PE Recruiting Coffee Chats

Hi all,

This post is for the people who have been through PE recruiting or, better yet, participate in their own firm's recruiting. It's my understanding that PE firms use coffee chats to get a hold of whether they want to extend an interview offer, just based on fit.

Any tips? What's the breadth of content like? I'm interested in upper mid market to mega funds. I'm expecting I should prep:

-> an understanding of their investment strategy -> an understanding of recent deals/headlines -> answers to the basic "why" questions (why PE? why us? why are you interested in that industry?)

Do you guys think I need to prep anything on my own diligence experience for this? (MBB consultant here) Obviously will do this for head hunters and the actual interviews, but unsure for these coffee chats

Thanks!

4 Comments
 

We didn't do coffee chats with most of the associates we hired last year. We find it's not a great indication for interview success (pretty unrelated). We were actually discussing last week whether we would even do them this year.

 
Best Response

I've actually found PE guys to be way more receptive to these meetings than when I was recruiting for IB, even if they disclose upfront that they aren't hiring at the moment.

For the PE people here, what are you looking for in these meetings, and how can candidates can best convert to them to interviews / introductions to other professionals? How often should you keep in touch?

 

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