Navigating the PE Landscape

Hey WSO Community, Posting to see if any individuals might be able to guide me in my approach to PE recruiting. I've started to line up sessions with headhunters and am doing my best to prepare for the inevitable question about which type of firm I'm looking for.

I'm primarily interested in the highest-performing, consultant friendly firms (New Mountain, Berkshire Partners, Golden Gate, etc.) I've found myself at a loss on how to describe these. While I believe these have typically been referred to as middle market to upper middle market, it seems like fund and deal sizes for a lot of these firms keeps getting bigger (H&F with its monster fund as a great example). Furthermore, I've seen definitions for middle market vary from size of fund being $1-5MM to investments hovering around $1-2B in enterprise value.

Could any of you more experienced professionals possibly help me better articulate this group of firms?

On a related note, when describing preferences for middle market, would reasons like broader transaction experience, higher returns in the market segment, higher emphasis on industry diligence (as opposed to financial engineering) suffice?

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