How does post MBA PE recruiting differ?
With 2 years experience in IB, if I leave to do an MBA, can I still recruit full-time for PE via headhunters, or will it have to be via internships since I’m out the game?
Alternatively, would having a year of PE experience help?
Would be very keen to hear your thoughts. Thanks
Extremely uphill battle excluding pre-MBA PE experience. Happens but quite rare. LMM funds might be more willing to entertain less conventional backgrounds but still no guarantees there. Having PE experience going into your MBA is pretty much table stakes, and even then a job isn’t necessarily guaranteed (barring a return offer from your fund).
Thanks a lot for this - very interesting to know. So suppose I did PE for 1 year (defer mba by 1 year), would it be sufficient to recruit?
Could I recruit directly full-time without the traditional summer associate internship?
Hey sorry to follow up but pretty desperate for some insight as really not sure what to do and the uncertainty is a bit troubling. Would be incredibly grateful for any thoughts if possible - thank you so much
That would be tricky, since you'd come into the MBA with 1 year as a PE associate as opposed to peer students who would have 2... would you be able to find a firm (at the tier of quality you're interested in) that would willingly hire you for just one year? I'd be careful about joining a fund that expects you to stay for at least two years and then you dip after one... it's a small industry and word gets around, plus you wouldn't be able to use them as bschool reccs either.
Is there a reason you can't join a traditional 2-year PE associate program and then go to bschool after?
Alternatively, you could go to bschool as soon as possible (assuming Fall 2024?), do a pre-school lower MM internship in summer 2024 if you can swing it (quality would be iffy but at least you'd have it on your resume), and then start doing in-year internships as soon as possible once you're on campus. But agree with the previous poster, it would be a slog.
Bump
People are being diplomatic and helpful, but the bottom line is this: going for an MBA instead of recruiting for PE if you want to do PE would be career malpractice. You’re also not going to get into H/S/probably W with two years of IB unless you got into a deferred program in undergrad, which further impacts the PE opps available to you.
Thanks a lot for the honest reply. I hope you don’t mind but I PM’ed you - just a little confused on what to do as I have an MBA offer at a top school and likely now won’t be able to go :/
This.
The PE recruiting pool out of bschool is a VERY competitive candidate pool. More competitive than the Banking to PE candidate pool.
If you have 1 year experience, that may be an even bigger red flag. Why didn’t you do a 2 year program like everyone else? You left early? Got pushed out early?
If you don’t have PE experience, you better have a damn good reason for it. Doesn’t sound like you do, I could be wrong.
There’s a tried and tested path in this field, deviate from it at your peril.
What’s your explanation for not doing the usual prereqs? Unless you went another route because you were selected to be a Rhodes Scholar, presidential speech writer at the White House, or were seeing how you’d fare at the Olympic trials, you are dead in the water.
Thanks a lot for the detailed reply. Could I pm you if you don’t mind?
I do have a specific reason as I already have a top MBA offer which expires in 1.5 years (2025), so the max I could get is 1 year exp. I doubt the business school would let me defer unfortunately
Thanks a lot for the detailed reply. Could I pm you if you don’t mind?
I do have a specific reason as I already have a top MBA offer which expires in 1.5 years (2025), so the max I could get is 1 year exp. I doubt the business school would let me defer unfortunately
What does recruiting look like if you do 2 years of PE then lateral to another PE shop vs getting an MBA? Would you have better options if you did 2 years of PE then went to B school vs doing 2 years of PE and lateraling?
“Better option” depends on where you are initially starting from. I assume you are referring to lateraling up market. If so, it’ll still likely be difficult whether you try to lateral after 2 years vs an MBA, unless you’re at H/S. Even then it’s not like you’d be able to go from a sub $1Bn fund to an UMM or MF with ease. An MBA may make the process smoother since there is more structured recruiting, but not necessarily easier. If you’re just referring to moving to a better performing fund of a similar size then it won’t be better one way or the other, just different. You may find instances like my MM that does not hire MBAs for VP roles and only brings on lateral hires below the sr. Associate level. I’m sure others may think differently.
SB’d. Thanks for the reply. For context I’m currently at a MF where most people go to b school after 2 years but I think I’d prefer to lateral after 2 years and continue working at a UMM / good MM. Just want to make sure I’m not making disadvantaging myself by choosing not to apply.
Still difficult in this market but the primary advantage of lateraling rather than mba is that you can theoretically move opportunistically to take someone's seat who left unexpectedly. Vs mba recruiting is mostly planned, structured hiring. Said differently, you can lateral whenever (which is an advantage) but mba recruiting is all at a set time (and thus can be more competitive). The advantage of mba recruiting is that it's structured, may in theory open more doors (probably just h/s), and of course you leave with the mba degree and experience (if those are important to you).
