1st year BB analyst, how soon can I leave for SM HF

I’ll share my thoughts since I somewhat went through this process (ignore the PE title in username). It is possible to do the jump but it’s just not that common because HF recruiting is pretty random and there’s always a lot of competition.

I had the opportunity to jump to HF less than a year out of banking. I was in awe with the idea that such a HF would consider me. And like a dumb analyst, I internally thought I was hot shit for being so ahead of the curve. I always imagined going down the PE path first

Some things to note should you choose this route (which is partially some of my lessons learnt)

Please be very sure of the strategy and type of investing you want to pursue - whether equity long short, distressed credit, or whatever. My experience is that it’s really difficult to jump around across different strategies. While your route to the buyside might be accelerated, you’re also getting pigeonholed to an investing strategy faster than otherwise. I also think that you’ll have to polish up on the modeling stuff yourself. Feel like you’re just not going to be that amazing at it if you’ve not spent enough time in banking or PE. My experience is that the HF role is not extremely modeling heavy as there is a lot of focus on other aspects of the investment process as well (caveat that different shops have different approaches). At the end of the day I can just tell that I’m not as polished as the PE folks and that bugs me every now and then. Finally, your network of friends may be smaller as you leave the bank pretty quickly and it’s easy to then get stuck in the bubble of your fund which obviously won’t have nearly as many people at a similarly junior stage as you.