Advice to Job Seekers: Don't Sleep on Asset Management

I saw another post on the site where someone was asking about full-time acquisitions opportunities, and a few of the comments mentioned being open to AM roles as well. I wanted to make a separate post on this to give those comments a little more visibility and explain why, in my opinion, AM is something to be open to in this job market rather than waiting around for a perfect acquisitions role to come along. This is not to say not to apply to acq roles, but just to rethink your job search strategy if that's only what you're targetting.

Be realistic about the market rather than interpreting a lack of acq interviews/offers as something being wrong with your background. You can have a great resume, network aggressively, know how to model, interview well, etc. There are still only so many seats available when the underlying business isn't doing many transactions. AM is different bc the existing assets don't disappear with lack of transactions; those assets still need to be managed, and in a difficult market, they can actually require more work due to refinancings, delayed exits, changing business plans due to interest rate environment, etc. etc. IMO, great opp to be working directly with investments while waiting for transaction volume to recover.

TLDR; Don't only target acquisitions in this market, apply to AM roles also but still have a story on why AM over acq besides the job market is bad