Thanks a lot for this - really appreciate the detailed reply
So assuming I could defer my MBA by 1 year, and rack up 2 years PE exp - I could bypass the need for a summer associate internship?
Thanks
It seems like W also placed in UMM/MF PE quite well this year (even have some consulting folks going top MM/UMM/MF shops), does your comment re: opening more doors only apply to H/S still?
What is your goal here? Are you interested in being an associate (pre-MBA role) in PE?
If I’m reading between the lines here it basically sounds like you have 2+2 offer that is about to expire soon. As other folks have covered here, you would certainly not be in a good position at all for any post MBA role (VP) as folks will be primarily interested in those with prior PE investing experience. I won’t deep dive on this as others have extensively covered it, but I think that’s probably pretty clear. It sounds like you’re basically going from 2 years as an analyst in IB + a year of something else then attending b school. Transition to a VP role is going to be pretty much impossible with this background.
Could you in theory be an associate (I’m referencing this since you have mentioned summer associate several times in this thread)? Yeah I guess that could maybe be possible, but it would be an odd situation. My sense is you wouldn’t be particularly well positioned to do this in b school as (1) very few people do it, and (2) there’s too many young and ready to work IB analysts.
If your goal is to work in PE, you probably should just continue down the traditional path of 2 years IB then go to a normal associate program directly.
Would it be possible to PM you? Have a very unique profile so afraid
But yeah you’re right, I have a deferred offer at HSW expiring during summer 2025.
My question is I suppose, why can’t I also recruit for an associate role (if summer associates exist and often require IB experience)? Do I exclusively have to go for post-MBA VP? I have the option here to do 1 year of PE before my MBA or I can go for it after my IB stint ends this year.
End goal and purpose of MBA was to network for a start up and try to grow it in a supported environment. My business school has great funding opportunities and I wanted to pursue a dream whilst having something to fall back on. Issue was that if I left post IB and recruited for post-MBA associate, I wouldn’t have the time to do a summer internship.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated and I’d honestly be so grateful, been a pretty few stressful days thinking about this . Maybe I could ask business school to defer an extra year and do 2 years PE but this would take me to 5 years since undergrad so very unlikely imo given the limit is usually 4.
Thanks a lot
Feel free to PM.
I’m not sure that the landscape of PE summer associates is actually that robust. There’s really no need to hire associates out of business school in PE. Given what you are interested in why don’t you just look towards other forms of investing post business school to fall back on that is more loose around pre MBA experience such as early stage VC? It doesn’t really sound like you are that compelled towards PE to begin with and you will be in that ecosystem anyways if you want to pursue startups while in b school.
Can anyone opine on flexibility between strategies pre and post MBA? Doing secondaries now and love the private markets. Would an MBA be a good way to explore other areas of PE or is it better to just stay in the industry and lateral around? Did my undergrad at a non-target public uni.
1) pick up the phone and ask to defer a year
If answer is no then you can
1) go into PE post IB and stay there
or
2) do an mba but be willing to be ok with no PE job affer
Thanks a lot.
If I did manage to defer, could I slot in as a post-MBA PE VP by directly applying for full times or is it head hunter led?
Secondly if I go for option 2 and do the MBA, and everything fails, will I be able to get a decent job (£100k+) again?
yes to both. be prepared for some headhunter involvement but not sure why this would be an issue.
Hey I’m the original OP and got locked out. If anyone did message me, I’d be greatly appreciative if you were able to accept my message requests in dm :)
Interesting reading comments. What does post MBA PE recruiting look like? Is it the same summer internship, then FT offer schedule?
Interested too. Isn’t the PE summer associate internship usually for those trying to break in as a junior associate?
I thought post MBA recruiting was for those with pre-MBA PE exp trying to become VP/ senior associate
Bit of a mixed bag at this point. Historically most PE firms have not had a summer internship program for MBAs and would exclusively recruit FT hires from the 2Y class starting in the fall. More recently, firms have increasingly started to offer summer programs - some have higher conversion to FT hires than others. If needed, firms with summer internship opportunities will still hire FT outside of the intern program from 2Y classes starting in the fall.
As it relates to hiring for pre-MBA level roles (i.e., associates), there are some ad hoc hires here and there, but they are far and few between / should not be expected to have a high probability of finding this as even if there is an opening, there are tons of applicants (e.g., prior banking / consulting experience MBAs that didn't pursue PE and may have done a startup / operational role).
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