Getting stressed out abt PE recruiting

Glad to hear it. Keep your head up - it really is just a volume game honestly. Don’t get too attached to any one fund - they’re all pretty much the same and at the end of the day no one outside of finance knows the difference between them. Focus on finding good people who you can work with and where you will learn a lot to help you grow. Most likely PE won’t be your career forever, it’s just a place to learn for 2 years so don’t get too worried about the super long term picture either.

Congrats!! Nothing will compare to real life deals but maybe check out the modeling prep in WSO? I’ve tried the LBO one and found some bits really useful in my day-to-day modeling activities :) 

In no particular order:

• Try and get in shape and sleep as much as you can - your life is about to get extremely stressful once you join 
• Powerpoint / excel skills are tablestakes in PE. Make sure you’re very good at cutting up and working with extremely large and messy data sets - take a class on VBA if you have to (it’s not necessary but damn it’s handy and can save you a lot of time). Become a pivot table master. 
• Master the LBO - most firms have templates so you won’t be making one from scratch but you do want to be 100% comfortable with how it works mechanically. Do lots of practice one tab LBOs but spend time to understand why you are modeling everything a certain way - the assumption in PE is that you completely understand the LBO theoretically. The harder modeling part of PE is doing granular revenue / expense forecasting - not much you can do to practice that in banking though. 
• Read “the most important thing” by Howard Marks - this is a fantastic book that explains how to think like an investor. 
• Subscribe to and read Howard Marks’ memos - I love them and learn a lot from them
• Talk to your MDs about businesses in your industry - why do sponsors like them? What do they think about them? What is it about the actual economic model that is so attractive? Understanding a variety of business models and understanding risk / reward is the key to being a great investor. Try and learn from senior people as much as possible, if anything they’re hearing how their clients are thinking about things. 
• Learn your industry from a business model perspective. Go find 10Ks on businesses in your industry and read them cover to cover - look at what metrics they quote in that document and try and understand how they are calculated and what they mean. Look at margin profiles, what companies trade at, etc.
• Take the GMAT if you want to go to business school 
• if you don’t want to go to business school, do some informational interviews on public markets / VC / startups / corp dev so you can keep that in the back of your head if you decide PE isn’t right for you (which is the most likely outcome to be honest)
• Befriend the analysts in your group and in other groups - believe it or not this will be a very valuable network in a few years 
• Keep a good relationship with your associates / VPs / MDs - I actually have gotten a surprising amount of mentorship from them since leaving IB. When you leave, write a card or nice email to each of them and end on good terms even if you hate them all. 
• Plan a fun trip between banking and PE - I did Australia and really enjoyed it. Other friends did Asia.
• See if you can get a VP or someone to walk you through how a generic sellside process works and maybe a basic overview of legal docs (purchase agreement) 
• Talk to the lev fin guys and ask them about how credit agreements work / how debt financing works 
• Learn how to use chatgpt really effectively - most firms have no real technology dept stopping you from using it. The more you can automate, the more you can sleep. 
• Spend a lot of time with your friends, go on lots of dates, and have fun whenever you can. Longevity in finance is all about managing emotional burnout and minimizing all nighters which cumulatively erode your energy and mental health (try to get as consistent of sleep as possible).
• Go see a therapist and learn some healthy ways of coping with stress so you have a toolkit once the intensity ramps up when you’re in PE. 
• Don’t overdo it on anything on this list, you’re going to be drinking from a fire hose no matter what.