Please share here the recruiting firms that need to be avoided at all costs. Here's my top 3:
-Mawney Partners (the name is a red flag in itself).
-Selby Jennings: Fraudsters.
-Goodman Masson: Biggest time-wasters in the game (says it all really).
Share more details to help us steer clear of scams.
| +30 | Imposter Syndrome: PE to Publics | 4 | 6d |
| +29 | Committing to CD&R? | 17 | 14h |
| +22 | Hours at MF Infra Funds in London | 5 | 10h |
| +14 | London Version: PE Check-in on Attrition, Promotions and State of Play | 6 | 4d |
| +12 | Consumer PE is dying/dead? | 1 | 11h |
| +12 | Which PE funds are actually great investors | 1 | 4d |
| +10 | Graduating Before Junior-Summer PE/Growth Internship — How Should I Approach the Firm? | 2 | 4h |
| +9 | Post-Banking Seats | 3 | 1h |
| +9 | MM IB Chicago Exits | 3 | 5d |
| +7 | Investindustrial | 3 | 4d |
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Oh, you've got quite a list there! It's always good to be cautious when dealing with headhunters. Here are some insights based on the most helpful WSO content:
Remember, always go with a high-quality, established recruiter that can actually place people into the types of roles they want. If a recruiter can't even tell you straight up the last time they placed a person or the firm they went to, it's time to look elsewhere.
And hey, while you're at it, you could probably also brush up on some areas of your recruiting pitch or your interview skills. It never hurts to be over-prepared!
Sources: PSA: Nightmare HH Experience, Brian Jennings - Avoid this Recruiter!, Firms to avoid, Awful Headhunters to Avoid, Watch out while recruiting: Office Hours Are A HUGE Scam
Would like some more colour on MP and SJ
Would love to, especially MP
Found 90% to be completely useless. Completely agree on Selby / Goodman Masson.
Adding to the list:
Pinpoint / Waterstreet - absolute jokemen, think this is just a pyramid scheme
Dartmouth - pretty hit and miss, prefer to avoid. staffed entirely by children
Greenwich Partners - seems to just be one matey there lol and he is completely useless
Arkesden - extremely unresponsive, do they even do anything anymore?
One Search (infra specific) - clowns, have used them as a search firm for us too and atrocious candidate selection, 0 thought
Metis Search - also crap
Some GOOD firms are Altus and Curzon.
Hey - how do you explain the fact that OneSearch is mandated by a big portion of the UMM/MF infra funds? Don't get me wrong, I agree with your assessment. It is equally applicable to Darmouth or Arkesden, I can't get my head around how they manage to secure those mandates.
Greenwich Partners, one man gig who is totally useless and send you generic emails with typos and zero relevance with skills or current role.
Also agree with Curzon, they placed me in my current shop and I have nothing to say on how they handled the whole process.
they were one of the first to specialize in infra i think. can't think of any other reason
greenwich constantly posts stuff and when I DM the guy he said he does not have any buyout mandates - so are these fake? also anyone have experience of KEA literally just not tell them about opps or claim they dont have any mandates, continuously? how do you get around this given they have 90% of jobs?
what do altus and curzon do? anything buyout? altus coming up dry HARD for me
Totally agree— Waterman Stern belongs with Pinpoint and Waterstreet. Cheap psychological tricks to lure people in while extracting company info from candidates about current/past employers
I really don't get it with Pinpoint. Are they just hoarding CVs to run scams? Perhaps they should be reported...
Brock & Decker - they take your CV and send it to everyone without asking permission. Unbelievable. Though it looks like this particular HH left for whatever reason shortly after I complained about him and made it a big deal. Incredibly unprofessional.
I've actually had good experience with some names mentioned like Dartmouth and Greenwich. They've delivered a few times.
Same experience with Albert Cliff (I think the same owners as Brock & Decker). One idi** headhunter from them sent my CV to MY FKIN boss to „confirm“ and I wasn’t even interviewing yet nor did I had any offers, which could justify the confirmation of my CV data. I was enraged as shit and threatened to sue their asses and apparently this fkin guy got laid off as a result. Thank god.
And thank god nothing happened to my current job as my boss was somehow cool with it. But was a very awkward situation.
Blackwood: are these guys doing anything these days? They've been totally useless in my experience, their PE recruiters ghosted me while their IBD team kept asking me about banking roles (despite me saying I wasn't interested in sell-side moves). Plus they used to reach out all the time when I was in banking to ask for updates on people / team structure / etc (in a somehow creepy way).
Asset Partners: allegedly they have good roles, was intro-ed to them by a friend but they had a terrible attitude and were quite disorganised (may have something to do with team size, think it's just the founder and a principal). Have the gut feeling they are very focused on female candidates - all my female friends had at least some traction with them, but my boys none.
I have to give a little shout-out to Dartmouth. When I was transitioning to PE they came forward with a few good roles and were very professional. Comment above on them being a hit or miss is true - but if you pick the right person they can be very useful in my experience.
