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If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview When I was a junior in college, my ultimate goal was to work in New York. Rather than just work in finance, I wanted specifically to land a role in New York so I could start my career in the epicenter of finance. Intuitively, it felt like the right thing to do. I ended up working in New York for four years in banking and private equity, but I turned down a number of “objectively better” opportunities on the west coast to do so. One important realization I learned while observing multiple recruiting cycles is that you can really use geography to your advantage if your sole focus is to maximize your career progression. I think most people pursuing finance have a modest preference to work in New York. But if you position yourself as someone who wants to specifically work in tech (in which San Francisco is the play) or as someone who wants to work in a specific geography, you can give yourself a huge advantage in the interview room. Investment Banking Analysts by City Let’s start by taking a look at the breakdown of investment banking analysts by geography to understand where most of the candidates are located. We’re using the same data set utilized for the investment banking target school analysis (i.e. top bulge brackets and elite boutiques scraped from LinkedIn). You can see that 70% of all the investment banking analysts in the U.S. are based in New York. That makes sense. Most investment banks are based in New York and it’s inarguably the largest North American center for business. San Francisco, which is the technology center of the U.S. (and world) has 9% of all U.S. investment banking analysts. The cities of Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles all have 3-4% (with Boston shortly after). So yes, the vast majority of analysts are in New York. In contrast, every other office functions much more as a satellite office. What’s interesting to note is that from a recruiting perspective, these satellite offices typically recruit from less traditionally prestigious schools and have a much stronger reliance on local geographies. If you’re at a semi-target or non-target, the best use of your energy could potentially be positioning yourself for one of these satellite offices. The overall level of competition is extremely high when targeting New York. For example, my alma mater (Ivey, from Canada) initially fortified its reputation in finance by consistently targeting opportunities on the West Coast. It’s my observation that there’s generally less competition for those roles. Geography in Private Equity All of this really gets magnified when you start thinking about recruiting for private equity. Below is a table of the largest private equity funds (ranked by AUM), which shows whether each firm has a private equity office on the West Coast and on the East Coast. All 20 of these firms have offices that practice private equity in New York. But what is potentially surprising is that 15 out of 20 of these firms also have offices on the West Coast (San Francisco and Bay Area). At the associate level, class sizes are not going to be that different (or different at all) between the West Coast and East Coast offices. In fact, most mega funds will have class sizes of 4-8 people, which are relatively evenly distributed between offices. You also have firms like TPG and Ares that have much bigger classes out on the West Coast. The point is that: to be a successful private equity investor in this environment, you need to have some exposure to technology. Technology is one of the most important industries in the world and impacts almost every other industry. The number of private equity friendly business models and opportunities that result from the technology industry is absurd. It’s almost cliché how attractive the B2B SaaS model is for private equity investors due to high retention rates, margins, and overall cash flow profile. You simply can’t ignore technology if you’re a private equity titan, which is why these firms end up hiring so many people in San Francisco and the Bay Area. If you're interested in recruiting for one of these private equity titans, check out our Private Equity Recruiting Course, which includes LBO models, headhunter coverage, and mega fund case studies. From a recruiting perspective, you can really give yourself an advantage if you tell headhunters you specifically want to work in tech. Even if you’re an analyst in New York (or another city). There are only 2-3 West Coast specific headhunters, but there are 10+ East Coast specific headhunters. When you consider the fact that there are 7x as many investment banking analysts in NY than SF, but a similar amount of private equity jobs, you can see why it can be helpful to use geography to your advantage. Lots of people inadvertently end up moving to the West Coast anyways through the on-cycle recruiting process. Therefore, I think you’d be well served if you craft a deliberate message to headhunters. West Coast (San Francisco, Bay Area) Working on the West Coast comes with its own unique characteristics. I’d call out a couple of key ones: VC, Big Tech compete for talent One of the biggest reasons why I think recruiting for the West Coast is comparably easier is because there are so many other great jobs there. The competition for talent in the Bay Area is really high. There are amazing VC jobs, growth equity jobs, as well as Big Tech jobs that have a much more survivable work / life balance. Investment banking class sizes are only so big, so there’s already a limited number of candidates with good finance experience that these firms can compete for. Technology-focused As we’ve alluded to several times, the West Coast is almost wholly technology-focused (with a modest amount of healthcare). If you want to further your career in tech, there’s a good chance you’ll have to be in the Bay Area at some point. There is tech in New York, but it tends to be much more hardware- and telecom-focused. A lot of the “cool” software stuff is out on the West Coast. Many people have to commute One lifestyle element I think is worth mentioning is how many people commute in the Bay Area. The majority of investing jobs are in “Silicon Valley”, which is 45 minutes to an hour from San Francisco. If you want to live in SF, you’re going to have to drive for a while. Commuting this long while working tough hours can be extremely challenging, which is why people tend to move into the Valley as they get older. East Coast (New York) There are still great reasons to want to develop your career in New York and stay there (even if it might be harder to recruit at the junior level). More finance competition and opportunities (notably hedge funds) At the end of the day, there’s still way more overall finance opportunities in New York. When you consider other asset classes like real estate investing, credit, and of course, hedge funds, there’s just way more finance overall in New York. Private equity jobs might be a bit more balanced from a geography standpoint because proximity to target companies matters, but public equity hedge funds are a lot more location agnostic. Many of the top of investment banking analysts will decide between going to a private equity firm or a hedge fund, which can have big geographic implications. If you want to go to a traditional hedge fund, quantitative fund, or activist fund, it can be a lot more helpful to be in New York. The lion’s share of these opportunities are in New York. Of course as we’ve mentioned, there’s more competition for these jobs as well. Diversified industries One of the advantages of being in New York is that you’ll get exposure to a wider cross section of possible industries. If you want to work in consumer, industrials, or stay a generalist, you might find it easier to stay in New York. There’s a greater volume of overall commerce in New York, so there’s a greater diversity of companies to work with. Slightly grindier I find that New York tends to be a slightly grindier city. People associate their personal value quite closely with the prestige and earning power of their job and so you get a lot of workaholic, career-focused people. I personally think that the overall hours worked is going to be slightly higher in a city like New York vs. the satellite offices or the West Coast. It can be a great environment if you want to be surrounded by competitive and driven people, but it is exhausting for some. Other Cities All of the other cities have their own personality quirks. We’ll quickly call out the industry focus that each city is well known for: Houston: Oil and gas Chicago: Industrials, lots of middle-market PE, quantitative funds Los Angeles: Media and entertainment Boston: Proportionally more asset management and hedge fund jobs Toronto: Diversified industries Calgary: Oil and gas Conclusion Your main takeaway here should be that geography quickly becomes one of the most important factors when recruiting. If you’re having difficulty recruiting or aren’t confident in your resume, you can try seeking out opportunities in less coveted cities. New York is deservedly popular for good reason, but there is a disproportionate amount of focus from candidates on getting jobs solely in New York.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview The two most important questions in your interview are likely to be the first two questions that you’ll get asked: Tell me about yourself Why do you want to work at this firm? Technical questions are important, but there really is a limit to how well you can answer them. That’s because most technical questions have a discrete correct answer. But when you’re competing for the very top positions, almost all of your competition is going to know all of the technical information pretty well. Everyone will know the ins and outs of valuation, how to walk through a DCF, and have a relevant stock pitch. At that level, the way you distinguish yourself as a candidate is to have great qualitative answers which will show that you’ve done thorough research and care about the job you’re interviewing for. In this post, we’re going to go over how to answer a question like “Why Goldman” and the sort of work you should be doing before you interview with a firm. How to Answer This Question A good, comprehensive answer to an important qualitative question like this will: Be 30-60 seconds in length This amount of time prevents you from droning on too long and gives the interviewer enough content to ask follow-ups if they want to continue asking questions. FYI, “tell me about yourself” should be longer, at ~90 seconds. Be described in 2 or 3 discrete points This amount of detail will allow your answer to be comprehensive, but still memorable. Mention points that are representative of the firm’s business engine You should mention things that actually matter to the firm’s ability to generate profit. Mentioning things like culture, strong CEO, or ability to do complex deals is a lot better than things like their TV advertisements or their font. Why This Firm? Your answer to “why do you want to work at this firm” should almost always match whatever makes the firm unique and whatever the firm is proudest of. If done correctly, you’ll