WOMEN IN PE - Easier recruiting?
Seeing as so few women stay in finance or PE — is it easier (if ever so marginally) to get looks as a woman during PE recruiting? Do firms want to take a quota of women? Do most of you guys see that the class is majority male-dominated?
If there are women that could speak on this, that would be helpful as well.
if you are a woman, or black you will always get more looks in 2021. This is the case for any white-collar job.
100% I was looking to lateral to JPM and I was denied the role for this reason. It was unreal and the hiring manger told me this (I knew him for a few years) so no hard no foul but its surreal.
You were lied to lmao, they just didn't want you.
You're not wrong, but frankly I'd still rather be a straight white male in this industry. I've worked at two banks and a big PE fund and I've never had a single female MD/Partner and each analyst/associate class I've been a part of has been less than 20% female. These types of environments are simply not conducive to advancing women's careers and that sucks for women. So honestly, if they have an easier time with recruitment that seems fair to me.
No shit
100%. This was an actual factor that people would be pretty direct about to me while I was recruiting. As a female in PE, I always felt conflicted about this. It's nice to have the opportunity and be "sought out", but really don't like the idea of being hired just because I'm a female and would like to think I'm actually competent and earned my place.
Both can be true at the same time. There’s no reason to play your accomplishment down considering that if you were actually incompetent for the job - you wouldn’t be successful during your 2(+) year stint.
No one is denying the bias exists, there are literally dedicated recruiting channels. What is in contention is the idea that diversity hires are somehow inferior to those who come through standard channels.
What if you are a pre-op, trans woman who bigots might confuse on the surface for being a male?
Is that worth double points? Can you threaten to sue the PE firm if someone refers to you as SIR and hence get an offer that way?
Significantly easier for women, have been told this by recruiters many times.
Yes — there’s tons of LP pressure. Bar is lowered during hiring and on-the-job.
Strongly disagree about on the job. Maybe in a very small subset of situations, but even the largest firms can't afford to carry deadweight. Both women and men that progress in this industry to mid/senior levels are almost always there on merit. Nobody is paying that much money to people that don't produce, even if LPs ask about diversity efforts; which they do, and I'm in favor of, but don't get it twisted on what ultimately matters at those levels. Having seen this firsthand, I would be extremely surprised if an LP turned down an allocation in a high-performing firm's next raise because they lacked diversity (gender, race, sexual orientation, whatever).
As an aside, I think what a lot of fratty white men miss is that many times they're getting dinged because they simply don't profile as a successful senior investor. I say this as a white male that was in a frat, but it's not just about how well you nail your technicals or the fact that you went to Dalton or that you played lax at Cornell. Those are all good things, but you also need to have the requisite EQ, creativity and finesse such that I can project you as a future moneymaker for the firm (even MFs with strict 2 and out rules prefer "scalable" candidates). It's easy to blame the system for not being fair, which it isn't, but a lot of people miss the opportunity to actually reflect on why they're not getting the opportunities or success that they think they deserve.
My experience has been very, very different. Across the LMM funds I have worked at, I have seen the following:
1) Direct instructions to a headhunter to only source female candidates for a Vice President vacancy. While male candidates required prior banking + PE experience to even have a conversation, no such criteria existed for the women. We tried for months to find someone suitable before ultimately abandoning the search because the candidate pool was so limited (note, this was in a third tier city not known for finance).
2) For pre-MBA recruiting, somewhere between 5-10% of applicants were women. The bar to interview these candidates was lower than their male counterparts.
3) Some of our LPs had funds set aside for minority or women owned businesses (the requirement wasn’t 100% ownership, but had to be meaningful). I’m talking about the PE fund’s management company. This was a meaningful contributor to a particular individual’s ‘success’ in the firm.
I have plenty of other examples but won’t go into details to protect the individuals that would be referenced. The summary is that firms absolutely can and do hire and carry underperformers in order to achieve diversity targets. This approach has been magnified x100 in the last year with the BLM movement combined with social pressure to put women in more board seats / executive roles. The pressure is very real and I think the composition of firms will look very different in 10-20 years (time lag due to the fact that it will take a long time for new hires to progress to senior roles).
