Q&A: I am a Hedge Fund recruiter

I work with equity L/s arms of the multi-managers and single managers. A little about me: I don't come from typical financial services major nor have I ever wanted to be an IP myself. All the same, I love my job and don't wouldn't trade it or my firm for the world. Happy to answer some questions as best I can.

 

The global macro hedge fund space is in a funky spot in terms of onboarding right now. I think it's in part to do quant easing - PM's are hesitant to carve out cap for new talent because 1. returns may or may not take a hit due to QE and 2. they don't want to vet an analyst in this environment.

I should have mentioned that I focus mostly on equity L/s funds and the L/s equity arms of multi strats. But funds like Brevan Howard and Garda have largely been shrinking their investment teams and their reasoning is consolidating "cap in a turbulent market". The real story ends up being that the PM / whole team posted poor returns in rates and said shops knee jerk their way out of the product until they think rates is stable again. They tend to bring in comparable talent and be second movers when rates calm down.

 

that's interesting. as an interest rates trader myself, i would argue that the current environment creates a different kind of trading opportunity within interest rates vs what has existed in the past...i understand that large established players in the market can get very confident in a strategy when it works (i've known a number of people that this describes)...and then the regime changes and the strategy stops working...this can cause immense frustration (and losses). I would hope that a hedge fund focused on absolute returns would be flexible enough to seek out new talent and ideas when this happens. I would raise my hand and say "i have an idea, and i think i'm potentially new talent...lets talk about it" but i'm not sure how to go about initiating that conversation, as i don't have the personal network to facilitate the introductions.

 
Best Response

I have a go to that doubles as the narrative behind why I focus on fundamental, investment oriented shops rather than quant and trading oriented.

I have not once but twice had a quant high frequency strat show up to a late stage interview with one of Citadel's quant equity businesses in jeans and a hoodie. I reamed him for it the first time but he blew me off and went BACK to interview after they had asked him to return when he was "feeling better" again in sleep wear. Freaking quants, man.

He's unemployed now.

 
Ekoa:
I have a go to that doubles as the narrative behind why I focus on fundamental, investment oriented shops rather than quant and trading oriented.

I have not once but twice had a quant high frequency strat show up to a late stage interview with one of Citadel's quant equity businesses in jeans and a hoodie. I reamed him for it the first time but he blew me off and went BACK to interview after they had asked him to return when he was "feeling better" again in sleep wear. Freaking quants, man.

He's unemployed now.

Can I have his number? If the way someone dresses is your way of determining competence, good for you. I find it rather superficial. If someone is that good, as long as he wears underpants, I'm fine.

Never discuss with idiots, first they drag you at their level, then they beat you with experience.
 

Thanks for doing this. A few questions, which have admittedly been answered before on here but thus the answers to which may be outdated; additional perspectives are always good anyway:

  1. Is it better for IB analysts interested in public markets to do HF recruiting to recruit off cycle, after rankings come out (assuming one is confident in their ability to be at least second tier)?

1b. Is analyst ranking as important as deal experience? My view would be that ranking is important mostly for initial screens by HHs but deal experience matters more in interviews; please correct me if I'm wrong.

  1. How can an IB analyst best compete with PE associates looking to make the jump to public markets? The analyst has no buyside/investing experience and is competing for the same spot(s), so i feel as if the ib analyst is at a disadvantage.

Thanks again!

 

I may catch some flak for this but here's my honest advise / opinion.

  1. The recruiting cycle is bigly (cheers, trump) over saturated and prioritized. The industry leading multi managers have historically recruited on cycle to commoditize best in class talent however more recently we've seen them recruit off cycle because of increasing rolling turnover. On the flip side, single managers recruit off cycle to avoid competing with multi managers recruiting on cycle. I think it's better for IB analysts to recruit on cycle to avoid having your resume front run to a number of shops that you have not condoned your recruiter to share to. There is no definitive answer to your first question but if you're wondering about timing then you're more at risk to be used as a commission on cycle rather than treated as a reference in the market who can become a candidate off cycle. Off cycle recruiting seasons are great for us recruiters to do our own business development and I think it's in that laxed time of year that people are more candid about what they want to do with their careers.