be giving a thorough answer that can apply to no other firm. That’s a great reason why you want to work at that firm – because there’s no other firm with that specific combination of characteristics. You’ll also communicate that you’ve done your homework and understand what that firm actually cares about. The best way to get this answer is to ask an employee at that firm in the context of an informational interview. You can ask someone over a coffee chat why they chose to work at that firm. If you can get an analyst or associate on the phone and ask them what makes their firm unique or why they chose that firm, you should get a bunch of unique characteristics that you can re-purpose into a high-quality interview answer. If you’re unable to get someone on the phone, you should first really try harder to do so. Your overall interview chances are going to be low if you haven’t spoken with anyone at that firm. But if you’re pressed for time, you can start by using a few points from the below lists, which depends on if you are interviewing for a bulge bracket or an elite boutique: Bulge Bracket Global network and world-class reputation (then mention how they have offices and different practices in several countries) Complex cross-border deals (then mention one or two deals you’ve seen) Expertise with financing deals (then mention one or two deals you’ve seen) Robust history and reputation of success (then mention their financial performance over the past few years) Culture Elite Boutique Growth trajectory (then mention how they’ve opened new offices or started new business lines) Focus on pure advisory and giving the best advice to clients (then mention one or two unique deals, like advising a board of directors or complex fairness opinion) Lean deal teams (which leads to more analyst responsibility and opportunities to learn) Culture A pro tip is that you should almost always mention how the firm’s culture is awesome. Even if it’s a bit cheesy, I almost always mention how I’ve been really impressed with everyone I’ve met during the interview process. I say how everyone I’ve met has been super helpful and bright. All firms in finance really like to think of themselves as the good guys and that they have a “no asshole” rule, so it’s a super easy thing to lean into. If you’re interviewing at a firm that is notoriously intense like Moelis or Apollo (in which that comment might be a harder thing to convincingly say), just say how you admire the firm’s commitment to excellence and how people hold themselves to a high standard. Some firms are going to work a lot more than the standard 60-80 hour week in investment banking and it can be hard saying those firms have exceptional work environments. Researching a Firm You should dedicate some time just Googling and checking the last few annual reports of the firm you’re interviewing for to understand what has been changing with the business. You don’t need to know discrete financial data, but at the minimum, you should know: a) one deal the firm has done recently and b) any new business units or geographies the firm has expanded into recently. Honestly, just spend like 15-30 minutes looking up a firm and write down some bullet points for yourself to remember. Why Goldman? Let’s go over a few sample answers. All you need for a good answer is to mention two business model related points and then shamelessly compliment their culture. Question: Why do you want to work on Goldman’s TMT investment banking team? Answer: I’m very interested in working for Goldman’s TMT team because I really think that Goldman’s global platform allows it to most effectively service the world’s technology companies. Last year for example, I saw that Goldman advised on the $11B Broadcom-Symantec deal, which involved different stakeholders, such as international regulators and activist investors. I think Goldman stands alone in its ability to advise on the world’s most complex deals. Relatedly, I think Goldman’s enterprise technology practice is very likely the best in the industry and that’s an area I’m quite passionate about. No other firm does the same level of multi-billion dollar IPOs and M&A transactions in that space. Most importantly, I’ve always been really impressed with the Goldman culture. I think it’s very evident with the leadership of David Solomon that the firm cares a lot about their employees and for being genuinely nice people. Everyone I’ve met through this process has been extremely helpful and I would love to learn from the people on your team. For this research, I just Googled “Goldman Sachs technology investment banking” and found this article. The thing is, we don’t even need to pick the most desirable group in the industry (like Goldman) to come up with a great answer. You can apply the same general format to get a great answer for any firm. Question: Why do you want to work on RBC’s M&A team? Answer: The most important reason to me is because I want to be on a successful team that is focused on growth. I’ve watched RBC’s investment banking practice grow tremendously over the past few years and I think its trajectory will make it the best place for me to grow my career in finance. I saw that RBC was a top 10 investment bank in the US last year, having only entered the market recently, while many of your peers have been declining. Secondly, I think RBC’s business model, which cleverly relies on lending to win deals and a strong Canadian foundation, is extremely robust and well designed. I think RBC is a great example of how to align the different business units in an organization. But most importantly, I’m really excited by the prospect of working alongside such thoughtful and committed people. Unlike some other groups, everyone I’ve met from RBC during this recruiting process has been extremely generous with their time. I really get a good sense that I would work well as an Analyst here and that RBC is where I want to grow my career. For this research, I just Googled “RBC M&A deals 2019” and found this article. This stuff should be easy now that it’s spelled out for you. Just spend 15-30 minutes on each firm you’re going to interview with. Try to speak with one person per firm.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview When you first hit the desk as an investment banking analyst, there’s a good chance that you’ll be filled with nervous energy and excitement. It’s a great privilege to get an investment banking job, but you’ll likely encounter some competition from your analyst class as soon as you start your job. You’ll be competing with a bunch of smart people who are also angling for good staffings and recruiting recommendations. The investment banking analyst job is lucrative, but it is definitely intense and competitive. Therefore, it’s really important that you take the first few months of your job seriously because it will really set the tone for your analyst stint. Trust me, the time to slack off and enjoy the city is after you have a buyside offer in hand. The vast majority of your performance as an analyst is going to boil down to hard work and having a good attitude, but there are a few tactical things you can focus on in the early days that are going to have a disproportionate impact on your opportunity set. Focus on the Relationship with your Staffer There are going to be a lot of mid-level and senior people that you can spend time networking with, but by far the most important contact in the first few months is going to be the staffer. The staffer is the person who decides which analysts get which projects. This is extremely important because those first few staffings are going to be the ones that you’ll put on your resume to recruit for buyside roles. Most of the time, the staffer is a well-respected mid-level employee. At most firms, the staffing responsibility is like an extra-curricular for an up and coming VP. Some larger groups at bulge brackets (like Goldman) will have dedicated staffers who are also responsible for other group administrative tasks. It’s not supposed to be a secret who the staffer is, so just ask someone in the group you’re joining. You should prioritize getting coffee / doing calls with the staffer and getting in their good graces. Offer to help them out if they have administrative side projects (like organizing social events or sorting through an e-mail directory). Try to add and demonstrate value with your initiative in the early days. If you think about any investment banking group, there’s going to be a huge disparity in the quality of deal assignments, so it’s important to try to get on a good deal right away. If the staffer is stone-walling you, then you can try sucking up to a second or third-year analyst and get them to put you on one of their good projects. Relatedly, I find it’s helpful to do your research on the specific types of deals that each MD and VP is responsible for. MDs will tend to specialize in an industry (so they don’t interfere with one another). If for example, you read online that your bank does a ton of Aerospace & Defense deals, you can assume that the Aerospace & Defense MD will have good deal flow where projects are likely to turn into live transactions. It would make more sense to spend more time networking and talking with people in the Aerospace & Defense team than with an MD in an unproductive vertical. Position Yourself for Good Deals In general, for buyside recruiting, there is definitely a hierarchy in the attractiveness of different deals. Your ideal deal is an acquisition where you can clearly talk about the investment rationale and diligence of the buyer. Here is how we would rank the different categories of deals (if your goal is to work for a private equity firm or hedge fund). We’re going to exclude restructurings because that tends to be a group-specific type of deal that many analysts won’t have exposure to. Advising financial buyer (e.g. private equity firm or hedge fund) on acquisition Advising strategic buyer on acquisition Advising seller on sale Initial public offering / financing (equity financing is better if you want to do PE or HF) Refinancing Fairness opinion / advising Board Bake-off pitch Strategic alternatives / general strategy pitch Profile book In general, you want to be on M&A transactions because it gives you tangible deal metrics to talk about. A lot of fundamental business strategy goes into an M&A transaction and I find it makes for a much better interview conversation than talking about a refinancing or pitch. Financings tend to be more market-oriented and guaranteed in nature (i.e. a company will always have to refinance periodically). It’s intuitive but worth saying: if you want to recruit for private equity, the absolute best deal is a private equity transaction. You really just want deal experience that’s relevant to whatever you want to recruit for. If you want to recruit for distressed investing, then restructuring and debt-deals are going to be a lot more valuable. Befriend the Senior Analysts The second-year analysts at your bank will be extremely helpful in giving you intel. Each firm and each group is going to have its own unique attitude towards recruiting. Some groups are very supportive of recruiting and some would prefer if you waited until your second year before talking to