Blackstone, KKR, Brookfield, Ares, Apollo, Oaktree, Sculptor, etc all recruit from UG. All will be insanely competitive seats with most if not all candidates holding prior significant internship experience either in IB or at other buyside shops. Best way imo is to get your foot in the door early and network heavy.

 

curious what your criteria for top tier is? Plenty of shops known for poor culture that are still extremely highly regarded.

 
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I'll also mention OP - don't cross off Eastdil. IMO one of the most clear-cut pipelines if you want to eventually get into the buyside within RE. Yes, you will grind hard and you'll start on the sell side but you'll get tons of reps and Eastdil is one of the most respected names in CRE. Exits speak for themselves - plenty of guys exit 6 months - 2 yrs in. Know a lot of the guys in the Santa Monica office and they do very well for themselves.

When I recruited, off the top of my head I was already reaching out to folks at BX, KKR, APO, Ares, Carlyle, PIMCO, Eastdil, Hines, Artemis, Walton St., Cerberus, JLL, Starwood, MSREI and some BB REIB groups as well. Wide net, I know. Most of these shops will consider taking someone out of UG depending on team if you can strut the right stuff and fit the culture right - some shops (Carlyle, APO to a certain extent) were more so building longer-term relationships for when I would be 1-2 years into the industry and looking for potential associate opportunities. Most people will give you the time of day if you show when reaching out that you took the extra time and effort to do your homework on them, and then you slowly build the relationship from there. Relationships are everything in the business - don't fall into the trap of thinking every opportunity is going to be spoonfed in a listing on a careers portal.

 

I am sorry but the vast majority of debt funds don't have analysts or what they are calling an "analyst" is more in line with an associate with 2-3 years of experience. The ones that do (Starwood, BX, Ares, KKR) fill their headcounts from their SA class and keep these hires to the Core/Core+ funds.     

 

OP was asking in general, not debt funds specifically. recruiting for most if not all of these shops (again, exception of Carlyle / Apollo to a certain extent) are taking select UGs for investment roles.

And again, OP was asking in general for UG so SA is certainly fair game. Disagree with the statement that SA returners are placed exclusively in Core/Core+ roles. Plenty of opportunities at flagship funds, just not that many and they are extremely competitive.

 

PIMCO has that new program for undergrads (see some other threads on this).

BX & Ares have taken UGs for a while.

KKR and Apollo would be more on a one-off basis from my experience, not a formal pipeline to my knoweledge,

 

My understanding is Apollo would be the main one-off - KKR has begun taking its first structured classes, though these “classes” are extremely small. I believe have only had 2-3 classes thus far with each class taking a small handful. PIMCO just finished its 2nd class I think, same deal with extremely small classes. BX/Ares have been going for a while like you said.

Source: recruited for all these shops in most recent cycle

 

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