How much leverage does a VP lateral offer get you?

In the same boat as pretty much else in this market: in a couple official processes with varying degrees of success, getting the “no openings at this time” cold shoulder at the rest. Headhunters beyond useless compared to networking.

My question is this—some firms have made intonations that indicate they might be willing to speed up the timing of their search before annual headcount reviews or whatever to do ad hoc / opportunistic processes, implying they might do so for the “right” candidate. How likely is it that a peer fund’s offer might be able to speed up a competitor’s clock to run a 2-3 week process to “beat” the offering firm even if they don’t have an active opening they’re running a full process for yet?

3 Comments
 

I don't think there's a hard and fast universal rule for this. If the PE firm has its shit together operationally, if they have taken laterals in the past, if they aren't in the middle of budgeting, etc. then it's a lot more likely to go well.

In general PE guys are trained to respond to deadlines and urgency. I don't think it's a bad way to stress-test if they actually like you enough to get out of their own way. 

 
Most Helpful

Given the number of highly qualified Sr ASO and VP laterals on the market right now at all levels (LMM / MM / UMM / MF), there really isn't any incentive for a firm to run an accelerated process, even for the "right" candidate. This situation came up at our firm, albeit at the associate level, and those were the words from our partners. No interest in rapidly accelerating timelines just to accomodate one person, no matter the perceived skills. We're not rocket scientists at the end of the day. We're not even HF analysts, so the ability to truly differentiate, even at the VP level is difficult, as most of the dead weight is already weeded out at this point

 

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