Hello Monkeys, can anyone share insight into real estate headhunting? (for all levels; primarily analyst and associates) How is headhunting in real estate compared to IB? Timeline? Is equity buy-side always the move?
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From my experience, the big name firms like Starwood, Related and Blackstone recruit their analyst classes right out of undergrad, drawing heavily from their prior summer interns. Other firms will recruit as needed - there is no "on-cycle" conventionally like you see in PE. I've had headhunters reach out, almost entirely via LinkedIn, since I began in June.
This is pretty much spot on.
The large repe firms that hire associate classes typically participate in same "on-cycle" that corporate private equity does. This year, however, my shop did not. Not sure about other mf repe firms.
As others have said, no real cycle for recruiting although some alts shops that sit inside of bigger firms are trying to standardize a little.
Head hunters have always reached out to me via LinkedIn (or at least over the last 7 or 8 years). Making sure your profile is optimized for keyword searches (without being annoying) is your best bet. Use specific words in the titles, include departments and brief description of the job.
Don't have it say (company) - analyst
Have it say (company) cre equity analyst and then in the description be like. Equity analyst for a 2bn fund focused on multi-family.
I speak more to the mid-senior level headhunting process than the analyst/associate process, but there are a few key takeaways to keep in mind:
- Recruiting firms (be it the exec. search type or the outsourced HR type), are paid and thus work for the hiring firms; they are not really in your "corner" and going out of your way to network/reach-out is worth your time, but honestly, is no substitute for networking/seeking referrals/cold-contacting with the firms themselves..
- These firms act like intermediaries, so they will only pass a profile along IF you meet the criteria set by the hiring firm..... thus, don't expect them to say "let's get this person a chance", especially at junior level... if the client wants people with 2-3 YOE in fields XYZ with this type of degree.... that is what they will send them. Alternatively.... if you get an "internal referral" from someone you networked with at the firm itself, you can bypass all of that (potentially) and be considered. The HH firms are hired gatekeepers.
- They use LinkedIn to search for people, so accurate/complete profiles are a must if you want to get attention. Keywords, titles, dates are very important. You can still email your resume, and they may intake it for searching, but from what I've been told, they basically just search LinkedIn to find people (it's more up to date than a resume in theory..).
- As to timeline or comparison to IB and stuff like that, not so sure tbh. Generally real estate firms and teams are smaller, and hiring is on an as-need basis more than 'on-cycle' at a lot of places. Many teams will only need a new person every few years, so they just hire as spots open/are created. IB and other "big" type industries/shops need tons of people each year as they lose tons and are just big, this is rarely the case for CRE, so less expectations of "on-cycle" style recruiting.
- As is often discussed, the "sellside" is a pipeline to "buyside" (i.e REIB/IS/DE to equity/debt/development), but this is often done by direct poaching or referring. Meaning, the acquisition team hires an analyst from an IS team they work with (usually referred by the senior broker). I'm sure many shops use HH firms to find IB/broker people to fill the pipeline, but direct networking with the "client" is really the way to go. The number of times I've seen people go to work for someone they did deals with is amazing, and makes total sense. I know this is very common in CRE world, not sure if similar for IB to PE/HF world, but very common in CRE.
TL;DR... don't count on HHers to get you a job (esp. at junior levels), LinkedIn is best strategy to getting found, networking/direct relationships trumps all.
Thank you all for the insight!!
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