headhunters. The best way to navigate this is to learn from the second-year analysts, especially ones who have already successfully recruited. Some questions you’ll want to keep in mind: Who is the contact that headhunters reach out to? Do all headhunters reach out to this group or will I have to proactively reach out to some? Which private equity firms and hedge funds does this group have the best track record with? Are there any staffings or accounts that have a bad effort / reward trade-off? I.e. clients that require lots of work, but never actually do deals Are there any MDs that are supportive of recruiting and will actively help analysts? If yes, which firms do those MDs have relationships with? Check your Work (10-20% of Your Total Time) This is not as tactical, but it’s by far the best piece of advice that all new analysts need to adhere to. You might be an extremely smart student and be excellent at standardized testing, but most new employees in every field of business are absolutely terrible at checking their work. Myself included. Most new analysts don’t have an eye for checking their work and consequently submit poorly formatted, error-laden work. Checking your work means ensuring your work has a high level of quality, which you can do by taking the following steps. If you like mnemonics, then try to remember that you should always check the “FACTS”. If you don’t like mnemonics, then just refer to the unordered list below. Formatting: Making sure that things are reasonably formatted and presentable. This means that you have consistency with page numbers, font sizes, page titles, color scheme, etc. Compare the formatting to a completed deliverable that your MD has worked on. If it’s an e-mail with a graph or image, you should send a trial e-mail to yourself to make sure it appears OK on mobile. Apply Intuition: Making sure that everything makes intuitive sense from a high level. This means that all financial inputs and trends make some logical sense. If it’s a financial forecast, things should probably keep growing in a relatively steady manner. If there are any big lumps or spikes in the forecast, you should be able to explain why they occur. Most financial accounts (e.g. cash, revenue) have a default proper sign. Comments: Make sure that all of the MD or associate’s comments are reflected. This means you’ve gone over and highlighted or crossed out every single comment. Even one missed comment means that your file is wrong. Time: Try to spend 10-20% of the total deliverable time on checking. You need to treat checking work as its own discrete task. It’s not just a cursory thing you do at the end – it’s a vital and important step of creating a high-quality product. You should try to allocate 10-20% of your entire time on a deliverable towards checking work. The modern school system greatly optimizes for speed (e.g. timed tests), so we just want to emphasize that you might need to break that habit and get into the mindset of checking work Save Up and Print: Lastly, make sure to save up and print out the output so you can read it one final time. Save your changes and edits from the previous steps and create a new version of the file. Print out the document and do a final review before submission. It is much easier to catch mistakes when things are printed out. It also helps to review things after waiting some period of time (if possible), so you can have a set of fresh eyes. Conclusion You really need to be on your A-game during the first few months of banking. Network and have good conversations with people who can put you on the best staffings. Make sure you find out all of the recruiting nuances that might impact your specific group. When you’re on staffings, take special care to make sure you’re checking your work and delivering a high-quality product.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview Even if you’re an absurdly keen finance hotshot who reads all of the literature that is publicly available, there’s a good chance that you still won’t really be able to distinguish between what it’s like to work at the different private equity firms. Private equity firms, like most investment firms, prefer to operate in relative secrecy and tend to loathe any news articles that delve into any specific or useful detail, which makes it harder for candidates to do proper research. Even if you’re in investment banking (unless you happen to be on the Sponsors team) there’s a good chance that you don’t have a strong opinion of how the different private equity firms differ from one another. Having worked in the industry for a few years, here are the main criteria and characteristics I would think about when evaluating private equity firms. Our Private Equity Recruiting Course goes over how to prepare for the modeling and case studies asked in private equity interviews. The best approach is always to talk to someone at the firm, but in the absence of establishing contact, here are some things to easily assess: Fund Size and Investment Size Fund size is really important because it impacts the kinds of companies you’re going to evaluate and invest in. Firms with similar amounts of money will compete with one another during buying processes. You can categorize different private equity firms by their fund size. Mega Funds are the largest investment managers that have raised >$15B private equity funds. This category would include funds like KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle, and TPG. There’s no real cut-off for what constitutes a mega fund, but this is about the range in which you can reasonably deploy more than $1B of equity into an investment. This is the size you need to be if you want to think about taking large public companies private. Below the category of mega funds is the Upper Middle Market, which is a broad range that typically refers to fund sizes >$5B. This would include funds like Berkshire Partners, American Securities, and ABRY. Most of these funds would typically deploy $200-$500mm per investment. This is large enough for PIPE investments in smaller public companies and also in the range for Series D / E type investments. I would describe anything below this range to be Middle Market and Lower-Middle Market, to which there are even blurrier rules. I’ve seen some people define the Lower Middle Market as companies that have <$50mm in annual revenue. There tends to be a blend between Middle Market and Growth Equity investing, which can sometimes be delineated based on the company’s business model. Growth Equity tends to invest in more revenue, growth-oriented companies, while private equity strictly speaking still invests in more cash flow-oriented businesses. There are no hard and fast rules, but most funds (funds, not firms) hold between 10-20 portfolio companies, meaning that the average investment size you make is going to be directly related to the fund you have. Looking at a real-world example, Onex Partners’ most recent fund is $7.15B, and they’ve stated a minimum investment size of $200mm, implying they could have a maximum of ~35 portfolio companies. I would guess their average investment size is higher and that they target around 15-20 companies to hold. The amount of companies you can manage and invest in is directly proportional to your team size, so you can’t invest in too many businesses. Industry Focus The next thing that I think is really important to identify is the industry focus of each firm. Exactly when to specialize is a pretty philosophical question, but most people start to naturally specialize in an industry by their late 20s. It can be very hard to consistently make money unless you know an industry inside and out. And when you’re recruiting for private equity, you have the option of pursuing a more generalist fund or a more specialist fund that only focuses on one industry. Most private equity firms, especially the larger mega funds, are generalist funds that have different groups and industry verticals. Even if you go to a generalist fund, there is a good chance you will get dedicated to a specific team or end up repeatedly working with the same industry Partners anyway. Groups at private equity firms also tend to be geographically organized (e.g. technology teams tend to be based on the West Coast), so keep that in mind when you are recruiting. If you have an existing industry preference or skill, positioning yourself for a specific industry can be very helpful. There’s so much competition for recruiting that it can make sense to craft a narrative around why a specific industry works better for you. There are a lot of fantastic TMT funds, which makes sense because the SaaS business model is perfect for private equity. Firms like Silver Lake, Vista Equity and Thoma Bravo all focus on technology and consistently hire people during the on-cycle. The consumer sector is another industry that has lots of great specialist-focused funds. Leonard Green, L Catterton and Sycamore are examples of high-quality consumer funds. Investment Structure When you think of private equity, you probably think more about traditional buyout, i.e. buying out entire companies and taking a controlling stake. In reality, however, private equity tends to involve a variety of different structures. Most private equity firms are relatively straight shooters – lots of mega funds just stick with either buyout or some kind of preferred securities. However, some firms are notorious for investing across the capital structure and even investing in debt. This kind of investing is sometimes characterized as Special Situations, Distressed Investing, or even Value-Oriented Investing. A lot of these private equity firms look at companies that others ordinarily won’t. Perhaps these companies are on the verge of bankruptcy or are mismanaged. The goal of these private equity firms is to acquire companies at cheaper valuations and identify mispriced assets. These private equity firms may invest using more complex securities to protect themselves in the case of downside. Apollo is perhaps the most famous and successful firm that uses this investing strategy. They have put up consistently stellar returns at the mega fund level by investing in exotic and hard to understand situations. Centerbridge, Cerberus and Searchlight are other notable players in this space. As an associate, these firms tend to be significantly more complex and have a heavier focus on technical modeling. Expect these firms to have a higher technical standard when recruiting. Fund Return and Growth Truthfully, it doesn’t seem quite as important if you simply want to be an associate at a private equity firm en route to hedge funds or business school, but if you want to grow your career with a firm, its recent performance is an important thing to check. Generally speaking, the easiest way to determine this is to check if a fund has continued to raise larger and larger funds. Just like how it’s sketchy if a company does a down-round, it’s generally a bad sign if a firm has raised smaller and smaller funds. I would also do a quick gut check against the CalPERS database to see their recent returns. Organizational Questions The last thing I would do when evaluating a firm is to try to assess the organizational aspects of the company. Here are some final important factors to consider before you sign with a firm: Attrition Attrition is probably the easiest way to determine if a firm treats its employees well and if it is a desirable place to work. If a lot of Associates don’t finish their two-year programs and if barely anyone goes back after their MBA, there’s a good chance that the firm is kind of toxic. I find that junior attrition speaks more to a firm being overly intense, while senior attrition speaks more to fund performance being poor. Focus Is private equity the firm’s focus? Some of the mega funds don’t necessarily prioritize their private equity platform and have shifted into becoming more like asset managers. If the leadership isn’t focused on private equity, it could impact your ability to climb the ranks down the road. Co-invest, Carry Co-invest and carry are two components of compensation that can contribute a lot to your compensation in private equity. Co-investing is essentially the ability to invest alongside the private equity fund, which can give you direct access to high-quality deals. Carry is the ability to earn part of the profits in a private equity fund. Many firms do not offer their junior members co-invest or carry, so this would be a great sweetener. When evaluating private equity firms, we would first recommend considering factors that will greatly impact the arc of your career and the kind of work that you do: investment size, industry, and investment structure. Then we think it is prudent to research the firm’s recent financial performance to understand the company’s growth trajectory.