I'm sure this question has been already asked but wanted to get some perspective. I went to a non-target, spent 1.5 years in audit and 1.5 years in TAS (financial modeling + FDD) and have 1 year in CorpDev.
CorpDev roles vary from company to company; however, I think I have a pretty transferrable skill set. I evaluate potential acquistions and investment opportunities in the medical space building out proforma merger models and detailed financial models. I lead DD, manage the dataroom, and help draft certain sections of legal agreements (setting NWC peg, definitions, etc...)
Outside of professional LBO modeling, do I have a shot at a industry-focused MM PE fund based on my skills? Does anyone know of any funds that have hired non-traditional candidates such as myself?
Do a little digging in the search, people have asked the exact same question and people (including myself) have posted pretty thorough answers.
Long answer short, it's going to be really tough for a few reasons., but the biggest is that you don't have a banking background, so you don't really have a deal oriented skillset.
Yes, theoretically you've lead DD, managed datarooms, etc, but from my experience working in Corp Dev and having worked with people in Corp Dev, often times people in Corp Dev think the work is similar, but it's actually different than PE/Banking. The pace of work is much faster, the quality and attention to detail requirements are higher, what you're looking for in a deal is different and so on.
That's in addition to you being from a non-target with a fairly non exciting background.
With all that being said, my positive takeaways are that, there are Corp Dev groups that are much more transaction oriented with lean teams that more closely mirror what happens on the buy-side. If you happen to be in a highly acquisitive group, that will help. Also, if you've done a lot of deals from E2E and can really speak to the whole process, what the thesis was, how the business was integrated, how much you paid, why you paid that much, etc and can show real thoughtful deal experience, that will obviously be important. Lastly, if you have a specific niche within Corp Dev that could be applied to a niche PE firm, those would be ones to target. If you were doing Corp Dev at a niche manufacturing company and you know of PE firms out there that invest in the exact same type of deals (and maybe ones you've even come across during buy/sell processes) you might be able to convince a firm that you're actually better than a banking analyst.
Anyways, good luck with the search. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's going to be tough. Best of luck with it.
*Edit, just something else I was thinking about below.
Think of the ultimate goal in PE, invest in a company to make money (more or less). That informs the way you think about deals, conduct diligence etc. Now think about the goal in Corp Dev, they're multi-faceted, maybe it's to expand on a current product/service offering, maybe it's in place of building a new service/product, maybe it's to acquihire a team for expertise, maybe expand into a new market with local expertise, etc. Point being, companies rarely acquire others purely to make money and many times, corp dev acquisitions don't make money. Taking a recent example I just read about, Walmart and Jet.com. Walmart paid $3B for Jet.com and admitted that it wasn't a great straight up investment (even though it ushered walmart.com into the digital age and had lots of other strategic benefits, blah blah). So it Corp Dev, you might point to this deal and claim success, whereas in PE, you'd get fired if you did that type of deal. In general, in my limited experience, I found Corp Dev to be more strategy focused and PE more $ focused, a generalization of course, but part of the reason PE firms don't hire junior Corp Dev folks, the deal logic tends to be different.