Comparing IB Recruiting to PE Recruiting
As someone who's interested in PE and on-cycle recruiting in the fall, I had a few questions for the more experienced folks so I can keep my expectations realistic. I'll be recruiting from an EB that gets talked on this forum for having great exits to MF/UMM, but have also heard from others that PE recruiting is 10x more difficult and random than IB recruiting. Assuming I'll be well prepared, what's a reasonable goal for a first year analyst? I don't want to over or underestimate the difficulty of landing a BX/KKR/Carlyle etc.
It's marginally more difficult from a content perspective (was a lot more when it happened deeper into you analyst stint), but there are far fewer seats, which makes it hyper-competitive no matter what questions they ask. And yes, there's certainly a fair amount of 'luck' (obviously preparation still plays a factor in the below, but there are uncontrollable aspects as well) involved: 1) How well you connect with headhunters – you're not even going to get an interview from Bx/Carlyle/KKR etc. if they don't like you. 2) How lucky you were as a intern / first-year for first ~month – do you have one deal that lends itself well to "deal discussion" questions? 3) How nuked you get on your first staffings – there's a chance you'll have little-to-no time to prep or even interview if you're on the wrong project with the wrong team. 4) Do you know people (alums, etc.) at the top shops who can get you into the process? 5) Are you a naturally gifted speaker / good off-the-cuff? 6) Day-of dominos – if you decide to spend all Saturday at KKR (and it's an unluckily strong cohort) only to finish 11th out of 10, it'll be 9PM and you'll have no offer, with all the other places willing to interview you will have finished up their processes.
Additionally – no longer talking about luck – GPA, test scores, undergraduate degree quality, etc. matter a lot to the funds you're talking about.
All that said, maybe 10-15% of your analyst class at an EVR/PJT/LAZ will place into a household name MF/UMM during on-cycle, and, with a head-scratching exception or two aside, it'll be the most dedicated / PE-obsessed kids who end up at the firms you're targeting. If you really go all-out from now until ~August, you've got as good a shot as any, but it's by no means a sure thing.
Would you recommend starting networking now? If so, is it best to network with headhunters or the PE firms directly? And in terms of preparation, are there any resources or prep guides that are worth studying now?
thanks so much that was very helpful! any color on how big the associate class is for BX/KKR/Carlyle? also only 10%-15% of the EB class make it into MF? man that sounds really competitive! appreciate the insight.
I'm not really sure; there are a lot of other funds (secondaries, co-invest, growth, etc.) that I don't really know much about, numbers-wise. Very roughly, I'd say ~10-15 across the firm in their general buyout funds (that people are most interested in / probably most directly applicable to your on-cycle process). Not a lot of space.
As for EB %s, it depends on how you define MF, but yeah, working at an EB is by no means a guarantee of anything, let alone a spot at at a world-renown firm.
Number 6 is the worst and it's so fucking unfair. Every year I watch my new analyst class travel out to PE firms and have to play a stupid fucking game "which firm should I spend time at, and when should I escape out the back door?" There are so many instances I can recall of a firm imprisoning a candidate to avoid them having the opportunity to interview anywhere else because they are afraid of the next firm doing the same thing. You also find out PE recruiting is actually happening like the day of / day before if you're lucky.
Frankly, PE companies are so insecure to play these games, it's actually unbelievable. These stupid fucking games are really what makes PE recruiting harder than banking recruiting: you will wish for the days when firms came on campus and your target school career office somewhat kept firms and their offers in line.
Finally, number 1 is when the real racism bottleneck in high finance comes into play. Every PE recruiter is a white woman. Hope you get along super well with white women.
are you chill with ur analysts recruiting and do you try to help their workload and stuff?
LOL that last statement is so true. Helps a lot to look like the "type of guy" (tall/waspy) these girls are into. No joke one of my older friends who's now a second year was meeting a HH who literally commented on his looks something along the lines of him leaving an impression on her/being memorable because of his attractiveness. Obviously he crushed it with their clients. Imagine if the roles were reversed.
Re: #1, I should have added (maybe as part of #5), "are you comfortable speaking with very attractive, 5'9"+ blondes in their late 20s / early 30s?"
I have a couple of (more bookish) buddies who, though super capable, would get pretty flustered by the interviewers, rather than the interview questions.
This, especially #6. And #6 is a big reason why I think looking at exits from a given bank/group are inherently biased; you spent all day at KKR and got cut at the very end, but if you had gone to Apollo, they'd have liked you better because you had the same tie as your interviewer or whatever stupid reason and you'd have got an offer. But since KKR held you prisoner now you leave on-cycle empty handed. There's no knowing the what-ifs but I'm sure the aforementioned scenario is likely true for at least one of the thousands of individuals who go through the process.
That said, #6 is something everyone who decides to do on-cycle recruiting should be aware of. There should also be more readily-available information on how a lot of the funds make decisions day of (i.e. KKR allegedly being massive prestige whores), so that candidates don't potentially waste their time at Fund X when they'd be better off leaving and heading to their interview at Fund Y. In other words, if you're in the industrials group at UBS and went to a state school with mediocre grades/test scores and you're at KKR but have an interview with GA in 30 minutes, you should probably leave KKR and go to your next interview. The odds of getting an offer will be more in your favor; even if only 1% greater that 1% makes a difference.
To answer OPs question directly, PE recruiting (both on-cycle and off-cycle) makes IB recruiting look about as difficult as getting a greeter job a Walmart when you're geriatric.
Wow, never thought of this. I would be remiss not to ask, do you know how some other big funds make decisions day of? The KKR info is extremely helpful to me coming from a semi-target background.
number 6 is tragically funny
bump
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