VP Promotion Chances at Megafund
What are chances of getting directly promoted at a megafund in NY (BX, KKR, SLP, WP, EQT, CVC, Bain and the like.)? What percent of associates get promoted?
I am an international and weighing if it is a worth the switch or stay in my current seat and have more certainity in the US. Any internationals here who have got promoted?
This has probably been answered a few times in a disaggregated manner on this forum, but like many other questions on this website … the crappy answer is “it depends”
At a H&F, you’ve got a 2 and out program unless you’re one of the top associates they want to keep. At Blackstone and KKR, certainly possible but not “the design” and most of your class will be gone before VP. At a Thoma Bravo or Warburg, the design of the firms are to promote from within, so materially higher chances there.
If you’re optimizing for promotion internally, just need to do your DD on which firms are like the last bucket. Thoma Bravo, Warburg, Bain, and Vista come to mind for me.
Yes KKR and CD&R have promoted internationals to Director/Prinicpal and Partner, very common in MF PE if you started as associate.
I worked at one of those firms, very common is extremely wrong. It is very common for people to be kicked out after 2 years. That's the case for 80+% of the people. Look at how many VPs both firms already have, there is an extremely level of VP bloat at almost all large cap funds even with only 1-2 promotes a year out of very large associate classes. A lot of associates stay in PE, but go down market to MM or LMM PE. Very few stay within large-cap PE. The senior associate market is far more competitive than the associate one given that 1) a lot of firms promote associates within and thus don't look for senior associates from outside and 2) you are often also competing with MBAs for those spots.
General rule of thumb for promotion odds that is helpful is looking at previous years and seeing how many they promote. The only caveat being that if fundraising momentum slows down promotion odds also go down. Thoma and Vista basically used to promote every associate back in the day but now are more similar to other MFs whereas most don't get promoted. Thoma, alongside maybe Silver Lake, is still probably the best MF in terms of promotion odds because associate classes remain relatively small. Most if not all MFs are either explicitly 2 and out or only promote the top 20%.
Former MF associate, agree with all of this. One additional point - if you're joining a MF that splits out into sectors (e.g., KKR), you also need to look at the pipeline ahead of you as there may just not be a spot for your to get promoted into if the classes ahead of you are full + someone is tracking to promo (or perhaps someone is coming back from MBA around when you'd be up for promo). There are cases where if you're really well liked, they may try to find another group where there is space for you to stay but that is unpredictable + you may not want to join the other group.
All this to say the base case is you get pushed out after 2-3 years at a MF
current KKR PE in North America, one principal is Canadian, one partner is Canadian, one director is from Hong Kong, and 1 partner and 1 principal are international (haven't 100% verified this last one), and this is just what I know of them.
What do you consider to be VP at MF like BX where they have assoc / SA / Principal type of ladder? Is promotion to SA considered VP elsewhere?
i think post mba title is fair equivalent
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