will every pe firm try to back channel additional references?
was asked to provide 3-4 references for a lmm pe fund i’m interviewing at. i contacted my references who were all super positive and happy to provide strong feedback for me and making sure we aligned on stories.
worried if the pe fund will do additional back channeling because i was let go. lots of personal factors came in to play (divorce, etc.) but was able to find a new role without any gaps in employment - but scared pe firm will back channel and find out i was terminated. thoughts?
context - i was at my firm doing well, the last 6 months i had a lot going on in my personal life and couldn’t do the job at the level they wanted so i was let go. got severance but also luckily started a new role without any gaps. the pe fund wants references from the first firm which i gave.
Wouldn't you?
Exactly, if they have any ties to your old firm and/or people who know you, they'll ask. It's just how the game works and risk you run.
got it thanks - any tips on how to navigate this? i provided 3 strong references and have a 4th
This was years ago, but I remember being in my staffer’s office and his phone rang from someone in his business school section who worked at the firm where I was interviewing. He knew I was interviewing and said, “get out of my office. We haven’t spoken in years, so this is probably about you.” I also know the firm had a partner call my group head. Fortunately, the references were positive, and I got the job.
Most people in this industry are one degree of separation from everyone. This is why you always want to try your best to leave on good terms. I wouldn’t be worried about layoffs if they weren’t due to performance. The good people in the industry will shoot straight and still give a good reference in those situations. I would strongly caution against being untruthful. I would not hire someone who lied, but I would hire someone subject to layoffs.
it was performance related - the firm said i wasn't able to perform at their expectations.
i had a lot going on in my personal life, it was probably the worst 6 months of my life the back half of 2024. i tired to reach out to HR and staffing to give me a break but we weren't able to accomodate people taking sabbiticals or long term breaks.
managers ive worked with in the past have offered to be references because they know i'm a strong worker, it was just unfortunate timing with when things were hitting the fan for me in addition to a weak consulting market which didn't help.
any tips on how to navigate this? i'm worried this is going to stick with me forever at this point, seems like I can't get away. have made it to the final round with a pe firm and provided strong references as i noted, its the back channeling i'm worried about
At the end of the day, is there any change in potential outcome that worrying will bring? Probably not. Therefore in my mind there’s no reason to worry. I would not personally offer up that you had a performance issue and that’s why you no longer are at the firm, but if they ask 100% you need to be honest, and would offer to give references that your work was good until you hit this rough spot, and explain what happened. Will this potential impact you, maybe, but as a poster above said, I’d hire someone who can explain the issue and what they learned, but would never hire someone who lied point blank to me. Every once in a while we get a CEO or CFO candidate for one of my portcos that extremely stretches the truth about something they did in a prior role (and for no real reason to stretch it that much), and we learn about it and immediately they are out of contention.
Overall though…wouldn’t worry about the backtracking because there’s nothing you can do about it. Better off spending time on something else.
Get ahead of it and come out full frontal. Just explain what happened and that they might hear about this. Say you fully understand why your firm made the decision it did, and that this is your side of the story. All the other references prove out that this was a one-off circumstance. And you move on. Stop fretting about it and try to hide it. The lie is always worse than the crime.
This is great advice. Was asked to leave the bank where I started and now years later my old MDs have shown my team a dozen deals and we’ve bid on a bunch of them. At the end of they day I am so glad I just said “thank you for the opportunity” and left when I was let go instead of crashing out like I probably could have. This is a tiny industry. I keep running into the same people repeatedly - conferences, deal syndicates, bankers etc.
you will be fine
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but unless you are bringing in a partner level .I think references are super over rated. If you do the modeling test, meet the team multiple times, have some form of social interview too. Who cares about past roles.
This might be a hot take, but "aligning on story" with your references is a huge red flag. I've been a referral for a dozen+ friends / contacts, and only one of them asked to get on the phone to align on their story before I was contacted by their prospective employer. "Aligning on story" is basically code for here is how I want you to white lie / gloss over the story for me and I will have no part of anyone's drama like that. As someone else said, unless you are practically a partner these calls are overrated and 99% of the time boil down to yeah he's a cool dude and works hard. If you have a blemish on your background you deal with it yourself, don't drag other people into it.
east rock did a HBS case study on references which i feel like makes folks want to be hardos about references when in reality, "cool dude can work with him/her for 90 hours a week and yeah"
They will likely back-channel if they can.
For my post-analyst PE gig, the partner at the group I was interviewing with called up my co-head at the IB group I am an analyst at and asked about me. The co-head wasn't on the list of references I had provided but the partner was a close client of his.
So, unlike the above saying they won't really be focused on it if it isn't a partner-level hire, I do think there's a good chance someone back-channels their way through the references.
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