Gap Year Between IB & PE

I’m an incoming IB analyst at a top EB (Evercore/Centerview). I am currently planning on doing my two years and then taking 1 (maybe 2) years off from the finance track to do something in entrepreneurship or economic development abroad.

How difficult would it be to recruit for a pre-MBA associate role in PE after this gap? What’s the best way to go about it? Should I still talk with lots of headhunters during my IB years even though I won’t be actively recruiting?

Advice and thoughts would be great!

7 Comments
 
Most Helpful

If you're a superstar you can write your own ticket. But otherwise, taking a year or two off after IB will likely damage your buyside recruiting chances severely. To many people you'd come off as an unemployed dilettante.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you go all in. It's not something you spend a year or two flirting with. Investors demand total commitment. They don't even want founders to have girlfriends.

A better choice would be to spend your gap year/two years saving West Africa or wherever, then apply to bschool. I teach at an M7 and have quite a few MBA students who followed that course.

 

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