1b. For a 1-3 year analyst ranking tends to carry some weight but if you've got sick deal experience (like underwriting for Facebook) then it may stack up even better. Each shop prioritizes experience differently and to be honest it's not as black and white as some of my colleagues asset it is. My gut wants to say ranking but I've seen lower ranked, bottom bucket analysts land at KKR after giving wonderfully detailed but comprehensive descriptions of their value added on recent deals. Emphasis on recent - you're only as good as your last trade.

  1. IB --> HF/LO/FO doing public is a hard jump to make without prior experience. There's a few avenues. 1. MBA and internship at a HF. 2. find a fund that does cross over investing and then find 15 more funds that do that because they have lower turn over by virtue of smaller teams. You'll need to do your own diligence here but one great example is Millennium Value Tech Partners - they trade names they help IPO. 3. Be transparent with recruiters and have them help you highlight any public experience you've had so you can spin yourself HARD. I'd star tlooking at the middle market as their hiring mandates are wider than larger shops that silo responsibility more often.

Hope this helps! My account is new but if you want more color PM me and I'll get back to you in 2 dyas when the timer is lifted from my PM's

 

Thanks for taking questions, I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to hear what recruiting is like for the buy-side coming from the sell-side.

Any sectors in particular that you work with most or mostly generalist stuff? Sounds like you have done Quant placement, any Fundamental? If so, how often is it purely Fundamental vs. "Quantamental"?

And I'm paraphrasing an existing thread here, but what is the current sentiment like as it pertains to hiring/expanding?

 

The current hiring market for fundamental, equity L/s HF's is somewhere between tepid and depressed. It's not a great time to have my focus. I began my career in quant as I work with a shop that built their career on quant but we have a fundamental practice that's been very successful int he past.

I'd say my forte is TMT, particularly tech. I've also had success in Healthcare and Industrials. I want consumer to make a come back as that's been quiet as of late and I've not had the chance to liquidate so many of my candidates that would take conversations.

Quantimental is a booming space but if a shop is has not "come out" as building out their quantimental effort yet then I, and I say I as I do a lot of our client side BD for my team, typically have to approach them and really grill them as to why they haven't tried it yet.

Tl;dr the sentiment is it's not a health market for entering HF's at the moment which is exactly why you should be looking. Good to open the dialogue with name brand shops and strong recruiters that will work with you opportunistically NOW rather than rush and slung like a product when the upswing hits.

 

Hard to say given that firms are typically known for being good in products / sides of the cap structure rather than seniority. If you PM me I'd be happy to point you in the right direction with some more color on you but I'd hesitate to make that call on just seniority alone. In general I will say to stay away from the bulge bracket firms that do things other than financial services as they're cyclically focused and tend to trade not treat their candidates. My firm is an upper middle market firm that places emphasis on maintaining relationships. Definitely try to work with shops that follow that model.

 

No because at the end of the day you're burning more bridges than you build. The PM doesn't pay the recruiter so it'd be pretty stupid of the recruiter to try to get in the PM's pocket that way. Sketchy practices include: front running resumes and compensation before the candidate clears them to share, calling someone's desk feigning to be a client just to learn about performance or whoever works there, fibbing performance #'s just to get an interview, etc..Everything comes out in the wash though. Seasoned recruiters don't tend to do any of this as it's a huge risk for a short term reward.

 

How is Equity Research viewed compared to IB for L/S Equity funds? What about MM vs. BB ER experience? Is it true that the analyst you work under matters more than the firm you work for?

What is the typical path to becoming a recruiter? Do former finance professionals move over to the recruiting side? How does comp stack up for the average recruiter?

 

Great question. Equity research is a stable bet post grad because you're likely to get a sector to cover earlier than and in IB. The reasoning for that I think is that IB management likes to give longer leashes to the bankers to source where as the researchers covering public clients are being sourced for business. So in an equity research seat you definitely specialize early on but aren't exposed to that breath of financial analysis that you do in IB which closes doors to the private equity and VC realms early on.

I don't think there's a real path but if we're talking post grad then probably any degree in communications, business, maybe eco or public affairs and speaking a second language is an enormous boon. Increases your TAM and makes you more relatable which is important to the job I feel.

I work with former bankers, institutional sales and tech analyst guys as well as entrepreneurs in market research and prop traders. It's an eclectic community and you can ease into it out of school or move laterally into it if you've got a great read on a few related communities - be it investment sectors or geographical or something.

