How to find post-PE opportunities?

For those who realized that private equity wasn’t for them at the associate/senior associate level, how did you find your next opportunity?

For some background, I worked as an associate at a buyout firm and then did a short stint at a PortCo during an exit year. I’m expected to come back after we sell. I don’t want to go back to being an associate again. Mostly focused on corporate strategy type roles, but recruiters seem to be reaching out primarily about Corp Dev or lateral PE opportunities.

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Just my experience and could be industry-dependent, but a lot of companies seem to combine corp dev / corp strat together, and team members don't specialize until VP or director level. Might be worth responding to these corp dev recruiters that you're interested in the strategy side, they can either point you towards the companies that combine or perhaps they have some strat roles as well.

A lot of these corporate roles also just post directly on firm websites too. Lots of corporates are on hiring freezes right now, but I've seen a number of corp dev/strat roles at big companies floating around LinkedIn

 

Chief finance roles in Series B (even A sometimes) companies might be interesting. They tend to be more strategic than FP&A silos in large corps with pure mind-numbing budgeting & reporting. Usually expected to take a more strategic role. Unlike big corps often seem to be more welcoming to relatively younger people too, at least what I've seen in Europe. 

 

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