Private Equity SA
Guys,
I'm a junior at a target school, did an SA at a boutique IB after my sophomore year, and I didn't land any SA offers this year.
Ultimately, I would like to work in middle market PE for a few years then either start my own fund or run a company, doesn't have to be something huge. I will be interviewing with a smaller PE firm this week ($600-700mm invested across ~60 portfolio companies). The firm is willing to take undergrads for SA and FT positions.
My issue is that although I have banking experience, I didn't really have the opportunity to learn any modeling skills like DCF or LBO. Most of my modeling work was spreading financials, comps, deals, etc. I have a ton of qualitative work on my resume.
Will my lack of modeling experience kill me in the interviews? Will I be asked to run a quick LBO? How about case studies?
In essence, I feel this would be a great learning opportunity and I really like the firm, but are they willing to let me learn along the way?
Thanks for your help, WSO.
Does your school not offer any class that deals with M&A? I go to a non-target and we had one offered, even though the class itself had a selective process to be admitted. From experience, I know qualitative work is very important too. so that can be a selling point for you and be a strength vs a weakness. I did a lot of Accounting and advisory internships, and although I lacked the quantitative skill-set for IB, a lot fo the qualitative work I did actually applied, and I just stressed that I how I was going to learn the quantitative and technical stuff during the school year through case comps, self-learning or class, and it worked out.
For interviews, you're most likely going to need to know the basics of each. Walk them through different type ofe valautions techniques, most or easy and dont need much detail, DCF wil probably be most in depth, and potentially an LBO as well.
My school does not have an undergrad business school...perhaps you can guess by my username. My degree program is a double major in econ and maths, so I can certainly handle the quantitative aspect of modeling. I guess my best chance is to teach them to myself this week before the interview.
I'm not sure what else a PE firm looks for when interviewing undergrads. Any suggestions?
DCF is really not too hard. If you're worried get BIWS.
I can walk through a DCF and maybe an LBO, but I wouldn't be able to run a quick LBO model during an interview.
aka - you memorized how to do it from a vault guide. sometimes, in the interview, they will ask you questions where only wisdom will allow you to answer. Meaning, if you have no anecdotes building a financial model, you will get ripped on that technical question.
BIWS is pretty good (fro what I have heard). Good luck, hope you get the job, bro.
Exactly right. Thanks for your help.
learn the simple LBO model. can be done easily within a week
You can easily learn everything you need to know in order to build an interview-style LBO model in about a week. You don't need to learn all that much about accounting in order to be able to build it out, aside from very basic stuff that is more or less common sense.
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