Hi fellow WSO-ers, I am a fellow contributor to the forums here but created a new account for this post to remain anonymous.
I went to a non-target and managed to get into an MM bank specializing in an industry group, after a couple years, I managed to wriggle my way through recruiting and received an offer from an industry PE fund (same one when I was in banking).
I was quite content on the buyside, looking at deals from the other perspective and getting to know the players in depth. I grinded and performed well, at the end of my first year, I was told that if I continued to perform well until the end of my third year, I would be able to progress up the ladder without going to B-school.
Things took a hit in my industry since and prospects are looking slim for the fund to continue. Needless to stay, I have no intention of staying in a zombie fund, no interest in attending B-school given the opportunity cost, and am looking to lateral desperately. My boss, however, has hinted that he would bring me along if he finds something but I do not want him to be my only option since I have other responsibilities I have to attend to.
I am interested in going to another PE fund with partnership track but am lost in how to approach potential VP opportunities with competition from many PE firms that promote from within or if not, from other post-MBA grads. Hell, I might even have to settle for a Senior Associate position but I don’t think I’m in a position of choice here.
I have reached out to headhunters but haven’t heard anything back (I think it’s because I’m quite niche in what I did) even though I mentioned I’m open to other industries. Other funds within my industry aren’t really hiring much either, and even if they are, I have no interest there. I’m in a major US-city and would like to stay within my vicinity.
I think my only option is hitting up some local firms around here. But is the best approach just really having university-like networking where you have coffee chats and informational interviews? Sorry to sound so naïve but it’s just been years since I last did this when I was at a non-target but I’m not sure whether firms are even receptive to this kind of behavior at the PE associate level.
Any advice that you guys can share or give would be much appreciated with respect to my current situation.
Sorry if any of this is blunt: If you are currently an associate (with 2-3 years of experience) then I think pursuing VP opportunities is a waste of time, especially if you have not sourced anything. Pursuing senior associate opps might be tough too, especially if you are trying to get into a new industry (and one in which you presumably wouldn't have any experience), but this depends more on how many years of experience you have. As I'm sure you're aware, there just aren't that many roles that tick all the check marks on your list:
"I have reached out to headhunters but haven't heard anything back (I think it's because I'm quite niche in what I did) even though I mentioned I'm open to other industries."
Simply mentioning that you are open to other industries isn't really going to work - your resume will read like you are somewhat pigeonholed in X industry, for obvious reasons, so you will need to overcome that somehow. I think your best bet is to try to get into a fund with a more generalist approach (so the industry focus is less relevant, compared to say joining a firm that is focused on 1 or 2 verticals that you have no experience in... or given you have experience in an industry that went through a downturn, perhaps you have experience managing distressed situations and can spin that experience for a special sits firm) or joining a firm that is still very young and willing to take a chance on you.
To be clear, yes you should be networking, but not necessarily in the college way of cold email someone and ask to learn about their job. You should already have a network (analysts you worked with in IB who are now in PE, friends at other firms, other colleagues or ex coworkers, etc.) that you can start off by tapping into and seeing if they have or know about any relevant opportunities.
Good luck man, we're rooting for you.
I second CHItizen. You're a smarter, better networked person than you were as a non-target junior hoping to break into banking. Your actions need to reflect that. I don't mean this pejoratively; how beautiful for you that you're starting from such a better position than then.
The one good thing about all of this is that you have at least six months (from what I can surmise) to make this transition. The partner isn't going to force you out (you said that he's expressed an interest in taking you along to whatever thing he finds). This means you don't have to force anything, and on the buy-side, nothing good happens overnight (a deal, a job, anything).
Your banking analyst class should be your immediate starting point. Make a tracker for yourself. Plop everyone in, and feel free to include any of the mid-senior or seniors you worked well with who would be a positive reference. Plug them into LinkedIn to see where they all are now. Your analyst class hopefully yields at least half a dozen different buy-side firms. The seniors aren't probably still all at the bank you did your analyst stint at. Note who is where.
Get in touch with people over text or email. For the seniors, do it with a phone call; the older generation loves that (seriously). Keep it super brief (even with the email/text). It should be very lightweight (under 5 minutes for a call, under two lines for an email): "Hey, it's been awhile, you popped into my mind for X-reason, I have been so heads-down with work that I've done a shit job of staying in touch. Want to grab a drink Thursday?"
Mix up the order in which you see people. You don't want your whole analyst class to know you saw them within two weeks of each other. Try to get one a week and intersperse them with your other contacts (classmates from undergrad, friends or acquaintances you made at other banks or funds through your deal work, seniors from your bank, school alumni, and ideally also the class of analysts who were there when you summered). If you tally all this up, it's probably several dozen very warm leads.
Try to do 3-5 a week for six weeks. If you did 30 coffees or drinks, that ought to generate real insight for you on what's out there. It also gets your juices flowing, you're back in the hunt.
Here is where it gets a lot like undergrad recruiting. Move forward with the people you feel are most promising. This means a second meeting, and switch it up. If you met someone for coffee, do drinks. If it was drinks first, do coffee or lunch.
Depending on how urgent your timeframe looks, I'd try to set this one up more as a "Yeah, I'm starting to think more broadly about what my future looks like. How are you evaluating things on your end?" If you don't have calendar pressure, you want to get them talking and make no explicit ask on your end.
You want to make it easy for the third touchpoint to be a layup where you feed them something like "Something that you said last time really stuck with me, now my mind's turning over a bit and I can see my fund isn't a great fit because 'X-that-they-said' plus I'm concerned that without a generalist experience, I run the risk of getting pigeonholed really early on. Do you know if there's any room for an experienced hire at your shop?"
