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May 31, 2024
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Per GoBuyside e-mail - here's who went out yesterday / today:
Apollo Ares Management Berkshire Partners Blackstone Group Centerbridge FFL Partners Francisco Partners General Atlantic Golden Gate Capital KKR Lindsay Goldberg Pegasus Capital Point 72 Asset Management Searchlight Capital Silver Lake Partners Soros Private Equity Sycamore Partners TPG Capital TPG Growth TPG Sixth Street Vista Equity Partners Warburg Pincus
Confirmed. Sales of our private equity interview course basically confirm this -- always a big surge when invites start going out. This timing is just insanity...the early recruiting trend just continues.
Good luck everyone: PE Interview Course here. Remember, if you're 8 years old, it's usually not too late if you get your act together: learn more.
Word is Francisco went first to make 4 offers and everyone followed. Most will be done by Thursday. Move quickly if you want to interview.
How should I proceed? One shop I want to interview with is represented by one of my HHs -- I assume there I should contact the HH. Another fund I want to interview with is not represented by my HH -- I am thinking there I should look for an introduction and if not, do my best cold email. Thoughts?
I would reach out to all headhunters ASAP, and cold email all other firms you are interested in. Nobody will definitely hire or even interview you because you sent a good or bad cold email, but they will certainly NOT hire you if they never know you exist.
Can confirm as well. My much more accomplished and pedigreed younger friends all have offers. I was basically connected all the first year analysts from my school to my older friends at current PE firms or who just finished the process last year. Hit them up, and many are actively intervieweing through final rounds, two got offers, one accepted, the other one is holding out and tripping balls not knowing what to do. This is madness, and PE firms know this. There is some legit candidate arbitrage going on here by some of the funds. There's a couple 22 year olds who are legit contenders for Blackstone and KKR who have offers from upper MM that expire before their BX and KKR interviews happen. What is driving the recruiting date earlier and earlier is the non top 6 funds wanting to get the kids that end up at Apollo/KKR by offering them early, and then everyone is forced to follow.
At this rate, with recruiting moving back a month every year, looks like things will be kicking off next year around Thanksgiving if not earlier.
If any of you were/are economics students, this is a great real-life example of game theory.
more specific to game theory, I would call it Prisoner's Dilemma:
"The prisoner's dilemma is a paradox in decision analysis in which two individuals acting in their own self-interest pursue a course of action that does not result in the ideal outcome. The typical prisoner's dilemma is set up in such a way that both parties choose to protect themselves at the expense of the other participant. As a result of following a purely logical thought process, both participants find themselves in a worse state than if they had cooperated with each other in the decision-making process."
Firms and candidates would be much better off if the process took place a year later, but theyre not willing to wait and see what the other fund does.
This is getting ridiculously early, but I don't see the trend reversing anytime soon.
Prediction: By 2020 we're going to be recruiting in August. Gotta get those banking analysts when they're still in training! You heard it here first.
I think we'll see a more equitable split between year-ahead and same-year recruiting. It is not sustainable to keep progressing earlier in the analyst lifespan.
Back when the process was a March thing you could justify an analyst 'checking out' of his banking job because for all intents and purposes he was halfway through. Now with someone getting less than 20 weeks of deal work (counting training being done in August) before the process kicks off, firms are really taking a flier on 21 or 22-year-olds.
Right now the process for same-year summer-start positions (e.g. Summer 2018 roles that pop up unpredictably in February-April 2018) is entirely ad-hoc.
I think that may standardize somewhat, where the same funds that went out through a formal headhunter process in the first week of December 2017 (nuts!) for Summer 2019 associate intake may three or five years from now be running formalized processes for a Summer 2024 intake in both December 2022 and December 2023.
You get a crack at the usual suspects (top 10 groups on the street that are a predictable source of candidates with a high risk-adjusted likelihood of success as an associate), and a year later you also get a crack at more fully-baked candidates who have 18 months of deal work.
Right now it anecdotally seems like the best funds take 90-100% of their class through this increasingly early process. I wonder (hypothesize / hope) if that ratio changes to 75/25 in the model I outlined above.
Based on the feedback I received from some MFs it sounded like this was already happening a little bit. At least one did not fill their class to take one off-cycle since they didn't feel comfortable filling with candidates who only had a few months of experience (or at least this is what they said to me)