Starting Early as a PE Associate
I was recently asked by my fund if I’d be willing to start early. I’ve been in banking for a little over a year and would have roughly 16 months of experience by the time I joined the PE firm if I decided to start early.
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through a similar transition. What does the associate ramp-up typically look like at a PE firm? What is generally expected of a new-hire associate in the first few months, and how quickly are you expected to take ownership of deals/workstreams?
For those who started early, did you feel like it was beneficial to get in sooner and start learning the job, or do you wish you had taken the additional time off? Does starting a few months early meaningfully change the experience or learning curve?
I’m generally someone who would prefer not to start a job early, but candidly, I’m finding banking pretty monotonous at this point and am very excited about my next role. So I’m definitely open to starting early — I’d just like to better understand what the transition is actually like and whether there are any downsides I’m not thinking about.
Bump
In full disclosure, I did ~3 years of IB so didn't leave early like you would. However, I left my IB job pretty soon after I got the PE offer and took ~4 months off to travel (PE firm was open to me starting later in summer). It was a super fun and amazing life experience I will not forget and am so glad I did.
If I were you, I'd ask for at least 2 weeks (ideally more) of time to do some travel before you start. It will be hard to take more than 1 week off consecutively in PE, especially as an Associate.
Take it. You’ve already learned enough in banking, extra time is fairly futile at this point.
This also gives you a longer period to ramp as an associate and form relationships with your firm, ahead of the rest of your cohort. All fortuitous for future SA/VP promo and gives you an extra window to get deal reps (where otherwise can be hard to get a platform done in the limited window of the associate program).
You’re doing them a favor and will get good experience (they wouldn’t ask if they weren’t busy). Plus, their expectations will be low since you probably won’t get full training until others from your class start later.
No real negatives.
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