It’s incredibly difficult to get into PE unless you have deal experience, and I would not even recommend trying in most cases. Having some M&A exposure helps, but usually only if you worked on deals directly. If you really want to move from a corporation into PE, switch into corporate development first, gain some deal experience there, and then think about the transition.

Further, would having direct exposure in M&A activity in corporate functions carry weight in lieu of investment banking experience or business school credentials?

You could do it but would probably have a better chance at credit. But if you don’t do much modeling work, even that might be a challenge. The whole on-cycle / off-cycle thing has gotten a bit silly as well since some firms start so early now that they’re forced to do another cycle later on… so who knows.

Thank you for the article — super helpful. Currently at a non-modeling levfin group (US), wonder if it is doable for me to try to recruit for PE on-cycle, given how early it is recently and everyone does not have much deal experiences? Would grind technicals on my end — I am not shooting for a MF but rather some solid MM ones. How difficult/realistic it is?

Or would credit shops/credit HF be more realistic exits after working in banking for a few years?

Thanks

We removed that article because it was old, not great, and barely got any traffic. We might restore it in the future if we can do another interview and get more recent information.

The link to see how to go into P&E in Portugal is not working, can you please fix it?

Thanks

This tends to be quite difficult due to visa issues and the fact that most U.S. PE firms do not like to sponsor applicants due to their size, the expense and time required for the process, etc. You’d be better off winning a PE offer in the UK and then pushing for a transfer.

That is a great question, and I don’t have an immediate answer for you. The large banks all have internal private equity and alternative asset groups, but I believe they’re a bit more constrained in their strategies vs. the external/dedicated PE firms. But I’ll see if we can cover this distinction in the future.

On this note of asset management, would you mind explaining to me how (if at all) alternatives asset management (specifically GS/JPM alternatives AM “private equity group”) is different from your general _____ Private Equity Analyst?

I just find it confusing because I see people on LinkedIn who are ____ Private Equity Analyst, but I never see anything on the websites to apply for where it is just “Private Equity Analyst.”

Thank you :)