Just trying to gauge this industry - I hate that I have to rely on HHs who screen candidates on arbitrary metrics and give no room for personality / unique cases to shine, but I find people less open to cold outreaches if they’re in PE.
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The answer is yes. Most PE firms don't have a full suite of HR people to screen candidates and run a process on their own. They will hire a HH to outsource all of this so all they have to do is show up to interview people. Even the big PE firms who have HR teams will leverage the HH since they know the best talent is likely to have been approached by a HH.
I personally have reached out to warm intros about recruiting and they always refer me to the HH they use to participate in their process. I am not sure how contracts are set up between PE firms and HHs but it almost seems like the PE firms have to pay the HH fee for any hires where there is an active search ongoing whether organically sourced or not so they might as well refer them to the HH so they can manage the pipeline. I could be entirely wrong on this and there is no contract set up in this way so treat this as anecdotal and not factual.
Funny because a partner directly referred me to HH (but was genuinely receptive to my emails), so think you’re right.
Also, what you’re saying just makes sense.
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