Happy to do a Q&A to give back and talk about how I went from a tier 2 consulting shop to UMM/MF PE.
My background
Multiple interviews
I had **dozens** of at bats for over a year before successfully landing this offer. I interviewed everywhere from VC to sourcing growth to regular growth to MM to impact investing to MF to HFs to M&A IB to RX. Seriously.
PE was the place to be
I quickly realized PE was the place to be and so I made sure to only get DDs and strategy. When interviewing, nobody cared about my strategy projects. They only wanted to hear about the biggest deals I worked on, not because of size, but because there was so much to talk about and I really got to put on my investor cap and show them I could think critically and *creatively* about these deals.
How I learned modeling
I went to a semi-target school. I came out of college having no idea what an "income statement" was (non-technical major, think something like philosophy or French). I learned modeling and accounting by spending most weekends modeling and through trial and error at interviews. You can learn just about everything you need from Multiple Expansion. They even added a sensitivity analysis module a few days ago. I also recommend picking up old tests from peers.
Interviews
Two consecutive years, I did not get a single invitation to interview on cycle (unlike my MBB counterparts) and so I really had to hustle. For the most part, I received all interview invitations through headhunters, though 2-3 I received from networking.
Ask me anything
Happy to answer any questions. The best advice I got on this forum was to have a never give up attitude.
Happy to give my two cents:
Not being involved in a DD won't necessarily put you at a disadvantage, but that's only if you can spin your experience to be semi-finance related. When HHs or PE firms read through your resume, they don't want to see how you spent a year helping a company improve their organizational structure and decision making capabilities. You don't have to do a PEG rotation, but they want to know their future associates will have analytical horsepower and financial acumen.
I agree with Bubba- - you should push hard to get 1 diligence under your belt before sending your resumes to HHs. (having 1 DD and 1 case should suffice). If you're unable to do a PEG rotation, try getting on a case ASAP that touches upon something finance/PE related like post-merger work.
Also, completely agree on the networking piece prior to HH interviews. If you mention during your meeting that you've already spoken to 1-2 associates at a fund you're interesting in, it'll significantly increase your odds of landing an interview there.
Last, recruiting as a second year will be very beneficial to you. Since on-cycle is earlier every year, 1st year IB analysts have nothing on their resume (unless you count doing 6 weeks of training and binding decks). Your 1 year of experience is still valuable, and you can mention that you will be doing a PEG rotation over the next few months.
Happy to answer any follow-up questions on this, and best of luck.