knowing a few private equity professionals from my university days, I understood that IB was the route into private equity and so I began sending out my CV to some investment banks. I landed a few interviews, which ended quite quickly once the interviewer understood that I worked in a niche part of the transaction process. The rejection only fuelled my motivation and I began spending every weekend learning how to do models in my sleep and practiced on every material that I could get my hands on.

One year later I still hadn't landed any IB role and once again I slowly started to accept that the move was impossible. One evening I sent out an application to a private equity fund just for the sake of it. Surprisingly this was one of the best decision I have made as this application eventually landed me my first role in private equity. Needless to say, my colleagues in the audit firm was surprised of my achievement and I still remain today one of the very few from that team to have landed a job in private equity. 

I hope that this post serves as an inspiration to others, especially to those who are trying to break into private equity from less attractive consulting roles. I finally ended up right where I wanted, working with the transactions that interest me. In the end I learned that was set me apart from the other applicants (a majority of my competitors came from mid-market investment banks) was some unique skills and having the audit firm on my CV (the hiring manager had worked with them in the past and thought they were good and reliable). 

Thank you WSO for helping me on my journey (and also for the entertainment)