HF Recruiting in London and Zurich/Geneva
I have a few questions about HF recruiting in Europe..
1) Do HFs in London or Zurich/Geneva generally consider bankers from Continental European offices like Frankfurt, Milan or Paris, or are they exclusively recruiting from banks in London?
2) If so, how do you get in touch with HFs and recruiters in London, I guess they only contact bankers at top firms in London, right?
I'm asking because I have the opportunity to join a top bank in Continental Europe, but ultimately want to end up at a L/S HF in London (or even Geneva/Zurich).
Thanks!
Any insights? Thanks!
They do recruit from continental europe, I interned at a BB in europe before moving to my fund in London... Reach out to recruiters, if you have a good background they'll get back to you.
Can you recommend recruiters please?
I echo this - would be interested in hearing specific recruiters that consider undergraduates for hedge fund opportunities (esp. L/S).
Undergraduates going straight into a HF are very much the exception as opposed to the rule. The vast majority of funds hire people from banking because of the skills you learn there (valuation, modelling, etc.) that they then do not need to teach you. Unlike (mid-/large-cap) PE, HFs tend to be very small, lean institutions in London, typically having (significantly) less than 10 investment professionals and so simply do not have the infrastructure and resources to train a graduate from scratch.
Those grads that do go straight to a HF tend to find the position through their own friends and family network, which is definitely a more plausible route, as a fund is more likely to take a punt on giving you a shot if they also do not have to pay a headhunter a fee alongside it. My advice would still be to go and join a bank in M&A after university though, as you will have a much better chance of getting to a HF after a year or so and also gives you options to go into other things if you later decide that actually there are more interesting things out there.
Firms hire external recruiters. Not the typical agencies like Dartmouth Partners that connect you to firms but actual recruiters hired by the firm to hunt down candidates (AQR and Bridgewater for example). If interested they will forward you to first rounds... Look them up on linkedin, not HR but recruiters. So - Campus Recruiting/Recruiter at The Blackstone Group yadayadayada. Email them, I landed loads of interviews last recruiting season this way.
For London hedge funds, the default path that the majority of headhunters will take is to search in the London-based BB banks and relevant boutiques. There are enough European language speakers residing in these institutions that one should be able to find good candidates for a specific position. The simple logistics of dealing with analysts in continental Europe are a significant barrier: London-based search firms do not usually have a meaningful presence on the continent and so cannot meet you in-person, and any reputable headhunter will always sit down face-to-face with someone before putting them forward for a position, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The onus, therefore, would be for you to come over to London for a day at a time for interviews, etc., which would require you taking days off work in the week.
I suggest reaching out to headhunters in London, initially for a call where they will be able to give you further advice, and take things from there. A quick LinkedIn search for some combination of: hedge funds, headhunter, executive search, etc. should turn up some results, and all the contact details will either be on their profiles or on their company websites.
Thanks guys, appreciate the responses!
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