Howdy all, I work at the largest private search firm in the world that only does financial services. I focus on the fundamental, bottom up investing space of the hedge fund community, however we cover the full gamut of products on the buy and sell side. It's been quite a year for the hedge fund space and I felt it'd be interesting to field some questions and hopefully be helpful to those scratching their heads. My own focus is pretty broad but in short, my clients are predominantly single managers, long track records, single or low double digit billion $ under management, have lean investments teams and try to avoid trading too often. I do some work with mid market PE funds, special sits funds, structured products (both primary and secondary) and purely distressed. I sit in NY where we're headquartered but out company has ~15 offices globally. Thanks for reading and curious to hear your thoughts / questions.
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Hey great question. I'm a younger guy (under 30) and so I actually do a lot of our junior banker recruiting (analyst to VP) personally. It's all about understanding what banks train folks to do and how well. If we're actively recruiting for a short term search, let's say in a junior distressed analyst seat at a credit fund, we'd want to look at banks with notably strong debt centric groups: JP credit IB (it's like lev fin with industry coverage), GLC, GS lev fin, MS lev fin, Evercore and Houlihan restructuring, possibly UBS lev fin, and I wouldn't preclude the financial sponsors and M&A groups but you really wan to focus on folks coming with the right skill set.
I try to avoid making judgement calls on schools unless I find there's some eonnctivity of the hiring managers to specific schools. The whole "target school" thing really carrier the most weight at funds that like to recruit en masse and on cycle. TPG / KKR / Blackstone / H&F, etc. Slightly less true for hedge funds as they tend to hire from banking so they focus moreso on work ethic and bank group than school -- it's not a hard and fast rule and mostly depends on the perspective of the hiring manager but the onus is on guys like myself to push them beyond what's on the piece of paper. Personality goes a long way!
I can try - the unfortunate (for many) truth is that the flight of the plurality of massive allocations is to the multi managers aka the platforms shops. Those firms rune the majority of their public market businesses net neutral and by virtue of that, they run their talent net neutral. It means they'll always inherently have a voracious hunger for junior and mid level talent.
Single managers are case by case but you hit the nail on the head - funds are lean. It behooves the fund managers with 2/20 models and considering most single manager funds run more directional, they're hurting far more than the lower net shops. I think we're on the cusp of massive consolidations in Feb/March in single manager deep value land and we're doing to see an interesting trend of atypical talent heading to platforms and potentially even leaving public markets to seek haven in PE until the markets return to a bull run. IMO that's a pretty poor cop out since you'd prove your mettle by weathering public markets rather than tucking tail and running for a steady gig at Bain.
Hope that helps
Hi. Are there such things as tree funds, bush funds or any other types of foliage related funds that you are aware of? Do you have a degree in horticulture?
Thank you.
I think you may have come across some trees yourself here!
I don’t intentionally ghost people - Wen have a big enough company to pass them along to someone that’s more equipped to help them immediately. We take a longer term approach to working with candidates so it’s often the case that I’ll know someone for a year before I place them- unless of course that person is actively looking. To be honest, most candidates do the ghosting but those are not people worth aligning yourself with on average anyway. I’m long “good humans” even if it means avoiding killing myself to work with someone that treats me rudely and is a strong candidatenon paper. It’s not worth the stress imo.
How hard is it for junior/senior analysts to find a new gig if their PM’s pod at a multi-manager or single manager fund blow up (L/S equity, fundamental focused)? Do they become “damaged goods” or are other PMs willing to overlook this?
Also, are you seeing junior/senior L/S equity analysts leave the industry altogether? Like going back to banking, trying to get into PE, going to work in industry, etc
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Bit of a different question.
So, I've talked to a lot of recruiters over the years. Most have been pretty useless/ repetitive. Some I like to check up on once in a while (or if they have an opportunity listed).
Do recruiters get annoyed when they sense you're using other recruiters? Is there buzz if your resume is showing up in different places from different people?
I get the feeling most recruiters are treating our relationship as completely transactional anyways, but every once in a while I shoot someone an email, don't get a response, and wonder if they decided they hate me for some reason.