That said, there is a wide range of talent. Just like men, some women are absolute rockstars and others are below the bar. However, I will say that having done dozens of deals, I have NEVER encountered a female lawyer who didn’t dominate literally everything she touched. I don’t know what it is. Partners, experienced associates, paralegals. They are consistently all over every aspect and detail of every deal and I am thoroughly impressed each time.
I am an LP. I can tell you that from the top down (ie. on orders from our IC/Bosses) that we are looking at teams and how diverse they are. We have not made any decisions yet, but we are definitely collecting data and figuring out what to do with it... There are three general responses from fund managers on this issue.
1. "Get bent. We have and hire who we want. You can take your money elsewhere if you want." (They often change their minds after Yale/Harvard etc threaten to pull out). Some don't. It's a game of chicken. Does the LP have the balls to dump the relationship and some great returns? Some do. Some don't. Does the Firm really want to lose another prestigious LP and then have to fend off the hordes of other LPs as to why this happened knowing that LPs (like any group of investors) are a herd?
2. "We are way ahead of you but promote internally so we have hired/are hiring diverse candidates (Mostly Asian Women and Men). We have also hired someone and paid them a lot of money to help/do this for us in a glorified HR role" . This way our top level people look the same and will for a long time since few junior people stay/make it but we have covered out butts. For now at least.
3. "We are too small for this but will do what we can" or "We are an international firm not based in the US/UK so everyone is a minority but we all look the same"
What bothers me, having sat on both sides of the table is this...
1. LPs are generally just as homogenous-looking/sounding as the funds are. You would think that a university endowment could easily go recruit some diversity candidates who are bright, eager, in the beginning of their careers and live like right on campus...But they never seem to make any real effort. I mean finding the people couldn't be easier. What a joke. Do as I say, don't do as I do, right?
2. I see a lot of complaining on this board nearly every day about diversity stuff. Look I'm a dude, I get it. In the end, I have seen tons of people in this business get fired/passed over for promotion/underpaid because they didn't look the right part or sound right or "fit" culturally (ie drink/go to strip clubs/like sports/similar hobbies etc). And a lot of that is definitely gender/race etc.
So yes, a diversity candidate may get in, but most won't succeed (since most people generally leave or get weeded out anyhow)..And on top of that as one rises, he/she has to play the politics game/work at being liked much much more than doing some excel model/ppt. And that's when things get really tough ie. cultural fit as I mention above...
Finance is nowhere near as meritocratic as many people make it out to be. If it was, there would be far fewer people and funds in this business today. I should know. All I do is look at track records and listen to pitches... All.. Day...Long... I used to spend all...day...trading and it is far more of a bro club (in many places) than I thought it would be.
My two cents as a guy who has been in this business for a long time in a number of different roles.
Because diversity is our strength, how dare you question the dogma? Honestly people keep on repeating this catchphrase but I have never, ever seen a convincing theoretical argument that would explain this or some studies that back this up. And btw before you cite some random overffited statistical study, gimme any dataset and time and I will find some spurrious correlation too.
Broadening the pool of candidate is good, as such by all means promote to segment of the population that may not know about those opportunities etc. but hiring should remain based on merit.
I’m a female in PE. I keep hearing it’s easier for us to get a job in PE and even on the job that the “bars” are lower and I just don’t know what the F you guys are talking about. It may be easier to land an interview, that’s it. Honestly at the actual jobs I keep having to work way harder than my male colleagues, I’m more “watched” and thrown under the buss by my female (and male) bosses ALL THE TIME. Any small mistake and I hear how useless I am despite obvious over performance. Not to mention that the male equivalent of my position was being paid way more because “he had 1 year more work experience” even though I had to literally take on his work because he was so lazy and bad. Women are always the ones getting fired as well. Some people just think we’re retards from the get go and look for confirmations all the time, especially if we are “pretty”. The tolerance for women in finance is much lower. Men get second chances, we don’t. Even in interviews the assumption is ALWAYS that we are less technical and analytical so we have to work harder at proving others wrong.
