What do you think got you hired when you recruited for PE?

Hi I'm about to be joining IB in the upcoming summer and considering recruiting for PE when I start my new job. I am wondering what are the key characteristics you look for when hiring analysts?

And more importantly, what do you think it was about YOU that got you the offer?

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Had a 100% offer rate during PE recruiting and there were two things that really set me up well:

- Demonstrating extremely good knowledge of their portfolio companies and the fund strategy and tying it in with my questions and answers

- Taking no. 1 and telling them why their fund, with my background, made the most sense for me and making them believe it

At the end of the day, being competent is table stakes - the fund is more focused on whether you’ll be a great fit and going to showcase the two things above really helped me.

 

Have wondered this myself before. I think overall it was having a good fit with the team. You need to know your stuff (deals, technicals, experience) as a baseline to get the interview/progress through interviews, but I think ultimately many hires are made based on fit. Reality is, PE has a line of people looking to fill those seats at all times and you need to be well-rounded to get hired/stay hired.

 

The IB seniors I worked for told my eventual PE firm that they could work me to the bone and my work quality would consistently be great. 6 months into joining the PE firm, I had a very tough (bad) experience with several new platforms invested and my deal team commented that my bank wasn't kidding. It didn't help that my PE class apparently had several more nepotism hires than usual, so the number of staffable associates was 20% lower than it should have been.

 

Starting in a few weeks. Similar to another comment here, demonstrating good knowledge of the firm’s strategy and portcos will be important. Though I thought the biggest differentiating factor was I was able to demonstrate that I could form opinions and support them.

They asked me what my favorite and least favorite portcos were and they jokingly said “don’t say xx company” because presumably all the other candidates were saying the same thing. I gave them different answers and even told them that my least favorite company was the same one every other candidate said was their favorite, but I had very valid reasons behind my opinions and they were impressed by that.

 

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