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview We did an AMA a few months ago on Instagram with @WallStreetConfessions and one of the questions that resonated with me the most was the following: “What advice would you give to someone who is burnt out after 1 year of PE?” Well first, congratulations on breaking onto the buyside! As someone who was extremely intense about finance during university and who subsequently burned out while in investment banking, trust me when I say that I understand what it’s like. I know what it feels like to work repeated late nights in an environment where none of the people you are working with care about your well-being or about creating a comfortable work environment. The average workweek in private equity is tough and the extremes are brutal. When you’ve been working consecutive 90+ hour work weeks and there’s no end in sight, the most reasonable option can seem like tapping out and just quitting. Working such a high volume of hours is definitely not for everyone and it can take a huge toll on your psychological well-being. It’s been well documented that there is a correlation between hours worked and the risk of burnout. “Long working hours are correlated with burnout when working over 40 hours per week and is even stronger when working over 60 hours per week. Limiting working hours to 40 weekly may be beneficial for the prevention of burnout. Physical activity helps reduce the risk of burnout.” The Associations Between Long Working Hours, Physical Activity, and Burnout That being said, I think you should consider the following factors before you decide to pull the trigger and actually quit your job in finance. It can seem liberating to walk into your boss’ office and tell them that you’re done, but make sure you balance your fatigue with rationality before making a potentially irreversible decision. Can You Get By If You Do a Worse Job? If you’re in investment banking or private equity or anything in finance, you’re probably extremely driven and moderately insane. You’re probably used to dominating every challenge given to you and can’t tolerate the idea of not excelling. Well, I think it can be psychologically helpful to try and re-frame how you think about work. Are you burned out because you’ve been giving your job 100% of your energy and attention for the last several years? Have you always been the star analyst or associate, eager to jump at the next project? See if you can get by if you only give it 70% or 80% of your energy. A lot of runners find that they can run for a significantly longer time if they go at a slightly lower speed. See if you can get by if you submit slightly lower-quality work. Honestly, even if you start getting reprimanded, you can weigh whether the psychological cost of being abused by your senior is worth the extra few hours of sleep. It might sound ridiculous, but I can definitely think of times when I chose to have a fun night out, knowing that I would get chewed out later for low-quality work. Here are some ways that you can do a worse or selfish job at work in order to get more of your time back: Dump even more work on your junior associate or junior analyst. If you’re working with someone who is still worried about being evaluated and doing a good job, they’re going to care a lot more than you. If you have your PE or MBA offer and they’re still in the recruiting game, they’ll be willing to pick up a lot of slack. I realized the beauty of this when I was a first-year associate and a checked-out associate kept dumping stuff on me – it was brilliant! Lazily check your models. Checking your work is one of the most time-consuming and soul-sucking tasks in finance. If you’re working underneath someone who cares about their job, they’ll probably check your work anyway. If you don’t mind being reprimanded every now and then, this is one of the biggest sources of time you can save on. Do work for other projects while on calls you don’t have to speak. I think everyone already does this, but if you don’t have to speak on a call, you can start taking that as permission to do something else. Exaggerate how busy you are to the staffer. Another classic tactic, but if you have some kind of staffing sheet or staffing process, it can be helpful to exaggerate how much work you have. I mean, your deal could blow up any second! How Much Leverage Do You Have Over Your Boss? Another really important factor to consider is how much leverage you have in the firm. If you’re the only associate in a small firm, you’ll be the only one that knows how a lot of models work. If the investment banking group you’re in has had a horrible attrition problem and reputation, they might be more likely to give in to your demands so they don’t get punished by HR. Hiring new people is costly, annoying and time-consuming for people. Firing people is also not always an option because if you’re an analyst or associate, you might be on a 2-year contract in which case it doesn’t make sense to sever someone. Some firms have a policy not to fire analysts. It might also be extremely helpful to just have a candid conversation with your boss. If you feel like you’re working too much or if you need a vacation, express that before throwing the hail Mary of quitting altogether. Even just a single weekend of good sleep and no e-mails can restore a burnout into a reasonably productive employee, so maybe that’s all you need to negotiate or push for. There’s a chance that your boss doesn’t actually know how much you hate your job and expressing that in a straightforward manner can give you a lot of leeway. There’s only so much that your boss can do to make your life better, but by communicating that you’re not having a good time or are on the verge of quitting, they might end up staffing the other associate / analyst a lot more. What Is Your Ability to Lateral? There’s a quote that says that people never quit a job, they quit their boss. I think that quote might have been intended for people in tech, not finance, but I think there’s some merit to it. If you haven’t worked under very many bosses, there’s a chance that your burnout stems from the specific place you’re working. If you feel a deep resentment for a single person at your firm, there’s a chance you might be better off if you lateral to a different firm. If you think it might be a bad boss and not actually a case of burnout, I’d urge you to try and find a lateral opening before full-out quitting. It’s much harder to recruit for finance jobs if you’re not currently at one. Another great thing about lateraling is that you might get some actual time off in between jobs. That might also be enough to help you shake off the burnout. How Far is Your Next Bonus? Let’s say you’re already doing a crappy job and you’ve complained to your boss numerous times that your office is a terrible place to work. Lateraling again doesn’t seem like it will solve your problem because you’ve already tried a few firms and have felt consistently burnt out. You see no opportunity for change. I think it’s then time to start thinking about things from an economic standpoint. If your bonus is only 2 or 3 months away, it might make sense to just soldier up and stomach the pain. Especially if you’re only a few months out of school, a full-time finance bonus can be monumental. Finance bonuses can be more than 50% of your entire compensation and walking away from it if it’s just around the corner can be a bad decision in the long run. Even if your goal is to escape and leave finance altogether, it can be extremely helpful to have more money as insurance and protection. Strongly Consider Finishing 4 Years in Finance The last thing I would comment on is that it can be extremely helpful to do at least 4 years in finance. I think working for that long can help you a lot if you ever want to move back into finance or a related role. Even if you know you’ll never want to do investment banking again, will you potentially want to work for a family office or a pension plan? It can be hard to land one of those jobs with only a few years of banking or no investing experience. 4 years is by no means a definitive number, but it’s what a few of my mentors had repeatedly told me when I wanted to quit finance during banking. 4 years generally means you’ll have completed 2+2, which is the point when a lot of people try new things anyway. After 4 years, you’ll have probably accumulated enough recommendations and been on enough live deals to effectively recruit for future positions.