UMM Vice President Interview

HarbourVest not treating you right ?

Curious as to why you are seeking to make this change. Work at a FoF currently myself and my impression was the hours/culture is significantly worse at most direct shops. Perhaps it boils down to the carry?

I would assume that there will be some kind of model / case study exercise since VPs are pretty heavily involved in day-to-day oversight of modeling workstreams (and my current shop administers this kind of exercise for VP level roles)

With apologies for the arrogance here, does it drive anybody else nuts when FoF people use the “direct” shop moniker? It connotes that there is some equivalence / interchangeability in talent/ability/reputation between those and the “indirect” shops from whence these people come. It’s like saying “I’m playing for the farm team but was debating lining up a tryout with and going to play for the Yankees.” 

No

please stop and acknowledge that those two things are not equal and interchangeable 

I mean he kind of has a point... our co-investors just rely on us for our memo, model, etc. We have to do all the hard lifting and face all the stress, and they just provide the capital. Not the same job by a long shot.

You bring a lot of attractive qualities to the table, particularly in terms of the volume of opps you have likely seen (in detail-- not just a CIM review that you spun your wheels on), which is why you're getting the looks. I've always enjoyed working with folks from your background because some shops can be so insular in their thinking and folks who have had exposure to numerous sponsors tend to be more independent in their thought processes. That said, the job functions are somewhat different.

Expect to spend a lot of time going into the specifics of your deals. Obviously you did not have the same role as the primary sponsor in terms of developing a thesis, building a relationship with the banker/management team, and of course management of third-party workstreams. If I were interviewing you, I would understand this and want to gauge your level of comfort with those through a combination of fit/deal-specific questions.

For the actual financials of the deals on your resume I would expect you to know these cold. To the extent you sat on the board, would want to know about the value creation levers that the sponsor pulled (successfully or not). I would also want to know your comfort in direct negotiations with counterparties, and would plan on extensively reference checking you. Finally, I would want to see evidence that you could engage in the BD work that comprises the next step. I imagine you have solid examples for all of these.

In any event, good luck with the processes.

The post above hits on a lot of good points.  Behavioral, fit and deal specific questions are very important but one other item you should be prepared to address is a potential case study that helps tease out how you think about developing a diligence gameplan / framework.  You could be given an illustrative deal that you get from an ibank and would need to think about developing a perspective on the deal and how you would quarterback a junior team and various third party advisors to check the right boxes to validate your thesis or identify appropriate value creation drivers to support your view.  The VP / mid level role is so much more than just knowing technicals, as you’ll start leading people and need to be strong at coordinating / multitasking with diligence parties, while still managing expectations from seniors.