It’s hard to say because it depends on the specific work you will do there. “Family offices” could involve work that’s more like a sovereign wealth fund or high-level asset manager (e.g., allocate X% to specific sectors), or you could be trading individual stocks or bonds, or you could be doing deals for minority stakes in companies or even entire companies, depending on how the family office is set up.

I would recommend going back to the firm and asking how they are set up, the different investment strategies they use, and what you’ll be working on to assess this. Maybe just ask, at a high level, if it’s more like asset allocation to specific sectors or more like individual company/deal investments.

If your main goal is to win a buy-side/investing role without crazy hours/stress first, you should join the family office. I think it’s not as good as IB for setting you up for future PE roles, but it is still possible to win something in PE coming from a family office (but likely at smaller funds that use off-cycle recruiting).

Thanks for the reply Brian, to add additional context I’ve been out of undergrad for 2 years now – 1 in internal audit and 1 in TAS, (2 years to complete online masters). So is it worth it if I’m able to interview and snag a family office role in the next few months? Or do you think I’ll just have to bite the bullet and go to banking given that I’m still so new to the work force? Another thing worth mentioning is I’m about to turn 26 (extra time in undergrad) and just worried about the impact banking will have on me because I actually know what I’ll be in for…Yeah family office may be the easy way out but I also feel like it may make sense given my age now??

I don’t think a CPA is worth it for a PE role. No one will care, and they will assume you already know accounting quite well from the audit/TAS experience.

I don’t know your exact # of years of work experience, but the best plan usually is to get into banking ASAP and then aim for PE roles.

I don’t think a family office would make it much easier to get into an MM PE firm vs. an IB role. In fact, it might be harder because it’s not the typical path (even though they are related). So it’s probably only worth it if you have an outstanding offer and don’t want to spend more time and take more risk by pursuing IB roles (really depends on how much full-time experience you have).

I think it’ll be hard to break into MM PE after family office due to lack of rep but at least ill have broken into private equity and maybe another family office will be on the horizon at least. Not sure if it’s worth the IB years just to not get into PE. Plus I definitely plan on starting another business. (started one and sold it for a small sum) plan on doing it again.

Not sure about that one, but yes, I imagine the brand name would be an issue. I’d imagine you could probably go to smaller PE funds, corporate development, growth equity, and maybe some hedge funds. But larger companies or finance firms might be difficult because the field is relatively new and most firms are not well-known yet.

I don’t know of any offhand, as we don’t really specialize in recruiters/job placements here but rather on education and training candidates to perform better in interviews and on the job. I’m not sure I would recommend speaking with recruiters if you’re from a very different background, as they tend to want super-specific profiles and are usually not open to people who don’t match up exactly. Networking is probably your best option.