In general, an MBA is not a great path into most hedge fund roles (given the time and money required for the degree). It can be good for the large funds that do some on-campus recruiting if you want to go that route, but most of the smaller funds rely on headhunters or informal networking/referrals to find candidates, and they don’t necessarily like the MBA degree or view it favorably (vs. work experience, investment pitches, etc.).

If you’ve worked in IB at an In-Between-a-Bank (not quite BB category) and want to do an MBA and then go to a hedge fund, you should just recruit for hedge fund roles directly. You would still be joining as an Analyst because the hierarchy is different (see the HF career path article).

If you have *not* worked in IB at this IBAB, then you should do IB or ER first and then apply for HF roles from there.

Brian, very specific question but I’d like to hear your opinion in this. Say I’m an analyst with 3 years experience at one of the “Inbetween-a-banks” (nearly bulge brackets, as you designated them) in Europe. I then do an MBA at a target school for high finance jobs in the US. Should I apply for top/mega HF jobs right after the MBA or go to a BB bank (research or investment banking, please tell me which one would be best) and then from there move to a top/mega HF? Also what position should I be gunning towards at an HF? Analyst? What are my chances of getting this if this is my profile? Thank you in advance.

Yes, but it changes from year to year, which is why this article doesn’t give the exact timing. It used to start closer to the end of the year for First Year Analysts a long time ago, but PE firms kept pushing it up… and then they delayed it a bit during covid, but now it seems that it’s early again. The large hedge funds roughly follow this, but they’re still less structured overall, and people win roles at different times.

Thanks for this great post.

Just to confirm when On-Cycle hedge fund recruiting is, you say that this is the same time as large PE firms. From what I’ve read, Large PE firms on cycle is from late August to October, so is this the same time frame for Hedge funds?

Thanks

I’m sorry, but I can’t offer you any advice here because we don’t really advise on that topic (finding clients for your trading services) on this site. But I would probably start by reaching out to local wealth management firms and groups and seeing if any of them might have clients who are looking for occasional “active trading” services.

The best thing to do here is to ignore the work experience requirement, research and write your own stock pitch, and submit it to them anyway. If they’re unresponsive or say that you need more experience, use it to apply to other jobs instead (entry-level ER, other HFs, maybe asset management). Do not spend more than a week selecting your company and building a simple valuation and stock pitch for it (at most, maybe a ~200-row DCF with most attention paid to the revenue and expense drivers).

If you don’t get a response, try again, and also reach out to other, similar firms as well as the ER and related roles. In the meantime, keep researching other companies and come up with 1-2 other ideas so that you can submit your work to other positions you apply for.

They have an email address on their website for employment inquiries. I am not confident in my own abilities, however. A few months ago they have an opening for an analyst role that required at least four years of relevant equity research experience and asked applicants to send resume and sample research report to that email address.

And me? I don’t have any finance experience. So far I only have some academic and data science R&D type of experience. The only thing I have to show for is the CFA Level I that I passed earlier this year. I have also gone through your modeling course Case #5: Equity Research / Asset Management / Hedge Fund on pretty much everything other than Module 5, 8, 9 (I skipped some lessons whole doing some that are optional). I have never written a research report, and I know I am bad at written communication, so I definitely need to improve on that, as well as idea generation to pitch investments (one of the the thing they look for in the analyst role is “credible track record in identifying investment opportunities”).

I am a little lost in what to do, though. Therefore, I am wondering if you have some ideas of what sort of concrete, structured, actionable steps that I could take to approach this. Highly appreciated.

It’s unlikely unless you find a hedge fund that focuses on tech or operates more like a VC by investing in early-stage companies.