"PE" @ Pension fund Vs. "PE" @ PE Firm

PE in a pension fund or any investment management firm means being on the L.P (limited partner) side of the L.P/G.P (General Partner) relationship in the P.E Funding life-cycle.

Your roles are fundamentally different. In the Pension Fund, your day to day is screening potential PE investments from PPM's (Private Placement Memorandum) sent by PE firms. If the PE firm meets the IM fund's guidelines and passes the next round, you attend meeting with PM's who interview them to find potential holes on management shifts, numbers, etc. After the PM's make a few phone calls to determine if they are good within the PE IM network (very close-knit; reputation is key), they get into the due-diligence stage and it all goes from your hands from there (assuming PM's/Investment Consultants (think Hamilton Lane) do the legwork). I don't know the success rate after DD, but depending on the IM fund you're at, you'll be attending a lot of pitches. Some interesting, some not.

In the traditional PE firm, your role is performing financial analysis for Associates and upward who are sourcing potential businesses to invest in. After basic financial analysis and your Associate's weeks-long due-diligence process, your role is to help with any work on creating PPMs to send to IM funds, creating pitchbooks on funds MD's are traveling to IM funds to raise capital for, etc.

Though the former sounds more exciting, there is only so much screening and creating investment review summaries for PM's (involving heavy cutting and pasting) you can do before you stop enjoying the screening process. But attending the investment pitches are typically nice.

I've not worked in traditional PE, so I can't vouch to the reality of life there. But I am positive the career opportunities should you want to leave are greater in PE than in PE investing.

Disclaimer: Worked in a state-wide pension fund in the PE department