It’s horrendous, not surprised why many women leave finance altogether.
Again, that’s my experience. I work at a much better place now and don’t experience any of that anymore thank goodness.
You obviously were let go due to performance (actually know a bunch of women like you, who blame it on everything and everyone else than you). Maybe, little lady, start reflecting on yourself first
Jane02 - I obviously don’t know your individual circumstances and can only guess at what you’ve experienced. That said, I think it is worth commenting on a few of the things you mentioned because I have seen certain patterns that may be helpful for women when assessing their workplace environment:
1) “I keep having to work way harder than my male colleagues, I’m more ‘watched’ and thrown under the bus by my female (and male) bosses ALL THE TIME.”
- I lost count at the number of times I was thrown under the bus by colleagues when I was working my way up through the ranks. I’ve been guilty of doing it myself plenty of times as well before having it pointed out to me and then making a conscious effort to absorb culpability rather than deflect it. This is super common in the industry given the amount of successful type-A personalities. I promise you that your male colleagues are also getting thrown under the bus regularly and are similarly super pissed about it.
2) “Any small mistake and I hear how useless I am despite obvious over performance.”
- This has happened to me and my male colleagues on countless occasions throughout my career. This is characteristic of the industry. The style of some managers is to berate people for mistakes, regardless of whether they are top performers or got 99% of the other things right.
3) “Not to mention that’s the male equivalent of my position was being paid way more because ‘he had one year more work experience’ even though I had to literally take on his work because he was so lazy and bad.”
- Putting aside bonuses, private equity compensation is nearly always fixed based on years of experience. Every PE firm I’ve ever heard of has a set salary and bonus target for new hires (these numbers are shared regularly on this website). This set salary and bonus target persists for probably the first 10 years of someone’s career and one can only really break the mold by getting promoted early. So while I sympathize with you having to take on your male colleague’s work, this happens regularly throughout the industry. You’re encountering this problem not because you are a female, but because you are a better performer than your colleagues yet compensation levels are fixed.
4) “Women are always the ones getting fired as well.”
- I haven’t seen any evidence to support this in my career — just the opposite in fact. I’ve seen firms bend over backwards to accommodate female employees (permitting more work from home pre-COVID, implementing maternity leave policies where none previously existed, etc.). That said, I don’t doubt there are firms that take the approach you’ve seen.
5) “Some people just think we’re retards from the get to and look for confirmations all the time, especially if we are ‘pretty.’”
- Sadly I agree with you here. This certainly happens with women, ethnic minorities, and relationship hires. I sympathize, it sucks when you start off with people doubting your capabilities.
6) “The tolerance for women in finance is much lower. Men get second chances, we don’t. Even in interviews the assumption is ALWAYS that we are less technical and analytical so we have to work harder at proving others wrong.”
- I’ve led recruiting efforts for a couple different PE firms for nearly 10 years. I can promise you that it is an exaggeration to say that the interviewers ALWAYS assume you are less technical. I usually conduct technical interviews and the women enter on equal playing field as the men. I do make some assumptions on capability prior to interviews, but that is based on undergraduate major, GPA, and test scores and not gender.