They are running the CD&R process AFAIK (Blackwood)
PER are good
KEA are good
Top names and TW partners (for RE PE)
u know bro / sis
Big PE told me about them
What firms do TW do you PE? They reached out to me
the dartmouth experience is always hilariously bad. makes for good chatter with my friends who have largely found the same
Speaking of Dartmouth. Had a call with them this week and it was a joke ... Role suggested totally irrelevant despite mentioning to them previously what I was after, wrong seniority, the consultant knew nothing about the role and you could tell he was just reading a memo in front of him. Started to call me 'my friend' and talking like we were buddies since kindergarden. Despite not being particularly interested, he was keen to submit my CV.
Wondering whether this is across all assignments, from junior to senior roles. If so, pretty concerning.
They are incentivised on sharing CV (they literally get paid per CV shown to client). So even if you're not interested he still makes some beer money
Thoughts on Healy Hunt? Got an inbound for an interesting industry focused opp but never interacted or saw them being mentioned here
Got a general call with them to catch-up on market. Will let you know any feedback.
useful at all? any other rogue recruiters actually useful for PE?
Walker Hamill: completely unresponsive
Waterman Stearn: completely unresponsive
Octavius: not necessarily lots of pure PE (mostly special sits and all sorts of hedge funds)... but staffed mostly by recent grads who have no idea what they're doing and act like they have a mandate when in reality they are just opportunistically blasting your resume to random funds that sound good. Even the more senior headhunters are completely disorganized and peddling fake mandates... unclear how they are in business.
Any thoughts on Alexander Chapman?
Scammers
Walker Hamill and Brock & Decker are literally the worst I have been dealing with. The former will send you emails / call you about roles and be completely unresponsive. Meaning, they never schedule a meeting to discuss about opps, just name drop and they are extremely sassy and unprofessional. The latter will just throw your CV at every opportunity they have and pressure you into applying to £500m infra funds telling you you absolutely need to do this process because nothing else will ever come up in the market (from top BB team). They are odious people to even talk to and will never bring you a qualitative opportunity anyways so not worth interacting with.
Any thoughts on Linear Partners?
I think they are decent and run good mandates. An MD I know in a large platform said his team likes them and have good results. Having said that, the usual HH issues still apply. Their priority is filling spots so they do present opportunities accordingly, might keep you out of popular processes or steer you to other less popular ones so they can place more candidates/fill more spots etc.
Do they actually do PE?
Bringing this up again - who is actually good these days in London? Seems like KEA but they won’t even reply or put you in any processes. Seems tough these days
They told me about a million opps on initial call then never follow through for any. they also skipped my phone call and ignored several follow up emails, any similar experiences?
same here, they scheduled a call and never turned up. They also ignored my follow-up emails. London recruiters are particularly useless. Extremely stupid relationship skills from these people as once people enter the PE industry, there will be a new class of associates who won't forget the recruiters / firms which took liberties with them
Dartmouth and Selby completely shit I agree
Blackbrook also meh never follow up
Kea has good mandates but surprisingly not very responsive
Options is good
Options is good for L/S and MMHF, not aware of them doing any PE mandates tho
Correct. In PE is more like special sits type of things.
Blackbrook is too busy managing social media mate
I think Dartmouth Partners are by far the worst. They are completely unresponsive and very snobbish even if you are reaching for an introduction. They never bring up any good mandates despite having a decent profile (top group at a BB). I find it impossible to work with. Also Greenwich is completely useless and have had bad experience with Metis. PER, KEA, and Blackwood are good and easy to work with. Very professional at the same time.
does metis even do PE? the guy legit has ghosted me. and who was helpful at KEA and PER because I have had a very different experience? what bank are you coming from?
I’m laughing my ass off at these. The quality of these HH are fucking atrocious you really have to find a diamond in the rust to find one that acts professionally, is responsive and actually knows wtf they are doing.
Stay away from Pearse Partners, I had applied to one role and the HH wanted to dickride people at my firm for brownie points and told a senior guy at my firm. Luckily he was a buddy of mine (not directly in my team) and warned me.
Dartmouth also super spotty had one recruiter there in my early days once ghost me 3 scheduled interviews in a row.
The amount of stories I have with these hooligans is insane. The mix of super junior people from but fuck nowhere and the supply and demand dynamic of the job market ultimately creates this shit show since they don’t have standardised processes or internal systems. The government should enact some sort of minimum service level requirement for these type of firms.
Any info on Oaktree Global Opps and other Distressed/Special Sits funds?
done hiring
Does Blackwood still cover Blackstone in 2024?
is blackstone hiring at all? an internal recruiter told me no but he did not seem to know what was up at all
Any experience with Carter Wahlberg?
Blackwood are also a useless bunch - constantly pestering me and other colleagues for information on the market, while never providing us with any processes
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