 

Well I started my career in quant but it was recruiting with the large multi managers. There's certainly a need at a fee global multi managers for top tier quant talent but to be fair the same can be said at top tier IB's. Machine learning is a big to do there so if you're looking for an edge to a first conversation I would tailor your resume to highly any experience in that or like deep learning.

 

School is a player if you've never had a job before but being a transfer doesn't really matter. So long as you can get an initial conversation you're past whatever block there may have been. But I personally don't see any difference. Speaking two or more languages is a great edge to have. History and English degrees are not as sexy as some bring stem or commercial but again same point as before.

 

Thanks for doing this AMA. All else equal, do you think fundamental shops (particularly value oriented, although that's a broad category) tend to prefer a more junior candidate (say 2-5 years sell-side equity research experience) have all of their experience in one sector or have experience in a couple different sectors? I assume it comes down to whether the firm takes a generalist or sector specific approach with its analyst team. But would a generalist shop say no to a potentially good candidate if that person only had experience in one sector? Just wondering if one is more advantageous than the other.

Also, how important, or not important, is it for the fundamental shops you work with to get a candidate with a top MBA versus no MBA but, for example, have prior buyside, or at least relevant, experience in the sector(s) they're looking for as well as a CFA?

"Successful investing is anticipating the anticipation of others". - John Maynard Keynes
 

Specializing early is a big recruiting trend. It's better I think now and probably moving on its better to specialize early as we're trending towards sub sector coverage as a priority. It's hard to pitch a generalist as a specialist but it's easier to pitch the specialist as more of a generalist if they can pick up a few plug and play strats in related sectors.

 

Thanks again. While it sounds like it may be better to err towards specializing in one sector, do you think there are sectors that are too small (as a % of the total market) to specialize in or too unique to be able to then "plug and play" strats in other sectors as you mention?

"Successful investing is anticipating the anticipation of others". - John Maynard Keynes
 

Can you think of instances where you placed people from outside of finance in HF?

How about specifically 1) bigLaw corporate/m&a/securities associates 2) programmers from the big tech companies?

 

Definitely interested in the process for finding institutional sales / wholesalers / relationship management roles. Do these even exist at hedgies or is it more a marketing or PR function?

Compensation is not commensurate with education.
 

Thanks for doing this. Interested to hear how your HF clients tend to view Asset Management/long-only experience? I imagine the CFA is less meaningful to HFs, but given the similarity in job function (if strategies are similar), do long-only junior candidates get much traction in the hedge fund space? Does staying too long in long-only label you a sleepy mutual fund investor? Any insight would be greatly appreciated

Array
 

I mean CREFs and Epochs are not sexy early on because of kind of how far it is from the hedge fund model. But there's nothing stopping any IP from developing sound L/s strats along side of what's on paper. Really makes you stand out if you manage to. So really when any candidate has back pocket relevant experience then I'm able to spin that into a conversation.

But in general it's a square peg square hole lens for hiring managers. Not saying people always know what they want but if you're not an obvious pitch on paper then it's up to the candidate and recruiter to pitch to the hiring manager rather than the hiring manager open the kimono.

 
Ekoa:
It's not common but middle market funds bring on portfolio analyst from corporate finance sometimes. Depending on what you consult on its possible but I haven't personally done a deal like that.

Follow on question to this: what types of consulting have you seen make the switch? There's a lot of talk on this forum of MBB strat consultants moving around, but outside that segment there's a constellation of others (transformation shops, deep ops/process reengineering, etc) that don't get as much press. Any general/specific bits of information are useful.

Get busy living
 

In your experience, is it more significantly more difficult for someone to break into a fundamental HF from lower middle market PE vs. upper middle market PE (assuming that in both cases the person had done BB IB) beforehand? For the purposes of this question, we'll define lower middle market as a fund that is investing out of a $300-600mm fund and upper middle market as a fund investing out of a $1bn-4bn fund.

 

Couple questions, thanks for doing this.

1) How important is GPA? Is a 3.5 good enough to get a conversation/interview?

2) And what do you feel is the best path to HF's (i.e.. IB -> HF, IB ->PE ->MBA -> HF, etc.)

3) What are some really interesting things (other than bank/school, deal experience/group ranking) really piques your interest and the interest of L/S fund managers?

 

GPA's important to top tier shops looking at post grads.

