Oncycle is a fucking joke

It’s 2am, and recruiters are still cold calling with a “are you free? fund x wants to hop on the phone ASAP” and getting emails with “MODELING TEST TONIGHT”

who the fuck thinks this is a good way to recruit talent? absolute joke

update: got an MF offer on day 3, absolutely exhausted. i stand by my points above.

Mod Note: Here are some more PE recruiting related discussions:

Heard on-cycle kicked off last night

2022 on-cycle kicked off

List of on-cycle firms interviewing

on-cycle backup plan

 

It's wack, but lowkey I love this shit. It's kind of a rush/high pressure, and I prefer that over some long, drawn-out process 

 

Hasn't it always been like that though? That was my expectation about on-cycle at least. Only those who want it really bad and are well prepared will have a good outcome

 

look up which HH your target fund use and reach out to them directly & lay out your preferences and profile out right. Top funds always get the head start and rest pick up from there. Better be proactive now if you want to recruit for MF but haven’t gotten intro yet

 

Can confirm - friends received 11pm / midnight emails to interview. Obviously on-cycle is always chaotic, but this year just seems like an absolute disaster given the virtual nature + the fact HHs have had literally only 3-4 days to meet candidates.

Anyone who's been interviewing want to opine on how their process has been going so far? Seems like most A2's will just gun for 2022 off-cycle. 

 

That's pretty crazy but it also makes a little sense. When I was an analyst, I was available every night at 11 p.m.except for maybe the weekend.  Also, a little easier to slip out at that time of night.

Also another side thought, if you're bothered by a PE fund that does calls at 2 a.m., then it sounds like you don't need the interview.  You don't want to work at that fund. If this is how it starts, the job is probably going to be much much worse.

 

Not sure how what you're saying is relevant. Point isn't that interviewing late at night is surprising or an issue. Everyone expects that lol.

It's that the process has been a mess largely due to HHs having literally 3 days to meet people (i.e. headhunter meetings were last Tuesday-Friday, and TB kicked off on-cycle on 9/11), whereas typically there's ~3 weeks from outreach to kick-off. 

 

Some of that does sound pretty crazy but honestly that's the job market.  People are not here to kiss your ass. Have not received 2 a.m calls but in the regular job market, plenty of stuff like, "Hey can you come in for an interview tomorrow at 10 a.m."

I sometimes wonder if PE recruitment is really as crazy as people say it is on WSO or whether they are encountoring a real job market process for the first time in their life?

Note on campus recruitment is not real life as far as how recruitment goes...so some of this may be a shock to those that have never done it.

 

On cycle recruiting is one of few accurate things on WSO. It is a shit show for both the candidates and firms. I work at one of the MFs and we literally had people running around interviewing all night with limited sleep. 

 

On cycle has been a shitshow since way back. Interview notifications past 11pm and final rounds stretching to 2-3am have always been pretty common (at least since 2010ish when the cycle starting pushing way up). What’s different / worse this year is that zoom allows people to interview that night vs. having the decency to wait until 7am. 

 
Most Helpful

If they are interviewing people at midnight, that's a big red flag for culture and work life balance.

Imagine trying to interview a top quant or software engineer at 2am.  They would tell you to phuck off and basically get the firm blackballed on levels/blind/glassdoor.  Goodbye engineering talent going forward.

Finance is full of huge cucks to put up with this. 

 

Is it to early to exit after 1,5 years in your opinion to middle sized PE firms? (I’m terms of probability, HH reaching out, possibilities etc.). I am totally exhausted after 1 year and 2 months and would like to exit ASAP to a smaller PE firm with good hours.

Work at a BB in the Nordics at the moment and graduated from European target.

Thanks a lot!

/A2

 

Thank god the person above said it. Like there’s just no way you have someone interview at 2am if you respect juniors. Furthermore, you likely also aren’t trying to recruit critical thinkers if that’s your approach—you just want hardos that will grind. Software engineers or quants at hedge funds wouldn’t put up with this they’d just go somewhere else—but the insecurity mixed with prestige has kids so lost in the sauce they will do anything.

 

Everyone gets the rationale—you only get the hardos who are willing to put up with that bullshit and make a decision on little information/ without talking to other firms. It’s the exact same rationale for reaching out to banking candidates as sophomores in college. Anecdotally, I don’t think it actually gets better candidates from looking at where my friends ended up and the dipshits I know at megafunds, but hey maybe you are right.

