Current PE Recruiting Environment London
Hi all,
What is your experience on the PE recuriting environment at the moment in London?
My feeling is that there are barely any processes live and from the once I hear, the HH feedback is a lot that they are looking for diversity candidates. Did you experience similar things or might it be also my background that is not suitable?
I am currently an associate at a elite boutique
There is definitely a slowdown in the process, but a lot of UMM / MF are still recruiting.
They have a big focus on females, I know firms like Francisco Partners who were looking for a female candidate for over a year. Otherwise, try and build relationships with key HHs, I know for instance EQT, Cinven, Permira, KKR, Bain Cap, Hg, TA associate, CD&R etc. and all of the firms have had live processes in the last months
EQT strong preference for females as well - source: top PE HH
Which HH does EQT use?
Ok thank you very much for this! This is very helpful!
I heard about most processes but the female feedback was what I got most of the times.
The one I missed was cd&r, do you know via which HH they recruited?
For all of them, I have had male friends who were put forward, I think they are targeting females + top decile males. Think it was either DP or Kea who were running CD&R, can get back to you and confirm
DP is the HH for CD&R
How does one rank in the "top decile" of males
May I ask what "DP" website is? I have searched "DP Recruiting Firm" on google as a start but nothing really came up properly. Thank you!
WP is recruiting for analyst positions, not sure about associate positions. Agreed on the diversity aspect. I was doing an internship at an MM / UMM fund before starting as a 1-year analyst a couple of weeks ago. They wanted to recruit 4 associates and had a requirement that at least 3 had to be females. It is known as a heavy industrials-focused sweatshop so attracting women proved to be quite difficult. By the time I left, they were interviewing women from tier-2 and tier-3 consulting firms while pretty much the entire firm consists of guys from GS / MS / JPM / BoA...
To be honest, they have been "interviewing" half of London, more or less everyone I know has gotten an inbound / done the first stage for WB, think getting the actual offer might be difficult so wouldn't read into it. I think WB is looking for an "Analyst" with 1+ year experience, a bit like BX
The recruiting in question is for people with no prior FT experience. My friends who have been contacted are all people with prior / current IB internships at top banks that will graduate in 2024. They held a recruiting event at their London office about 2 weeks ago. From what I understand, the outreach from DP was very wide but the recruiting event was heavily diversity-focused.
WP Analyst Program (LDN) is a female-only process
Do you know the reasoning behind inviting a bunch of males to the recruitment held a couple of weeks ago?
Nah, one of my friends who I am mentoring is in the process and he is male
Any idea where the application link is/who is running the process? Can't find any info
You can't apply and I think it might be too late. Dartmouth reached out to people with a certain background via email where you had to submit an application to join the recruiting event. They then held phone interviews with selected candidates to determine who got to join the recruitment event. I guess that they have now narrowed the process down to a select number of candidates who attended the event.
Similar sentiments I got - there is a big push to recruit female + diversity candidates ( also got confirmed by some HH off-the-records).
Spot on re diversity. I have heard the same during regular catch-ups with them
Have interviews for WP started ?
I am seeing everyone talking about this push towards more female intake and have one question about it, pure curiosity because I wonder. I understand that more networking events for females are being held and more females are pushed to first rounds interviews. Nevertheless, if we look at who is getting into these first rounds, the people passing to the second, the third, the last, are they still the most competent ? That is, in terms of pure numbers and socio-economic inequalities there tend to be less qualified enough women as men coming into first rounds. If the intake for the following rounds and for offer is based on merit then it does not change anything after first round. But second possibility is that women are getting slightly easier pass criteria or interviews? Can you please let me know what's happening? I find it just difficult to believe that funds such H&F, WP, Advent, KKR, Apollo etc would let go of quality for diversity?
I find the entire idea ridiculous. The fact that there is fewer women in finance is not because there are a bunch of old white men secretly trying to prevent women from entering finance, it's because a smaller proportion of women are interested in a career in finance to begin with. There is an obvious way to see this - just look at the finance classes. I did my master's in finance at Bocconi and about 10% of the class were females. Of course you will have to compromise on quality when you are desperate to reach a 50/50 split at banks and PE shops when your supply is more like 10/90 or 20/80.
You can also notice a significant difference in quality many times. I was an intern in a well-known UMM fund and one of my female VPs consistently had to ask the male VPs for advice on technicals. I even had to show her functions in Excel multiple times.
Don't get me wrong, there are some incredibly talented women in finance as well and I've had the pleasure of working with some of them. But in general, I think that lower quality is accepted to fill the quotas and I think that once on the job, expectations are lower because firms do not want to lose the women that were so difficult to recruit to begin with. I've seen women get away with stuff (leaving early, low-quality work etc.) that my male colleagues would never get away with simply because the assoc / VP / MD is afraid to push back against women.
In my experience, women care much more about social interactions and relationships. By definition, it is extremely difficult to have any of those things in IB or PE due to the extremely poor WLB. Moreover, the work itself is hardly that exciting and 95% consists of you sitting alone staring at a screen rather than having any type of social interaction with anyone. I also think that women in general think that their career is less important when compared to men. That's my thesis on why so few women choose to pursue a career in finance to begin with. With that said, I think it is completely ridiculous that IB and PE are trying to force a 50/50 split.