There is no best path to a fund because funds all have different mandates. Either IB or equity research from my perspective. I don't do much in credit but if you don't know exactly what fund and vertical you want to cover then do IB to get more exposure to modeling and being commercial.

Being polished on the phone and in person. Having interests outside of investing. Being able to connect with someone beyond just talking about a job. Stressing the will to learn.

 

I think it might be helpful for everyone if you described the differences between working at a single manager and multi-manager and why single managers are viewed as being so much more desirable (I'm in this camp) by people who actually work in the industry.

As a banking analyst many tend to think Citadel or Point72 are the top places to work because you don't know any better...

 

Sure. Single manager funds give you chance to explore more about the product and garner tangential experience where as the platforms are more plug and play oriented. It takes a high bar of confidence in your abilities to perform in that environment. More over, multi managers come with the risk of shedding teams that were up but didn't perform well enough to warrant their existence over more cap allocated to a top performing group. But to the credit of multi managers, they offer rare opportunities for people to link up with industry leading talent without needing a prior relationship.

There's a lot that can be said to differentiate the two but I think the single managers are largely in demand because people are concerning about turn over at the platforms but if you've got 10/100 teams shed from Citadel and 1/10 analysts shed from a single manager in a year is it really that much more volatile?

 

Its a lot more volatile. For one I think 10% turnover is low for the multimanagers (one of them has 30%+). For another most single managers don't fire analysts on the spot, you're more likely to be 'encouraged to leave' and given time to figure things out

 

How dificult is to move from pure coinvest PE fund to L/S HF? The skill set is super relevant but it appears that perception is more important that actual skills.

 

How can one from a STEM background best leverage themselves to break into hedge funds? I am obtaining my Ph.D in malaria vaccine development from 2 top tier unis and have done an internship in business development plus work part time in venture capital.

Christopher N Haggarty-Weir, B.Sc(BioMed), M.Mol.Biol., Ph.D (ABD)
 

What are the best options coming from a MM shop doing DCM? Do you think possible breaking into smaller shops, or is it better to transfer to BB and then recruit? Also, any knowledge on recruiting for special situations/distressed shops?

 

As a incoming college freshman here are couple questions: Is there a preference for college major for L/S HFs? Also, for someone graduating 4 years from now, do you have any general thoughts on shifts in HF (entire industry, not just L/S) hiring preferences (will there be a greater preference for quantitative backgrounds)? Thanks a ton

 

This is great and thanks for doing this. There seems to be a trend among the fundamental teams at very large multi-managers toward recruiting (at least partially) directly out of undergrad (P72, Citadel, etc...). Are single manager funds/lower-profile funds also recruiting directly out of college? Do any recruiters work with clubs/individuals out of colleges?

 
nofundforoldtraders:
how do small prop traders get into PM seats at large multi-manager firms like Millennium, Tudor, Brevan, etc... ?
Ekoa:
insane returns / working with legends / networking

could you quantify "insane returns"?

For example, assuming starting with a 100k trading account...trading a strategy that could scale to a billion $ portfolio (with the appropriate slippage / execution costs), what are the minimum numbers needed (P/L, max drawdown, risk, etc...)?

 

what is the % mix of people from IB / ER / long-only to the LS equity hedge funds that you cover, in general?

would you highly recommend long-onlys to move to the "fundamental" hedge funds rather than RV?

how often do you see people leaving long-onlys to relative value / LS (such as Millennium)?

what is your appetite to source people from New York to London/Hong Kong and vice versa?

 

Thanks for doing this. Do you have any advice for managing the flow of headhunter interest? To be specific, I frequently get emails from people telling me about how many L/S clients they have that would be interested in my background etc. While I have no desire to move right this moment, I would like to create a pipeline of backups such that I can seamlessly move into a new seat should my current PM blow up randomly.

How would you manage this situation? Talk to them or not at all? Send them your resume? I'm less inclined to do either of those things as I wouldn't want to jeopardize my current job (my shop is pretty ruthless when they find out people are even thinking about elsewhere), but I'd still like those backups to avoid being out in the cold for 6mo.

 

Are behavioral interviews more or less important than a candidate having a solid resume and knowing their shit?

Common dos and don'ts that you take note of during behavioral interviews?

I come from down in the valley, where mister when you're young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done
 

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I am NOT in denial!
 

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