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview Whether you are working in investment banking, private equity or corporate finance at a Fortune 500 company, you'll likely be asked to build a financial model with multiple cases at some point. This kind of model will employ a range of operating assumptions to determine the financial profile of a company under different situations. The process of running these sensitivities is often referred to as a scenario analysis or as building out cases. Why Develop Different Cases? There are many benefits to building different cases and sensitizing your projection assumptions. Predicting the future is nearly impossible, but it is prudent common practice to evaluate several different cases to determine a range of outcomes of a potential investment. This kind of modeling is the industry standard at all private equity firms and hedge funds. The three most common cases used in finance are: Upside Case – The Upside Case is usually the most optimistic scenario where everything in the future that can go right for the company does. It is common for the Upside Case to incorporate margin expansion and the realization of all growth opportunities. Upside case assumptions typically come from the management teams of the company you are analyzing and are thus collectively referred to as the Management Case. Most investment professionals take these assumptions with a grain of salt given how frequent it is to hear a company miss their forecast. Management teams often work with sell-side professionals to prepare an ambitious Upside Case that can serve as the starting point for deal negotiations. Investment professionals will often “haircut” the different drivers and assumptions in the Upside Case to something more reasonable. Base Case – The Base Case is a moderate financial forecast that is supposed to represent the most likely situation. A good Base Case will be based on reasonable and factual drivers that can be easily achieved by the business. The Base Case can be thought of as an average and relatively conservative scenario that will happen in the future. An example of this would be if the revenue growth of a business remained stable and in line with historical levels or if the company grew in line with an industry benchmark (e.g. you forecast a company’s revenue CAGR to be in line with the industry’s forecasted GDP). Downside Case – Think of this scenario as the most severe and conservative case. A Downside Case could reflect when revenue growth stalls, business units fail to cut costs, or a recession hits. For example, if the company you are working with is in the home builder sector, a Downside Case financial model could look like a similar performance during another housing downturn and financial crisis similar to what happened in 2008 – 2009. The cases you spend more time with can also depend on what side of a transaction you are working on. A CFO of the company is more incentivized to view the Upside Case as a certainty as they have a vested interest in the forecast being correct and for their business to grow indefinitely. A private equity investor who is looking to take an ownership stake in a business may focus more on developing a conservative and data-driven Base Case. On the contrary, a lender or debt investor tends to focus more on understanding what a true Downside Case would look like since their returns are capped at the interest rate they are earning, but their downside risk is losing all their invested capital. Building Case Functionality In Excel, building case functionality is really just a matter of organizing different drivers in a way that can easily be toggled and switched. And you'll want to make sure that you've optimized your Quick Access Toolbar in Excel before starting any modeling. 1. Create an assumptions / case section It can be very helpful to carve out a section specifically for assumptions and case drivers. Putting all of the important assumptions into one place will also make things much easier to review and audit. Lay out a few rows for each of the important drivers you want to sensitize. Lay out the different case drivers for each assumption. Next, add a few rows under each assumption. Each row will correspond to a different case. Here, we will create three new rows to outline the assumptions for an Upside Case, Base Case and Downside Case. 2. Create a “Case Toggle” We will determine the active case of the model with a “Case Toggle”. This is a cell that we will point our driver assumptions to. In practice, this is just going to be a cell with a hardcoded value of 1, 2 or 3. Each number will correspond to the case that we want to be active. We will input a different value for this cell depending on which case we want. We will set this cell to 1 if we want the Upside Case, 2 for Base Case and 3 for Downside Case. It is considered good model hygiene to name this cell something like “Case”. This makes it easier to audit (vs. having the case be an alphanumeric cell). 3. Link the Case Logic Lastly, we are going to add the actual case logic that connects our drivers and the Case Toggle. In each of these assumption rows, we are going to enter the following formula: =OFFSET(CELL,0,’Case’) Here, CELL refers to whatever cell the formula is in, i.e. it is a self-referential cell. In the example below, this is cell E14. Essentially what we are doing here is creating logic such that one of the below rows will be selected. OFFSET is a formula that pulls the information from a nearby cell, and we are determining which cell that is by using the ‘Case’ cell. When we have ‘Case’ as a value of 2, the OFFSET will pull the values that are 2 rows below, which is where we have input our Base Case assumptions. This way, we can directly edit the assumptions for each case in the assumptions section. If we want to switch between different Cases, all we have to do is switch between 1, 2 or 3. Note: In our opinion, OFFSET is meaningfully better than the other popular CHOOSE formula. CHOOSE is extremely error-prone because it makes adding new cases extremely annoying. To add a new case using OFFSET, all you have to do is add a new row for each assumption. CHOOSE requires you to edit every single driver row and the linking required can be very cumbersome. How to Develop a Downside Case Thesis The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact businesses across multiple industries and create uncertainty on when the economic environment will return to normal. As such, investors and finance professionals are now taking more a conservative approach towards evaluating investment opportunities and how they predict the future performance of those investments. This sort of thinking is integral to investing in private credit. The most common approach when creating a Downside Case is to mirror performance from the last recession. While this approach works for some sectors and allows you to forecast the company’s performance if another financial crisis just like 2008-2009 occurs, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that not all recessions are created equally. Some businesses are actually performing worse today than they did in 2008-2009. The following steps provide a general framework in helping to develop a defensible Downside Case. Identify Risks Affecting the Company – The first step in developing a Downside Case is understanding what key risks could impact performance. What key risks and headwinds are Management worried about? Using a home builder company as an example, one of the top risks to this business and sector is how sales of new homes are correlated to general macroeconomic conditions. Generally speaking, if the U.S. economy is performing poorly, families have less disposable income, and there are fewer new home sales. Incorporate Risks into Financial Models – The top risks you incorporate into the Downside Case should have the most material impact on financial performance if they were to occur. Consider the impact of COVID-19 on a consumer goods retailer. Your Downside Case would likely incorporate a steep decline from in-store sales, but perhaps include an increase in e-commerce sales. A thoughtful revenue forecast might incorporate how many missed days of sales will occur and what the maximum store occupancy is. You want to try to use drivers that you have reliable data for and that are highly correlated with financial performance. Consider Operating Levers – Just because you are modeling a Downside Case does not mean it cannot have any upside drivers. During periods of financial distress, companies will usually have operating levers they can pull to help maintain some level of profitability as it weathers a downturn. Some example of operating levers that can be executed to preserve cash and profitability in a downturn are: Reducing headcount (e.g. layoffs and furloughs of non-essential employees) Company-wide hiring freezes Facility consolidation (e.g. moving redundant manufacturing plants into one central location) Eliminating or deferring discretionary spending (e.g. dividends, share buybacks) Reducing capital expenditures - Cutting back spending on growth capex and spending only on capex that is truly mandatory (replace worn-down machinery parts instead of buying new equipment) Divesting non-core business assets to generate cash for the short-term (extreme case but can be done if companies become distressed) It goes without saying that no one can predict the future and no matter what assumptions you put into your model, they are not going to be a perfect mirror of how a company performs. That being said, developing cases and stressing the financial viability of a business is an important function in determining what makes a company a good acquisition target or investment opportunity. A scenario analysis enables businesses or finance professionals to quantifiably take the best- and worst-case future probabilities into account and analyze those outcomes to make an informed business or investment decision.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview Breaking into investment banking as a target and as a non-target are completely different games. As a target, you can lazily rely on on-campus recruiting. Hundreds of alumni will be willing to chat with you. And you can join one of the many finance clubs at school. As a non-target, you often have to make your own luck and play a longer, more arduous game in order to break into investment banking. You will likely need to network three or four times as much as your target school peers and your conversion rate on reaching out is going to be much lower. Your ultimate goal should still be to break into a top bulge bracket or elite boutique firm, but it would be extremely wise of you to reach out to a much wider list of firms. As a non-target, you have to accept the reality that your chances of graduating into a top firm out of school are much lower. That shouldn’t prevent you from knocking on every door that you can find, but in this post, we’d like to shine the spotlight on other categories of firms that non-targets end up at that are still great places to work. And if you want to learn the technical and interview skills needed to get the best banking offer possible, you should check out our Investment Banking Course. Methodology The way we conducted this analysis was to extend our original analysis of investment banking target schools. We first looked at all of the U.S. investment banking analysts who graduated between 2014 and 2019, which gave us 6 years of data. We then sorted the data to identify which schools do consistently place into investment banking. We ranked all of the schools and determined that any school with above 30 investment banking hires at top firms over the past 6 years could reasonably be concluded as semi-target or target schools. By top firms, we mean the highest paying investment banks that work on the largest deals. Firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, etc. This is the same list of firms we used to determine our investment banking target school list. 30 hires at top firms over 6 years is by no means a "good" placement rate, but we’re treating it as the cutoff of what a reasonable finance program can place. The best performing target schools consistently placed 40-50 candidates every single year. When surveying the data, we saw that there was a sharp cut-off at schools with fewer than 30 investment banking hires over the 6-year time horizon. Schools