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Getting a Private Equity Job 101

Despite the recession, credit crunch, and lack of deals, private equity is still one of the hottest areas for aspiring financiers out there. Young investment bankers and businessmen and women of all types still yearn to be in private equity.

So how do you get a job in private equity? Well, you can try to network your way in – but realize that PE is an extremely small industry and therefore most large firms rely on headhunters – recruiters – so you’ll need to get to know them very well to have a good shot. In private equity, only 3 recruiting firms are worth speaking with: Oxbridge, SG Partners, and CPI – they place 90% of candidates.

If you’re working at a bulge bracket investment bank currently, they will probably contact you first – but if not, you need to reach out to them via cold calls and cold emails, as well as referrals from your friends who are at large banks.

Who can get recruiters’ attention? It’s tough for undergraduates and business school students, mostly due to lack of experience – most headhunters are focused primarily on current investment banking analysts. If you’re in management consulting or related industries, you also stand a shot but you’ll need to do a lot more networking because recruiters will not come to you first.

If you come from one of these non-standard backgrounds, you’ll have to target tiny firms with fewer than 10 people, and go to places that are a good fit for your background (you worked at Microsoft and are going into technology private equity, for example).

The KKR’s, Blackstones, and TPG’s of the world – the largest private equity firms – start recruiting in January and finish by April or May; smaller firms start later and finish later, but most are done by October or November.

As far as the actual recruiting process, typically you present your resume to the recruiter, they meet with you in-person to go over your experience, and then they decide which private equity firms they’ll “show you to.”

If you remember nothing else from this article, remember to impress the recruiters – they control your destiny with private equity jobs!

If you’ve impressed your recruiter, you’ll get referred on to private equity firms and go through multiple rounds of interviews with each one. You’ll have to build models, present case studies, and think on your feet – make things as simple as possible, and avoid overly complicated LBO models or presentations.

Negotiation or leveraging other offers is almost impossible with private equity recruiting, because most offers are exploding and will require a quick response – so make your decisions fast!

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