How efficient are hiring markets over time?
Hi all — been reflecting on some gutting rejections from lateral processes lately and found myself wondering about the efficiency of hiring markets long-term. Appreciate any insights, especially from more senior WSO members with experience navigating these dynamics.
It seems like, early in one's career, hiring is more heavily distorted by biases; academic pedigree, social behavior, tribalism, minimal technical missteps, even appearance sometimes overshadowing talent / passion... Over time, I would love to believe that the market corrects itself, and that true ability, passion, and performance become equalizers. I assume driving factors here are things like burnout among unimpassioned nepo hires, declining emphasis on pedigree, cumulative confidence gained through experience, etc.
For context, I worked very heard to break into my current seat at a rather small + specialized buyside firm after going nontarget -> no-name boutique IB. My day to day is quite technical and I spend much of my spare time reading / learning / practicing, yet I struggle with getting any larger firms to take me seriously. For purposes of this conversation, just take my word that both my technical skills and soft skills are strong.
It's disheartening to think that, by the time my experience and track record develop enough to attract more serious looks, I will likely be too senior to receive the mentorship I'm looking for. Also worth mentioning that the universe of lateral opportunities seems to get much smaller with every title increase (fewer seats, incumbents more entrenched, skillset harder to develop, senior team believe potential bad habits too far gone to 'retrain').
TLDR: Apologies for ranting and will boil the above down to the following — are hiring markets actually efficient over time? If so, do opportunities to lateral diminish so much that it hardly matters?
Thanks in advance.
Not at all
its total chaos
the way to be long term successful is to be short term opportunistic
Lot packed into short text here. Thanks for your response, really helpful
I think they are inefficient. Perhaps in the aggregate the lateral market can be efficient if you apply for every opportunity but your time places an inherent constraint such that you're always behind in some way. Perhaps that is a good thing because it forces you to adapt? As a cancer survivor and I don't have much belief in the idea of things equalizing over time because I've seen first hand how different things can be at the extreme end of the distribution of outcomes. Ex: I have a non-target background and I've landed interviews at places like APO/CG/KKR but rejected from boutiques, there was a lot of work in between. Sometimes I think about what opportunities I may have missed out on because I didn't try a different approach, yet it would mean I am a different person if I had, thus the consideration is based upon a faulty premise that doesn't help me move forward. Generally, I think people have a sincere desire to believe the market is efficient over time but I'm undecided that it is actually the case.
Thank you for taking the time.
May not mean much, but kudos for reaching such heights in spite of an extraordinary / statistically anomalous challenge.
Curious to know whether you ended up at one of the aforementioned firms?
I am still on the HF side it is a PM track but I won't say much else... PE recruiting just never worked out for me.
Will likely go to asset management or capital allocation eventually but also looking at MBA/EMBA programs at the moment.
Inefficient based on the fail ups I’ve seen
Odit illo illum qui. Quas asperiores natus et.
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