in this category tended to have very erratic hiring between years. Non-Target Schools Just to be abundantly clear, we’re defining a non-target school as a school with <30 investment banking hires into top firms over the last 6 years. This includes schools like: University of Florida (which actually still has a great finance program, but it’s very small) Texas A&M University The University of Georgia Miami University Northeastern University Bentley University Fordham University Claremont McKenna College These are overall good schools with capable students, but they might not necessarily have a strong finance recruiting system or sufficient alumni in the industry. Again, it’s not impossible to place into the top firms from these schools (as students from these schools still consistently do so every year), but it is meaningfully harder to do so and might only be accomplished by the very top finance students at each school. Where do Non-Targets Place? So what we did was look at all of the placements of students from these non-target schools. We then stripped out the placements to top firms. Our goal here is to identify which lesser known investment banking firms commonly hire non-targets. Investment banking is a huge industry. As a newbie or student, it’s understandable to not have a great understanding of the landscape, but there is a very large number of investment banking firms that do small deals. The most recognizable top firms work on the mega deals, but many respectable firms focus on small asset deals and regional deals. The thing is, many students waste all of their networking effort chasing the big firms. If you're a non-target, you need to reach out to both big firms and these lesser known firms. What you need to do is play to your expected value and reach out to investment banks who want to hire talented individuals and have less demand from applicants. Upon surveying the list of firms, you can roughly categorize the firms that hire lots of non-targets into the following buckets: Middle Market Firms Stephens Raymond James Stifel William Blair Craig-Hallum Group JMP Securities Alpha Capital Holdings Regional / Industry Focused Players SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Lincoln International Financial Technology Partners Union Square Advisors Leerink Partners Foreign Banks trying to break into the U.S. BNP Paribas Societe Generale Mizuho HSBC TD Canaccord Genuity Accounting Firms / Financial Institutions with advisory divisions Deloitte KPMG Duff & Phelps PNC Citizens Financial Group Capstone Partners (formerly part of Arthur Andersen) Let this be a general framework for you as you’re researching firms. These are the types of firms that tend to fly under the radar but offer attractive career opportunities. These are all firms that still do investment banking deals and will give you all the training you need to break into the buyside. They also garner way less attention than the biggest investment banks, making them much easier to reach out to as a non-target. The data we’ve scraped from LinkedIn supports this notion. And anecdotally, I’ve seen way more non-targets at these firms. Many people will lateral after a year or two at one of these firms, sometimes in a regional office, in order to break into a top firm in a Tier 1 City. The road is a little longer, but it's definitely possible to lateral if you employ the right strategies. Another great thing about these firms is that they tend to have smaller investment banking organizations, so there are fewer decision makers you have to network with. It’s easier to reach out to someone and know that your efforts are actually making a difference. Trying to network into a large bulge bracket can be extremely annoying because it’s less clear who actually has the authority to make a hiring decision. What do These Firms Have in Common? The list above is a great place to start, but you should be reaching out to 50-100 firms as a non-target if you want a solid chance of landing a place. In general, as a non-target, you should really be looking for firms with the following characteristics: Actually does investment banking deals It doesn’t really matter what firm you’re at as long as you’re actually getting deal experience. You can be at a Big 4 firm or abroad at an unknown firm. As long as you’re getting deal experience, you’re moving your career forward and building tangible skills. Make sure that whichever firm or office you’re going to at least does a few deals per year. You can verify this by checking the firm’s website, checking news, or Googling for league tables. Track record of people lateraling to top firms If your ultimate goal is to break into a top firm, you should obviously make sure that the firm you’re going to has a track record of lateralling. You can verify this by looking at the last 5 years of LinkedIn data from the firm. Do analysts actually have a decent chance of leaving? Some firms might be in bad geographies, not have deal flow, or have senior people who actively prevent recruiting, which are all factors that would limit your career. Hires at least 5 analysts per year From an expected value standpoint, it’s helpful if the firm hires at least 5 analysts per year across its offices. This is already a really small number, but this number generally means that there’s room to network into. Firms that only have 1 or 2 analysts per year can be really tough to break into because there’s almost always some reserved spots for relationship hires (at every firm in finance). Conclusion Don't be afraid to play the long game with your career. Tons of people lateral to the top investment banking firms after a year or two working elsewhere. There’s so much attrition in finance that as long as you’ve landed a finance advisory role out of school, you can eventually climb your way to the top. As a non-target, it really makes a ton of sense to focus on opportunities and firms that others might not be as focused on. Even if you’re at a target school, you might potentially be late to recruiting in finance, in which case this list of firms would also be a very logical target.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview One of the most effective ways to differentiate yourself when networking and reaching out is by thoroughly researching the firm you are applying to. It’s extremely obvious when a candidate has put in the time and effort to study your firm. Researching a company for even 30 minutes is one of the highest ROI activities you can do to improve your interviews. You don’t have to research every single firm you reach out to, but if you’re finding that your outreach or coffee chats aren’t converting well, then this is an obvious area to work on. And if you're interested in working on your technical skills, you should check out our Valuation and Finance Starter Kit. There are three key benefits associated with researching a company. Research prepares you for the qualitative component of interviews In order to successfully answer the common question of “Why this firm?”, you’ll need to research the firm. By conducting research beforehand, you can ask more thoughtful questions to the interviewer when it’s your turn to ask questions. Research allows you to specifically tailor your outreach By studying a firm, you can pepper in a few key details in the outreach e-mail that you send to different professionals. Mentioning a recent deal, relevant portfolio company, or the firm’s investment strategy is going to improve the conversions on your e-mails dramatically. Research helps you benchmark and more easily compare different firms By researching more firms, you’ll start developing a mental model of how firms differ and better understand what it is that you want in a job. This research process will make it much easier for you to evaluate which firm you want to work for. While researching, I think it can be helpful to catalogue all your notes into a single document or note-taking system. I like to use Notion, which is a free cross-platform solution. What to Research I like to bucket my research into three main categories when researching firms: 1) the firm’s opinion of itself, 2) the industry’s opinion, and 3) the Internet’s opinion. 1) Firm Opinion To Do: Scroll through the firm website for 5-10 minutes. Go through LinkedIn and check a handful of profiles of people who are in the position you are applying for. Try to have 2 coffee chats with people at the firm before interviewing. A firm is going to have a particular identity and will try to brand itself to LPs and competitors in a specific way. You can easily determine this by going on the firm’s website and reading its mission statement, business model, and checking its investments or recent deals. Your first goal is to learn how the company makes money, its key business segments, and what kind of initiatives it focuses on. For example, checking Apollo’s ‘About’ section reveals that they invest in multiple asset classes and use a value-oriented investing philosophy. You can then check their press releases and media to see the recent deals they’ve done. Asking about recent acquisitions during coffee chats is a really good way to appear engaged and interested in the firm. On LinkedIn, I would try to get a sense for how the headcount is distributed across offices as well as the firms they typically hire from. It doesn’t take long to quickly scroll through 10 or so profiles to develop a sense for what their ideal candidate and typical career progression is like. I would also keep an eye out for attrition – how long are people staying at these firms? More attrition tends to signal tougher culture. During your coffee chats, you should try to ask the professionals their favorite part of working at the firm or why they chose that firm. You can then take their answer and repurpose it into your own when interviewing. 