PE Associate role: responsibilities and expectations?

What are the real responsibilities and expectations of a first year private equity associate (recruited from 1.5-3 years in banking)? 

I've had several first round interviews with PE firms where they have described new associates as being fully responsible for effectively the entire deal process (model / rationale / diligence / CIM / IC Memo).

Is this accurate? If so, how can this translate into better hours than banking? 

Granted, as a third-year analyst, I take full ownership of technical and other processes, but my VP and MD to some degree have some oversight / bear some responsibility for the ultimate deliverable. How do you make that transition from banking (with a much larger deal team) to what sounds like running a one-man show? Any advice?  

(I realize that my reaction to imagining the pressure of scenario means that this career path is likely not for me, but I was wondering if others felt similarly daunted--and if so, how you dealt with it) 

7 Comments
 

I’ve been curious about this. In many of my interviews they also touted how you will be running deals alone from essentially day one — and some of the firms even staffed deal teams as an associate and partner for a platform investment. Definitely seems like you’d be in over your ears coming in from 2 years of banking where you regularly had another analyst, associate, VP, etc

 

No way is any new platform deal going to be a fresh day 1 assoc and a partner. You will have considerable oversight with potentially 1-2 if not 3 layers between you and the partner. The job will be similar to banking except output needs to be thoughtful, truly error free (don’t just submit and expect the layers to fix like in banking) and you need to be highly proactive not looking to go home early like a banking analyst 

 

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