 

As a dipshit going to a MF, this is pretty true. Id consider myself a grinder / bit of a hardo, which is why im in this industry in the first place and got locked into it due to sophomore year recruiting, but my really intelligent friends from college went to academia/quant/startups. You dont gotta be smart to do pe/consulting/swe at the entry level tbh, but that’s good for people like me lol

 

or they could......offer something else to candidates other than being first to talk to them at 3am.....

like....oh i dont know, respect for their time, a great culture, decent WLB

thats what software companies do, and they pay their people 500k plus easily.....there so much demand for talent they HAVE to

 

This $500k easy like for SWEs is getting a bit out of hand.

it is not easy to make $500k. That’s deep into L6 territory and only ~30% of Sr SWEs ever make L6 and they’re like ~10-12% of the engineering population. Please stop spouting nonsense. 

 

The context was tech companies…

Outside of tech (and some exceptions like finance / quant finance / media / comms) Staff doesn’t even exist and most SWEs cap out at like $150-160k. 

Even in tech, but tier 2 / 3 companies (vast majority of names in tech) Staff is like Sr SWE comp at tier 1 companies.

So when we’re discussing $450-750k+ comp at L6 we’re really only talking about the 10-12% of folks at only ~25-35 established top names + some of the top tier unicorns / scale-ups with equal comp ladders. Not a lot of people when you consider that outside of Google, FB, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft the median company has <1-5k engineers. 

 

I am really surprised you broke this down and didn't see how flawed this is and how it supports tech>finance. 

"10-12% of folks at only ~25-35 established top names + some of the top tier unicorns / scale-ups with equal comp ladders. Not a lot of people when you consider that outside of Google, FB, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft the median company has <1-5k engineers."

Let's assume 3k companies at top 50 tech companies, (which is really conservative bc there are wayyyyyyyy more than 50 established tech companies that pay fat $ for sr engineers, albeit these r smaller companies but a large number of companies overall nonetheless). So 150k employees * 10%  = 15k.

You're really telling me there's more than 15k seats for VP/MDs at top banks, Partner at PE, etc? And oh by the way you're working long ass hours and are at the hands of market activity. 

Tech>finance and its not even close. Coming from someone who wishes they could have broken into swe. 

 
Analyst 2 in IB - Cov

It's 2am, and recruiters are still cold calling with a "are you free? fund x wants to hop on the phone ASAP" and getting emails with "MODELING TEST TONIGHT"

who the fuck thinks this is a good way to recruit talent? absolute joke

Maybe, it weeds out people not willing to work until 2 a.m and do all kinds ridiculous stupid requests ASAP.  If the recruitment bothers you, it sounds like you shouldn't work there.....

Do you think the recruitment process is the worst part and then it'll all be easy after that? This screwed up process sounds like a harbinger of things to come if you accept to job. You probably don't want to work for these guys.

 

Exactly. If this fucked up process deters my competition from interviewing/accepting an offer there, that’s good for me 

 

Same boat, pulled nearly an all nighter the first night it on-cycle kicked off but gave up. Got too much work to catch up on already at my ACTUAL job.

 

It's a broken system. At a UMM fund that filled ~50% of its incoming class - we don't do exploding offers or 2 AM interviews but the process could have been managed so much more effectively. There are still a few hundred kids who haven't met with CPI yet so we aren't in any rush to fill our class at the moment. Based on what I've heard from friends at other UMM funds, a lot of them are also holding a significant portion of their classes vacant so I wouldn't lose hope.

I personally know of kids who went off market with offers at MFs on Day 1 who are ridiculously awful analysts. Many of these firms are cutting modeling tests / skimping on interviews and/or hiring based on pedigree and I can tell you many of them will be in for a rude awakening pretty soon.

 

These are analysts who just started in July? What is there to interview about, July was Series exams, August was training...It's been less than a month...Or are these 2nd year analysts 

 

Bc you have to relearn all the ropes, are at the bottom again vs in staying in banking, you have more experience, can game the system, and can shove work down / push back on bullshit where you can’t as a first year in PE with brutal hours. Corporate has easy hours and some smaller hedges have a collegial vibe 

 

Anyone else feel like they've been getting dinged from interviews for no apparent reason? I totally get how competitive these roles are, but I'm struggling to make sense of this process. I've even had a few where the interviewers literally said "great job on the technicals" or "I think you'd be a great fit here" and then get dinged for the following round. Kinda discouraging given the lack of feedback we get 

 

I think reality is just not trying to read into anything. I had an interview with one place where they would give me a very generic “we’ll contact you via HH” and then push me forward. Had another where they were very friendly and complimentary of my case study and investment write-up and then I just never heard back. These people have done this a million times and are good at not showing their cards.

 

That’s because, though nobody will admit it, the recruiting process is a circle jerk of “top candidates” who aren’t actually top candidates at all.

Ever notice how the “top candidates” for IB on paper or through interviews often aren’t top bucket? It’s almost like, intangibles like grit, work ethic, and EQ matter (shocker, I know). You can’t test for that well in an interview process, let alone a 48h one. Thus was created the illusion of “top candidates” since no firm is willing to admit that hiring for PE is a total fucking crapshoot.

 

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