2) Industry Opinion To Do: Read 3 news articles that cover the firm. Check a few databases like Crunchbase, H1B Data, CalPERS (or CapIQ / Bloomberg if you have access). The next category of opinions to research is what the industry says and how the overall performance of the firm has been. You can do this by simply Googling the firm’s name and reading a few recent articles. This can help uncover if there have been any landmark deals by the firm, if they’ve made any big recent hires, or if there happens to be some controversy. I would try to quickly skim 3 or so articles so you get a high-level sense for what the overall reputation of the firm is. I would follow this up by quickly checking their performance on a few databases. Some good free ones include: Crunchbase, which can tell you recent funding amounts and portfolio companies, H1B Data, which can tell you salary, and CalPERS, which can tell you fund performance. Checking these databases and recent articles can let you know if the firm is on the uptrend or not. Have they been raising more money in each successive fund? Is the fund doing well? Are they hiring more senior talent vs. losing? Do they have any news scandals? If you see online that a lot of a senior talent has recently left the firm or if the founder is stepping away from the day-to-day operations, it might be a red flag. 3) Internet Opinion The third opinion to think about and research is what is generally available on the Internet. I will say that this is probably the flimsiest opinion to rely on because there’s less accountability and much of the opinions are offered anonymously. I still think it’s worthwhile to check the big message boards like r/FinancialCareers, Blind, and Fishbowl, but I would take things there with a grain of salt. These sources can be more dubious because the information is offered anonymously and many of the posters are college students who offer second-hand information. Another reason why individual opinions can be tough to trust is because people’s experiences at firms can vary wildly. People in different offices, working for different MDs, on different projects will have extremely different work experiences. There is such a wide diversity of work / life balance at individual firms that one anonymous opinion might not mean that much. However, it’s still prudent to check through the message boards and even meme accounts on Instagram. You can tease out what ex-employees think and what competitors perceive them to be like. I generally think the most accurate people to talk to are people who recently left that firm. These people will be less biased than current employees and are also likely to candidly talk about their experiences. Conclusion Research is a very important and occasionally overlooked step of the recruiting process. All good candidates are going to put in the time and effort to thoroughly research a firm before they even set foot into the interview room. Take the 30 or so minutes to research a firm and take notes while doing so.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview In this post, we are going to evaluate a dataset of private equity professionals to assess which schools, career paths, and firms produce the highest number of private equity professionals. We will answer the following questions: Which undergraduate school places the most people into private equity? Which MBA program places the most people into private equity? Which firm (investment bank and consultancy) places the most people into private equity? Like our investment banking target school list, we are going to arrive at this by cataloguing a database of hires and then by ranking each school and firm by number of total placements. However, unlike our investment banking target school list, we collected this data by hand, going through each private equity firm website and manually recording each entry. We did this because there are much fewer people at the top private equity firms vs. at the top investment banks. There is also less standardization in LinkedIn job title (lots of people as “Associate”, “Investment Associate”, “Private Equity Investor”, etc.). We also wanted to have more control over data integrity given the smaller universe of candidates and thus wanted to verify each entry ourselves. If you're interested in landing a spot in private equity, check out our Private Equity Recruiting Course. Data Caveats Because this was effort was manual, there are a few caveats and limitations of the data: The data includes all positions below the Partner / Senior Director role. Our main goal is to understand recruiting paths and we found that many Partners joined the firm several decades ago under very different circumstances. The data is only based on what was available on the firm website. We did this to make sure we could verify every entry and to eliminate the noise from LinkedIn (e.g. people using different titles or not updating when they move jobs). Some larger firms (e.g. Blackstone) don’t include non-senior roles on their website and are therefore underrepresented on the list. The data only covers “upper middle market / large cap” private equity firms. I cut off the firms at about ~$5B fund size. We would've only done mega funds, but that wouldn't have been enough data. The data was collected in Q4 2020. The data only includes New York offices of each firm. We did this primarily because it would be too hard to standardize placement across all satellite offices. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, satellite offices tend to recruit a little differently (i.e. less competition and less requirements for traditional prestige). This unfairly underrepresents west coast focused firms such as TPG, Vista, Thoma Bravo. After doing this exercise, we ended up with 16 private equity funds and 290 professionals, of which ~40% were Associates / Analysts. This is kind of a small data set, but we saw enough clear patterns in the data to feel comfortable working with this. Let’s dive in. Best Undergraduate Schools University of Pennsylvania There should be no doubt in our mind what the best undergraduate school for private equity is. The reigning champion for New York large-cap private equity is without a doubt, the University of Pennsylvania, which is home to Wharton. Wharton isn’t just a private equity powerhouse – they’re quite likely the best school for any buyside job, including hedge funds and possibly venture capital. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to attend Wharton – it must be a crazy pressure cooker, where landing a job at Goldman TMT is viewed as pedestrian and uninspired. People casually exit to the best funds in the world and still feel insecure about their accomplishments. 19% of our data set attended the University of Pennsylvania and Penn had twice the number of professionals as the #2 school, Harvard. What’s extremely notable is that Penn has so many juniors in private equity. This is because they send people directly into private equity as Analysts into top firms like Warburg Pincus, Silver Lake and Blackstone. No other school has even close to the level of Analyst track record that Penn has. Harvard University The second most represented school in New York large-cap private equity is Harvard – ever heard of it? Harvard is an amazing place to be if you want to go to the buyside. 8% of this data set went to Harvard for their undergrad. And Harvard likely beats Penn on a per capita basis, but Harvard has a relatively smaller school size. Importantly, it seems to me that Harvard does not quite have the same Analyst pipeline as Penn. Only 33% of Harvard’s private equity professionals in this data set are juniors. What this suggests to me is that the Harvard folks that choose to pursue private equity tend to climb the ranks well. Other Top Schools The playing field is much more even after the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. One big theme that emerges when you look at the top schools on this list is that traditional prestige seems to matter more vs. for the investment banking target school list. You have your traditional Ivy leagues in Dartmouth, Cornell, Yale, as well as other overall strong schools like University of Chicago and Duke. These top schools just don’t have the pure volume and student population to be at the top of investment banking lists, but it’s clear that recruiters and firms are still looking for that kind of caliber and cachet. NYU and Michigan, which can be likened to investment banking boot camps, do not place proportionally as well into private equity. It’s a bit sad how pronounced their drop-off is relative to investment banking placement. Ivey Business School (The Canadian Wharton) Perhaps the biggest surprise on this list is the Ivey Business School, which is the business school for Western University in Canada. I attended this school – and although you might be tempted to believe that I tampered with this data just to stick it to those Cornell kids – I can 100% affirm to you how well Ivey places into private equity. The Ivey Business School is the top Canadian school for finance. It's also the only Canadian semi-target on the overall investment banking school list and it’s clear that they consistently place into top private equity firms. I would say that Ivey tends to attract the top students in Canada and many students have a laser focus on dominating finance recruiting. I think a big reason why Ivey places so well on this list is because they have extremely consistent placement into a couple of key firms. They have a dominant representation at Onex (the largest Canadian firm) and good representation at firms like Silver Lake and TPG. Other Undergraduate Schools Overall, I also want to highlight how the #20 firm on this list only has a handful of people in private equity. That’s why it can feel so hard when you’re networking and trying to break in. There really just aren’t a ton of top spots available. There are a number of schools with just 1 or 2 people at the top private equity firms. This might seem disheartening, but I do think that your firm really does matter more. We’ll explore that data point in a moment. Best MBA Programs The best MBA program to get into private equity (and likely all of finance) is the Harvard Business School. 37% of all mid-level (and above) positions were occupied by graduates of HBS. It’s hilarious thinking that there are so many people from HBS in the industry, but it’s true. During my time at Providence, I noticed that every single mid-level person in the New York office either went to HBS or didn’t go to school at all. I mean, going to HBS really is the path if you think about it (2 years of IB, 2 years of PE, 2 years of HBS). Private equity really is just a bunch of smart, polished path followers running around and trading B2B software businesses. Stanford also places amazingly. However, they are a bit underrepresented because our data excludes the west coast offices. The Stanford school size is also meaningfully smaller than HBS, so it won’t put up the same numbers as HBS. In general, I’ve also found that Stanford students tend to be less obsessed with private equity / hedge funds. The same can not be said for Wharton. They’re just much worse at placing into top private equity firms than either HBS or Stanford. They’re 3rd, but it’s a distant 3rd. Most MBA Programs are Trash for Private Equity I’m sorry to burst your bubble if you’re a wide-eyed MBA, but the chance of breaking into a top private equity firm if you don’t go to a top MBA is extremely low. Frankly, if you don’t go to the Harvard Business School, your chance of landing a top spot without prior private equity experience is virtually nothing. I think it’s still extremely possibly to go to a middle market firm, pension fund, or other great investing roles, but the top private equity firms are filled with people who have never strayed from The Path. There are too many exceptional path followers in the world that top firms aren’t incentivized to take a chance on other people. One extremely important thing to note: a large majority of people in these top spots started as pre-MBA Associates at that firm. That means that people placed into these roles out of banking or consulting and then just stayed there the entire time. Even if they went to get their MBA, they went back to the same firm. Roughly 2/3 of the mid-level+ people are at firms that they were pre-MBA associates at. This should paint an even grimmer picture for you. Many pre-MBA associate hotshots go to HBS thinking that they can upgrade or change the firm they’re at, but the majority end up right where they started. No shame in that though, you’re still bringing in $500k+. Lastly, it’s