Given the above, I encourage you to reflect on whether each of these experiences is unique to you or something that is also happening to your male colleagues. I have read a lot of articles, LinkedIn posts, etc. from women about the struggles they face in the workplace. Many of the struggles are ones that males face as well. As a male, it can be very frustrating listening to shouts of sexism for struggles that are universal. As I’ve mentioned in a separate post, sexism absolutely exists (both in favor of and against females) and it is painful when it cuts against you. Unfortunately the moment a female adopts a victim mentality she will find her colleagues distance themselves from her. I’ll end with a final example:
One of my former PE funds hired MBA interns each summer. We had a female MBA from Harvard. Very bright and very hard working. We were informally talking about a deal over lunch (all male employees from associate to Partner level). As is the case with all of our meetings, people were constantly interrupting each other (in a collaborative way during the natural flow of conversation), supporting / refuting ideas, etc. The intern joined in on the conversation and participated. Maybe 10 minutes in a Partner cut her off and shot down her idea. She got upset, stood up, and declared that if we weren’t going to listen to her she might as well not be part of the conversation — proceeding to walk out of the room. This was a few weeks into the internship. From that point forward she wasn’t going to get the job no matter how hard she worked. I promise you to this day she feels like she was treated unfairly due to being a female.
All of you complaining just aren't good enough to get the job and are upset that the system currently favors URMs as opposed to white men... before, you had to play golf and go clubbing to get the job; now you need to be a URM. Someone gets the short end of the stick either way, but I'll take the current system over the old one every day. And fact is if you can make a GP a lot of money, they'll hire you... stop complaining about how some woman/URM took this job from you and just get better because end of day, you are the only reason you aren't getting the job (assuming you're coming from a good school as a white male).
Also, you can claim studies are bullshit all day but last I saw, Vista is absolutely murdering every other fund... it's no coincidence they are also the most diverse large fund out there.
- white male in mfpe
I interviewed at a MF a few weeks ago for an associate position. Didn't get the role despite doing 13 hours of interviews (you know how it goes). I later asked the headhunter, hey why didn't I get the role. He said oh the fund is aiming for a 50/50 split between boys/girls of their classes, so I didn't get the job. For context I'm a Hispanic, First-Gen, Male who was interviewing at a basically all white fund.... I'd argue that being a woman definitely helps.
Why didn’t you get the other 50% reserved for males? Were you worse than them?
Sure, my performance wasn't as good as the 50% of males. You can't say that the 50% of women's performance was better than mine though...
Furthermore, an all white male firm is saying gender is important, but diversity in race isn't. They should try to do both instead of just arbitrarily focusing on their gender split.
I’m a female in PE and will be the first to admit that yes, I may have had more opportunities to get my foot in the door when it comes to initial screens / getting interviews. But never have I felt that standards were lowered for me during the interview process or on the job - I had to go through the same modeling tests / case studies, intensive technicals, etc and felt that I had to overperform to prove that I deserved my spot at the table both then and now. At the end of the day, there’s no room for slack on the job and it’s a joke to see posters here think that life is easier for females when we’re all grinding at 2am just the same. My advice to chronic complainers here is to do the best you can do - you can’t control other factors and what firms are doing but you can control your own performance. I’m sick of seeing the excuse of not getting something because “some diversity candidate” took it - if you’re that upset, why not just work harder and make sure you’re the best of the ORM / male pool and focus your energies there instead of complaining about how your life is unfair.
I’ve now been at the other side of the table when evaluating potential candidates and while my firm does have a mission to recruit diverse talent, we’ve never lowered our standards for those candidates.
Some of the PE funds where my friends work in London are looking just for girls.... just to comply with diversity shit.
This is the world we live in boys. It does not matter who is better at work, now it is about complying with "society values".... it is disgusting..
No. It’s because it’s overall harder for women to stay and maintain a job in an industry dominated with men who are sexist, believe you’re inferior, less for for leadership, less “social” because you don’t give a shit or talk about Tom fucking Brady and so on... I could go on and on about the blatant sexism I’ve faced at a top tier BB from my associates (comments about dress, saying I look pretty and cute in the middle of a zoom?? When I’m asking questions about work and the client, etc). This is why women leave and this is why there needs to be a tangible effort made for women to have a space so they can be comfortable and not be overwhelmed with sexism. This only happens when there is space specifically for females. Not because you’re smarter and we need a space to work in otherwise we wouldn’t get the job (we would...) and not because we’re smarter than you. It all has to do with equality and creating an equitable industry you fkn idiot.
