I’m currently at a small GP/PERE firm. The two partners recently left a small/mid size firm to start the one I’m currently at now.
Prior experience: 1 year - valuation at a big 4 1 year - IB at reputable MM (industrials) 1 year - current repe firm Also have a MAcc
Im the only analyst and feel I’m doing a great job. When should i expect a promotion? What should I expect to be promoted to? I heard that these smaller firms will sometimes promote analyst to VPs/directors without having to do associate level. Have others heard this? Is there a way to leverage something so this can happen?
Any & all input is welcome.
Or similar situations?
Will leave the promotion timeline to others as am not in the same vertical.
But, if this is something that you’ve been thinking about, not only is it important to communicate with leadership about promotions, but also make sure that you are going to have a junior team below you. Otherwise, it’s going to be the same job with some but not as much development. Just my 2c.
Appreciate that info.
I’m also glad you brought up that point.
They mentioned, that they think they will be bringing in another analyst or two in the next 12-24 months who would be under me.
This would probably mean I would skip associate level, right? Or not necessarily?
(Just from your best guess given the information)
Additionally, if they do bring in a new analyst under me. Any recs on how I could I leverage or negotiate a more upper level promotion?
At small shops it's less about your title and more about who you report to/who reports to you along with responsibilities. You can be a VP in title but without anyone working under you and presumably having the same responsibilities then you don't have the leverage to ask for significant raises. And saying you're a VP after only 3-4 years isn't really going to help look for another job since most people don't want to hire a VP for an associate's role (they're going to have a lot of questions as to why you would even be considering dropping title), and they aren't going to hire someone to a VP level who's only been in the workforce for 3-4 years and only in REPE for 1 year.
If you want my unsolicited advice, try and take on more and more responsibility until you physically can't do anymore work. Then continue to do this for a few months and then bring up to your boss the idea of "I'd love to take on more projects and I have some ideas that would be great: X,Y,Z but I don't have the capacity to do it. Would you consider bringing on a junior analyst or someone to help me if I became an associate so we could continue to grow and make the processes that much smoother?". The trick is to become indispensable and in charge of things, otherwise they can just bring in someone else of your level and spread the grunt work across multiple people. They aren't going to just randomly say "hey you've been here doing good work on data entry for market research and plugging base assumptions into an acquisitions template, how about you start sourcing all of our deals and here's a massive raise!".
The process always/usually goes like this: you are good at your grunt work level, then you say that you can look through more deals if you help source more deals or source the debt (something to take the load off your boss). Once you start doing this, do as much as you possibly can so that the pipeline is full and your boss no longer has to do it themselves, once that happens you have taken on a much larger role than just underwriting and researching what is placed in front of you. If you are consistently able to bring interesting deals to the table and do the Due Diligence on them in an accurate and timely manner, then you can talk to your boss about bringing on someone else underneath you to help take the "boring" part of research or underwriting off your plate and you can source even more deals and the pipeline can get exponentially bigger. The boss understandably loves the idea of more deals and so they would hire a junior analyst or just a regular analyst and you have the leverage to ask for an increase in title and subsequent pay increase.
In this scenario, which I've seen happen a ton at the more junior levels, is almost always initiated by the analyst actively looking and taking on more responsibility themselves and the more senior positions start to enjoy having less on their plate. But just asking for a promotion and raise without demonstrating actual ability to be more than an analyst will probably get you a "we can talk about a promotion at another date" and either the same for the raise or maybe a 2-3% increase if you haven't gotten one yet. They aren't going to be promoting people simply for the sake of promoting people.
Thank you- very helpful.
Specifically, like how you positioned the “I don’t have enough capacity, which then leads into a promotion”
I’ve been doing a lot of extra work last few months but now realize I need to do even more till I don’t have capacity.
Thank you- much appreciated
There is a fine line between taking on more work until you're at capacity, and burning yourself out. Make sure it's not more than you can sustainably can handle. There is also the possibility that growth isn't a short term plan for you at that company. There are certain shops out there that realistically can't grow fast because of capital sources not being readily available or maybe they aren't looking to grow that fast. In which case taking on responsibilities is more so just a talking point that you can focus on when applying to new jobs. It's much easier to land a higher paid/ranked job if you can say " I was the head of sourcing our acquisitions as well as leading the efforts to underwrite and research prospective new deals" instead of "I have the title of VP so I'm qualified for this associate/VP role at your company". Most of the time when people are looking to hire associates/directors/VPs its because they are looking to add the organizational infrastructure to increase deal flow or improve processes, so if you can get the experience of leading teams or processes while also bringing in new business and helping them grow, then you'll be a much more attractive candidate should your current company not be looking to retain you or help your career development.
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