I'm a first year Analyst at a small MM IB. For a variety of reasons including prestige, pay, better training and just having people my age to talk to, I want to move to a large (think Roths/Lazard/HSBC/RBC etc) or BB bank to work in M&A.
I've been contacted by a recruiter for a small PE fund. It's not a great fund, but they do promise a lot of exposure to modelling. Given that I am keen to develop an M&A and modelling skillset, would it be a good idea to move to a PE fund that's even smaller than my bank, with the hope of gaining the M&A skills to move to a BB? Is PE just worth it just because it's PE regardless of how few deals this shop does? Or should I just tough it out at my bank and hope some small M&A deals come through? I will be interviewing regardless, just to get the exposure and learn more about PE, but if I do get the offer, I nee to consider if it would actually be a good move for my career.
I know you might think I'm crazy for wanting to move to a shitty PE fund just so I can move back into banking, but the social pressures of working somewhere with no one I can relate to is dragging on my wellbeing. There are no girls where I work, no drinking culture, no diversity either. Not to mention, I hope to work abroad someday, and this would be much more likely working at a large IB than with any PE shop. I know this will be even worse at the small PE shop, but if I can leverage that experience to have a shot of getting into a BB, I'll do it. I went to a target school with solid extra curriculars, so that shouldn't be a problem. Previous internship experience in consulting.
Would be great to get some opinions on how feasible/desirable this route is.
Have you tried networking with people at larger banks? You could just try to lateral to a larger bank directly from where you're at...I would think that jumping to a small no-name PE firm kind of complicates your timeline and story and may not necessarily make it any easier for you to jump to a BB. If anything, it just makes your lateral situation more difficult as the BBs wouldn't really know how you would fit into their analyst classes.
Thanks, I see what you're saying about complicating things. One concern I had is that coming from such a small bank with limited deal exposure, it'd be tough to get a lateral role.
I haven't actually done any networking. Do you think cold messaging alumni at the larger banks asking if there are vacancies is my best bet?
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