It seems someone is having a bad day. Maybe you should fuck more often. Cheeeeers!!
Female here and can speak a bit from my own experience so here's my bit of unsolicited advice for all the ladies thinking long term. I'm dishing it out here, because it baffles me how many smart, well-educated women in my circles just don't seem to get how their choice of firm and spouse has contributed to their own misery, and I'm just sitting there thinking.. "B***, you did this to yourself." This is speaking purely about the traditionally male dominated investment roles, not sales and support.
I went to a top MBA think H/S/W and had a decent although a bit non-trad resume. I wasn't even recruiting for PE in my MBA but was approached by a couple of firms and through events targeted at women in finance at my school ended up speaking with a few others. There's definitely a push for recruiting females and I'd say women had a better shot on average at being hired for selective jobs on the buyside in general. This is particularly true for places that were big enough for LPs to raise their eyebrows for lack of diversity in the leadership & pipeline. Frankly, the same is true on the AM/HF side, but hear me out. Being hired doesn't really help you on the job. The truth is a lot of these funds are terrible places for women to work in because [i'm simplifying here] they're run by men who have stay-at-home spouses and certain views of women. Most men project that lifestyle on you and will inherently think of you as less capable, professional or worthy of personal investment. Depending on the market niche you are covering, your gender can be a liability because most CEOs in say midwestern industrial companies just would rather prefer transacting or networking with the boys on the golf course or the shooting range. Don't forget that it's an apprentice craft that's driven by relationships so these things really matter for your career progression.
So you really have to vet the firms carefully if you're interested in some sort of long-term career prospects at the firm. Whenever I'd even consider taking an interview / applying for a position I'd always try to understand how many women they had at senior ranks and try to tease out whether they had personal lives at all. If my manager/partner/PM was gonna be male I tried to tease out whether their spouse had a job and ideally what kind. It matters because that tells you something about what he thinks about women! I concluded that most PE funds I diligenced at some level of detail are terrible places to work in as a woman interested in having children. The same is true for HF and to a lesser extent also AM. They'll try to sell you on the lifestyle at the big long onlies but frankly it's still a joke compared to average industry jobs or more chill parts of finance like FoF/SWFs/endowment etc. Ok, OK someone has to be the trailblazer, right? I'm way too selfish for that to be me and frankly I wouldn't be so arrogant to believe that the senior associate me is gonna change a culture of god knows how many people and years of reinforcement. Stop being naive!
My first advice is just don't take any job that impresses strangers and makes your former resume ho self salivate. It's a trap! I know it's hard af to land a job in FO/buyside finance to begin with and there's a huge scarcity mentality in this forum, but if you're in the position where you are a hot commodity and can choose - choose wisely. Listen, I'm a pretty career driven person, but I'm married and pushing 30. I'm expecting my first child now a year into my post-MBA job and I've been so sick during the first three months that I'd probably have to take disability leave if I had to show up at an office (thank God for WFH). If you're genetically gifted this won't be you but I wouldn't bank on it. My husband is in PE and told me that on a work trip he had to cancel a day of meetings because his female colleague had to be brought to hospital after passing out in a taxi - she wasn't showing but whoops now everybody knows! You want to work for a place who will understand/tolerate these things if kids are at any point in your future plans.
Also a word about spouse. I'm not gonna lecture you about finding a real partner, whatever, just don't marry a turd. Yeah, I mean that guy who screams king of the jungle, alpha from afar and acts a bit like jerk that you may find sexy. Go ahead have fun, just don't marry. It may sound like a good idea on paper, a power couple, think Ken Griffin and Anne Dias, but, lol, we all know how that ended! These types of men like ambitious women, but honestly what they like is watching you turn from a total beast that kept up with them into a devout mummy while they can continue globetrotting, partying and working weekends. I've seen some variations of this and don't recommend this type of "partnership" to anyone. Terrible, terrible choice when what you really need is someone who will hold your hair while you vomit for the 15th time and pick up the slack at home because you're just so damn tired/overwhelmed because of work/kids/pregnancy. I met my husband well before b-school and he's a bit older, and dang seeing the male inventory at b-school made me feel like I majorly lucked out. P.S. you don't have to marry someone in finance!
