Thoughts on Harris Williams, William Blair, Mesirow Financial, and Jefferies

Harris Williams is the place to be if you want to place quite easily at MM PE without much effort. They solely do sell-side M&A in the middle market, and almost all of their deals are with financial sponsors (MM PE firms). The MDs are really supportive of people going to MM PE and will go out of their ways to place you (mostly because placing more juniors at MM PE = more future deal flow for them since they almost only work with MM PE to either sell their portfolio companies or have them be potential buyers).

However, the fact that you want to do Tech would advise you to cross out Harris Williams, as it most definitely is not their strong suit. Jefferies tech is actually the best out of the firms you listed by far. So if you're set on tech, try your luck at Jefferies. But their first year analyst program is a generalist program so you would have to try hard / get some luck in networking into their tech group once the first year is over. Jefferies is still as good as HW in MM PE. HW is more true MM PE whereas Jefferies would be a mix of that and upper MM PE. Hope that helps.