PE Prep Advice needed

Hi all, happy new year.

I wanted to come on here today to ask about how I should structure my prep over the next 2 weeks. I'm currently gearing up for Q1 recruiting of this year and can do level 4 of the PF LBO model and Version 1 from scratch. The case studies are a little tough tho - sometimes struggle to pull certain assumptions out of a 40 page deck. I was wondering what type of questions are typically asked in an interview, and what should I do to prepare myself? I haven't really touched the 400 guide since banking recruiting but wasn't sure if there was specific things I should focus on. 

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Signed MF during on-cycle for a sense of my qualifications (very different process than off-cycle so take advice with a grain of salt). 

Would believe a lot of this depends on what type of funds you are looking for, how much experience you've gotten on the job, etc so I will leave more general advice. Generally, ensure you have your technicals in line (LBOs from scratch + papers easily within reach) as those will be seen as a baseline. Then, I would practice your behavior and ensure they are all ready since you will face certain obvious questions multiple times (tell me about yourself, why PE, why this fund, why location, etc as applicable). Then next most importantly is probably industry focused items (i.e. tech trends for tech funds). First two are MUST haves and then the industry stuff is also necessary but a bit unbounded (no hard number on needing to know 1 trend vs 2 trends, 1 potential take private vs 3, etc)

General structure I'd use over the next two weeks is probably to do LBOs and in between focus on behaviorals/ industry knowledge. This gave me time to let it "breathe" and not fry myself since the preparation uses very different parts of your brain.

In terms of the 400 guide/the IB guides, I found the accounting section helpful, especially for one of the more technical funds I interviewed at where I got asked about specific accounting practices (relevant to my industry).

Hopefully this is helpful and good luck!

 

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