If you're rushed on time, you have to decide whether to finesse that whole process into two touchpoints, or alternatively, compact three into a tighter timeframe. I dislike either of those options, which is why I think it's fortunate that you don't seem to be in a do-or-die moment.
If you can spread three touchpoints across 12 weeks (put six weeks after each), nothing feels rushed and each of your contacts hopefully has the impression that you're reconnecting naturally and that they ended up being helpful to a thought process they didn't even know you were in the middle of.
Remember that this business is a long-term game. Don't reach too far for the VP role. Just like in banking, if you lateral it is more probable than not that you'll have to reset back to t=0 or t=1 on your current title. If that's the price of moving upstream to a larger fund with a partner-track position, what a great trade.
Best of luck.
Thank you for both your views. Very helpful and I’ve began to reach out into my network to start teeing up some catch-ups. Just want to pick your brain a little more. I have about 4 years of banking experience and on my 3rd year in PE now, considering this lateral switch might come out to be a little bit difficult, I’m weighing doing my MBA as well. There’s a big opportunity cost for me as I have a family to take care of and my wife is taking care of the kids so she’s not working yet.
I have not done my GMAT yet so ideally if I were to submit my application, it would be R-1 for Sep 2018, which would mean I would get admitted in 2019 (would be around 32) and graduate in 2021. By that time, I would be around 34. Do you think that’s too old to hit a reset in the industry? Ideally, I’d still be in PE but have a better brand name under my belt post business school (I’d really only consider the top-7 really) and a strong network and the pedigree that comes with it required in the industry.
I’m just worried I would be way behind the eightball here considering 1) I graduated later than my peers at 24 instead of your typical 22 (I’ve got a solid reason for that), and 2) my stint in both banking and PE would be longer in duration than what you typically see in the MBA profile (typical 2+2), and 3) lastly, that I essentially would be going back into PE as an associate at age 34, which seems to be on the extremely side from my perspective, so not sure if MBA is something I should even consider.
I wouldn't be remotely focused on the title at my next shop or whether it was partner track - I would just get a seat at a good place and work hard enough to give yourself a great chance to move up quickly.
pelateral I don't think an MBA is the wisest path you could pursue.
In the incredibly insular world of private equity, I have found that it's helpful to think of an MBA as an accelerant for the trajectory you're already on. It is not a panacea that allows you to switch your trajectory altogether.
Someone who comes from a strong target undergrad, placed into a top bank and a strong group within it, and then placed very well into a MF or upper MM PE role is going to be able to use an elite MBA as the necessary stepping stone for those partner-track post-MBA PE associate roles.
Someone from a non-target undergrad who "managed" to place into a true MM bank and then "wriggled through recruiting" to secure a seat at an industry specialist PE shop (which almost invariably means smaller AUM) would, given a seat at the very same business school, struggle to get any post-MBA PE role given the competition. There's a higher number of qualified candidates coming into school than there are seats that exist for post-school roles.
Now, absolutely none of that is a knock on you or your progress to date. Getting any banking job is a feat in itself. Getting one from a school with no formal recruiting process at your fingertips is laudable and speaks strongly both to your resolve and intelligence. Placing successfully into a buy-side role from a bank that doesn't carry the reputation that the heavyweights do does so doubly. Congratulations on everything you've done so far, truly.
The picture I'm trying to paint is that you have to know what recipe you're able to cook based on the ingredients you've got on the table in front of you. If (and candidly, the odds aren't in your favor) you could get into HBS or GSB (and that's really what you need to do these days to have it easy, in relative terms, in the PE process), you're faced with the new burden of being compared to all the guys who were at better banks and better pre-MBA roles.
(My prior paragraph is by no means a knock on Wharton. I have been surprised in the past three cycles to see how many friends had a "H/S or bust" mentality. Where before it was always HSW in the same breath, there seems to be a slight gap in how some of the more competitive candidates view the school, which is strange given the rigor and history of its finance curriculum in particular.)
This is getting long. To sum it up, I don't think the time spent on the GMAT prep, application process, and campus visits is worth the probability-weighted outcome of you taking a real shot at the MBA business schools ">M7 application process. Your odds are more favorable in the lower portion of the MBA business schools ">M7 and best in the Tuck/Fuqua/Stern bucket, and considering how that affects your recruiting chances, I am not one to encourage you to take that bet knowing you're coming out at 34 on the other side of it.
You are underestimating how heavily work experience weighs as a factor for people off the elite PE track. I am serious; there are fantastic investors at really great funds who never went back to school. This is what Z1196 was getting at: if you can find a strong shop that's willing to give you a seat, your only worry should be how to perform your best in that role. It may take you twice as long to get each title promotion, but if you started at another fund sometime in 2018 as an associate, made Principal in 2022 after four years (that'd be long), then Director four years after that, then MD six or eight years after that in 2032 or 2034, you still got the golden ticket. You're an MD in PE at the age of 43 or 45. So what if it took you longer en route, you got there.
If you spent half the amount of energy that you would on the b-school application hoopla on strengthening or building the relationships that will enable you to make the PE lateral you need to in the immediate term, you'd make it successfully. I think that's the much smarter path given what you've shared about yourself so far.
You're going to have to consider kind of starting over at the associate level and perhaps in those other cities even though you don't want to based on your industry and hesitation to pursue an MBA.
Really good comments here so far, the only thing I'd add is, have you thought about moving into an industry role?
I know it's not nearly as sexy at PE for a number of reasons, but if you're at a specialized industry focused firm, I would imagine there are some industries that would be interested in an experience hire from the PE world. Sure, the work is different, less upside, etc just a thought as you think about your next move.
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