I also think that people in general assume that if there are less women in a field, it's because of discrimination while if there are less men in a field, it's just a matter of preference. Take a look at healthcare staffing firms for example where you have ~80% women. Do you think that the mgmt. and investors in those firms are pushing hard to increase the quota of men to 50% at all costs? Having been at a PE firm owning such assets, I can tell you that no one gives a flying fuck. However, as soon as we are discussing the gender split in a high-paying field, any divergence from the 50/50 split can impossibly be because of preferences, it simply must be due to discrimination and must be corrected at all costs.
Other things to point out is that females once they actually start in banking are not given the same treatment as men. They start by being categorised as less competent from beginning, get the « qualitative » staffings, don’t do buyside etc. Discrimination are being perpetuated further even after the 50/50 recrutement process. As a result, they had less opportunities to develop (within the job) when arriving for the PE recruiting cycle.
The bar for PE recruitment is not the same for male and female candidates. Every LP nowadays want around 50/50 investment professionals.
Places like Francisco Partners legit paused recruitment and were looking for a female candidate for a year until they found one.
Some places, let female candidates skip modeling tests and when it comes to technical questions / case studies they are more chill. Is this unfair? Yes, but probably for a better cause in the long-run.
Thank you for the factual answer, exactly what I was wondering!
How can skipping an essential step in the process be better in the long-run ??
You get more women to look at in the office, obviously a benefit that should not be underrated.
LPs do not provide money to funds that don’t respect their quotas
This 100%. People can complain as much as they want about unfairness or it not making sense to hire worse quality candidates, and they might be right, but at the end of the idea the client is king and if they want 50/50 investment teams then the firm has to provide that.
Anyone experience with mid-level / VP hiring? Feels completely dead but maybe it’s just me?
I’m a female and was looking at infra recruiting earlier in the year. I was definitely getting more interest than a very good friend of mine that started looking at the same time.
I had an interview where I made it to final round and they asked me what my biggest fear is. I said point blank that it is being hired for my gender. They said that they actually cleared with HR to hire a male if need be and that 95% of applicants fail the case study and I should own my achievements. I didn’t pass the fit interview if anyone is interested :) no idea who the role went to as they went back to the market from what I heard.
The reason why I asked is because one of my friends moved to PE where she is certain she was a diversity hire. She’s the only woman and she’s patronised by her boss which emboldens all her colleagues to speak down to her and treat her as if she’s intellectually challenged. Her confidence has never been lower, work is a horror show and mental health as well. She’s afraid to leave because of how LPs will punish the fund might make her boss retaliate.
I don’t have a point. I’m just sharing stories to show the other side of the experience. It is very difficult as a woman not to feel imposter syndrome, especially when some women around you are diversity hires.
Hey, so glad you posted this. Am also sharing the same fear. Would you be open to talk in pm?
Reply to this under your username and I’ll DM :)
V glad you mention this, I'm a black girl and just finished a PE off cycle and it's so clear that people from outside my team and other firms think im a tick box (on race especially) yet I came with a bunch of econometric AND modelling experience so I ended up really doubting my place there. Banks etc are also not keen on my CV at all it seems which doesn't help. But to your point, I do think people should be careful with framing women hires as incompetent. The firm should be committing to training the women who don't have the technicals or ditch the gender balance idea all together. At best its useless at worst makes an awful environment for everyone.
Unfortunately, humans have prejudices based on their previous experiences. If you have been robbed by guys with a green hoodie 7 times you will automatically suspect that people with a green hoodie are robbers. Same goes for the workplace. If a higher proportion of females you work with are less competent, you will automatically suspect that newly hired women are less competent. Of course, that results in an unfair assessment of women who are competent.
Jumping to conclusions based on experience is part of human nature. Whenever I come across a really stupid white guy at work, I suspect that he is a nepotism hire.
as a 2nd thought, if you would be ok w dming please do!! Would appreciate it :)
this female drive is everywhere. my consulting firm legit pretty much made only female hires for last several positions despite always saying that good female candidates make up maybe 10-15% of the applicant pool. suppose when youre not winning anything doesnt matter whos arranging logos on pitch decks.
These messages make me feel sad (as a woman in PE). I've argued strongly against a policy of 50/50 hiring in my team specifically because of the balance of capability issues I've seen in hires, which just ends up propagating an (at times) unfair perception of the qualified folks who do get hired. And spoiler alert: we see more attrition at levels beyond the first, because people are either not good enough and get managed out, or they feel out of their depth and resign regardless. We won't promote to higher levels aka where the real money kicks in, unless there is demonstrated performance.
Not sure what the best answer is here, would definitely love to see more diversity but not at the risk of performance. I work my ass off, don't want any freeloaders.
Very good point and I can only imagine how frustrating it is as a woman to see people achieving the same things as yourself without putting in the work. As a male, it is frustrating that women recruit on completely different terms, but it must be even more frustrating as a woman since the women without the knowledge recruit on the same terms as you do but haven't actually put in the work.
My firm has only been hiring female candidates for the last year. We’ve exhausted the CV pool and don’t know where else to look.
Out of curiosity, is there really no good female that you can employ? BBS are now full of them with classes being almost 50/50.
Also did you observe that usually they do not want to learn / do well / improve? Or does your fund do not spend a lot of time teaching people?
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