OK, please take this all with a grain of salt, because plans change and I've no idea what life is gonna throw at me in the future.
For now I plan on staying at my unicorn employer (they're rare but exist), take some maternity leave (splitting 60/40 with my husband who also happens to work for less so but still a unicorn employer and hire a live-in nanny. If all goes well I plan to have at least one more child, and maybe even beyond that if we so fancy/can handle and afford within the next 5-10 years. I'm still pretty junior but fwiw earn enough to cover the nanny even on my own salary & bonus if I had to and that is the bigger pro of staying in a finance job if you otherwise like it and think can combine career progression with kids.
Also, a lot of this is about expectations of how you are going to raise your kids. Both of us grew up with help - he with nannies in a developing country even though his mom stayed at home, I was in daycare & grandparents and *gasp* was formula fed, so for us it's a normal working assumption for how kids are raised. Contrary to what the haters say that you need SAHM mama's love, the boob, the unparalleled attention and yada, yada, we turned out well above any parental benchmarks and are happily married, are healthier than most people our age and obviously earn comfortably to afford help while living in a developed country. I think not having that guilt (and people will shame you for whatever life choices you make - trust me) at least for now is big. My mom wasn't my primary caretaker, but she was definitely a role model and through example instilled the belief that I can accomplish whatever I set my mind to. That's what I also aspire to be for my own kids.
As for your plan, a lot of women decide to downsize their careers/quit finance when they are about to have kids and there's nothing wrong with that. My own experiences led me to believe I wanted a financially rewarding and mentally stimulating career before I met my husband and frankly I was never too into female-dominated industries from the get-go. Without saying too much, I had spent some time pre-MBA working in a more chill industry and I hated how everybody just didn't care about their work. Also the pay would never let me hire help at home and realistically because the work wasn't all that rewarding/challenging and financially was just a fraction of what I currently earn, there's a good chance I'd end up at home as one of those yoga/non-profit/school board moms. Again, nothing wrong with that, and if anything, I'm so glad that we (unlike most men) have that choice to stay at work or home. I also know a couple of moms who work lifestyle jobs after their expensive degrees by choice while the husband brings home 90% of the bacon, but it just wasn't for me. This can very well change after the bambino is here.
I also wanted to add that a lot of women my age group (late twenties) and even younger are very worried about how their career will affect their chance of meeting their spouse. In my personal experience and I do count myself lucky, my husband was attracted to my ambition and enjoys that we can discuss anything ranging from art to animals to ZIRP to family issues. He often tells me that ability to conquer life, be straightforward and not be a damsel in distress is inherently attractive. It doesn't mean that you get a free pass on points that make women attractive - do your part - keep fit, healthy, take care of yourself and act like you're interested if you are. Let me clarify the last bit, I read some ridiculous post here that apparently if you don't put out on the first date it indicates lack of interest. Well ladies, let me tell you there are so many ways you can show a man you're still interested without ever unzipping his pants and don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
Also I think a lot of women that I see end up dating too slow and cutting their losses too late. While you're at your best age date aggressively - dating (not sleeping with) multiple people doesn't make you promiscuous - just smart. Men do it all the time. Don't date or keep seeing people you know you wouldn't marry - it's a waste of your time if marriage is your end goal. While I'm all for women sleeping with as many people as they want, for professional reasons I suggest you keep it a privilege for the select few. People in big cities talk and even while being pretty conservative myself I've professionally ran into someone who I know used to work in the same department with someone I used to briefly date. You don't want to have too many people in the city have that story, because these things travel around, especially with so few women in the industry.
Happy to answer any other questions you may have!
Can only speak about PE in Europe. Nowadays recruiters tell you straight in the face - the client only wants to see female candidates. Imagine that happens the other way around.... if that is not discrimination, I don’t know what is.