important noting that 43% of professionals have no MBA whatsoever. It’s definitely not necessary to get your MBA if all you want to do is forge a career in private equity. Best Feeder Firms for Private Equity The firm with the highest representation into top New York private equity firms is Goldman Sachs. It’s hard to ignore their dominance, as they have more than 2x their bulge bracket comps of JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. In my opinion, Goldman is by far the best investment bank when it comes to buyside and overall exits. There definitely is a certain cachet about the brand and I would say that most people I’ve met from Goldman are bright and hard working. However, after Goldman, I would say that the playing field is pretty even. If you’re at any respectable, top-10 investment bank, you’ll have a reasonably good shot landing somewhere. The numbers for all of these investment banks are close enough that you could imagine the number of hires and ranking changing on any given year. Elite Boutiques PJT (formerly Blackstone) is the best performing elite boutique on this list. However, it’s worth noting that PJT itself is relatively new, as it was spun out of Blackstone in late 2015. Most people included on the list had worked for Blackstone, not PJT. I think PJT is still very strong, but it’s still unclear to me if they will be as dominant as Blackstone was. Evercore and Moelis also have solid placement for elite boutiques. Elite boutiques are much smaller, so it’s likely they place a little better than JP Morgan (which has very large classes) and potentially in line with Morgan Stanley. Consulting Firms McKinsey seems to place overall the best among MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain). I’m more cautious to dub them a clear winner because the numbers are relatively closer (McKinsey with 12 vs. BCG with 8), but it’s my perception that McKinsey is indeed the overall best when it comes to getting into the buyside. Many consultants don’t even consider the buyside, so it’s incredible that MBB can place similarly to investment banks. I will say that many consultants placed into private equity after going to get their MBA, but it’s still crazy that going to Bain could be better than going to say, Lazard, when it comes to breaking into a top private equity firm. Unfortunately, there was no other representation outside of MBB on this list from consulting firms. If you’re at a different consulting firm and you want to break into private equity, you should consider potentially first moving to MBB. From a recruiting perspective, MBB folks definitely also get contacted by all the main headhunters. Most MBB people do not recruit in their first year of consulting, so they tend to interview with more work experience under their belt. Most MBB people will recruit in their second or even third year and tend to be more open to off-cycle recruiting. Lots of private equity firms don’t hire consultants, but the ones that do tend to always reserve a few spots for them. Hellman & Friedman, Advent, and Bain Capital all tend to hire consultants. Conclusion It might feel grim to see this cold hard data, but you should view it as informative. Know that it’s hard for every single candidate to break into private equity. These are some of the most competitive roles in the world and that’s why the lists are topped by the most competitive schools and firms. You'll want to make sure you're fully technically prepped with our Private Equity Recruiting Course in order to maximize your chances of landing an offer. I would say – if you’re not at one of the firms listed here, then you should consider making a lateral move before you start recruiting. I think firm is more important than school. There are definitely stories of non-targets breaking into top firms, but you won’t even make it on the radar of headhunters if you’re at a B-tier firm.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview Like most people in private equity, I come from an investment banking background. But I have to hand it to consultants – the majority of them are extremely bright and actually end up doing a better job once in private equity. It turns out that moving logos around for two years in investment banking is not always adequate training to invest in businesses. On the other hand, consultants tend to immediately do a great job with the diligence aspects of work and are well trained to handle abstract data-oriented problems. After working a couple of years in the workforce, my intuition is that the kind of people that go into investment banking are quite similar to the kind that go into consulting. At the end of the day, most bankers and consultants tend to just be highly motivated business people that want to have career optionality and make lots of money. Many people in consulting pursue buyside roles after realizing that they could be making 3 or 4 times as much money while doing relatively similar work. If you’re a consultant thinking about private equity, you should check out our Private Equity Recruiting Course, which will fully train you how to model and prepare for the interview. But what I think ends up greatly influencing people’s initial decisions to pursue finance or consulting is the school they went to. The school you go to is likely to be the biggest determinant in your career opportunities and some schools are much better at recruiting at finance vs. consulting. Traditionally prestigious Ivy league schools like Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia are dominant all around. But other schools like NYU and my alma mater, Ivey, place significantly better in finance. In this post, we’re going to apply a data-driven approach to determine what the target schools are for management consulting. We’re going to employ a similar approach to what we used for the investment banking target school list. Methodology One note: we are only looking at MBB consultants in this screen. MBB refers to McKinsey, BCG and Bain, which are commonly understood to be the top 3 consulting firms globally. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that these firms are a clear tier ahead of their competition. These firms charge their clients higher fees, pay their employees more, and generally have better exit opportunities. I actually originally included Oliver Wyman in this screen, but my guilty conscience ended up overpowering my desire for a more egalitarian society. Here was our approach: Aggregate all MBB Employees in the world (~95k people) We collected profiles from LinkedIn using the help of a mechanical turk program and a proprietary data provider. We collected the profiles of anyone who worked at McKinsey, BCG or Bain. We are most interested in who the target schools are today, so we only looked at people who graduated between 2014 and 2020. This resulted in ~95k global profiles around the world. Screen for North American Consultant Roles (~8k people) Next, we filtered for employees in the U.S. and Canada. Our view is that most of the attractive MBB consulting roles are in these countries. We also only have work experience in North America, so we didn’t feel comfortable validating and commenting on schools from around the globe. Maybe we'll add an EU version down the road. We then screened for job title, only selecting junior and mid-level consultant titles. We included the following: Associate Consultant, Senior Associate Consultant, Business Analyst, Senior Business Analyst, Associate, Consultant, Senior Consultant. Consultant titles are way more confusing than investment banking ones – there is definitely less uniformity across people’s LinkedIn titles, but we think this filter is good enough. Screen for Undergraduates (~3k people) Finally, we screened only for consultants with an undergraduate degree. We filtered out anyone with a master’s degree, MBA, doctorate, etc. We did this for data integrity purposes and to make it easier to compare the pure, unadulterated undergraduate schools. It becomes hard to isolate for pure undergraduate strength if you include any people with master's degrees. I recognize that this actually filters out a lot of people. There are truly a lot of people who end up doing a 1 or 2-years master's program immediately after their undergraduate program who end up going into consulting. However, we chose to still apply this filter to clean the data up. We were left with ~3k U.S. and Canadian management consultants who graduated between 2014 and 2020 and worked at one of McKinsey, BCG, and Bain. These are some of the brightest minds in the world – the future leaders of tomorrow! Management Consulting Target Schools With the hefty disclaimer on data out of the way, let’s finally tickle the insatiable part of our brain that rewards us for feelings of esteem and prestige. After surveying the data, we cut the schools into four tiers. Relative to investment banking, this list of consulting target schools has much less obvious break points. We have still tiered the schools to make the data more easily digestible. Top Targets – Harvard and University of Pennsylvania have placed ~2x the amount of people into MBB than the following targets. Their dominance in MBB consulting is extremely impressive. Targets – There is a crop of elite schools (and somehow UC Berkeley slid in here) that solidly place into MBB every year. We set the cut-off at 80 hires per year. This tier includes the usual suspects like Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. Weaker Targets – We set the bracket for this tier between 50 and 80 hires. We could’ve easily cut this differently, but we think this tier is the last one where you still see the impact of traditional prestige. Semi- / Non-Targets – Schools with fewer than 50 hires over the past 7 years. Top Targets Harvard and University of Pennsylvania stand alone on this zenith of capitalist expression. These two schools fetch twice as many hires into MBB than the next crop. Considering how well they also do in investment banking and private equity recruiting, I think it’s safe to assume that Harvard and University of Pennsylvania are the best overall schools when it comes to undergraduate business recruiting. This data also suggests that consulting is relatively more popular than investment banking at Harvard, given how there are meaningfully more MBB hires at Harvard than investment bankers. Targets This tier of schools all have very respectable placement figures and consistently place into MBB. 80-100 placements over 7 years means that these schools all send roughly 10-15 students into these top firms every year. All of these schools have relatively even representation at all of the MBB firms. These schools are respectable colleges that tend to do well in every business category. It’s worth noting that consulting seems to be relatively more popular at some of the traditionally prestigious schools. Schools in this tier like Stanford, MIT, and Duke are much lower on the investment banking target school list. Weaker Targets These "Weaker Target" schools have all placed between 50 and 80 hires into MBB over the past 7 years. This tier is filled with the other traditionally strong schools and includes Columbia, Vanderbilt, and Georgetown. In this tier, we start to notice that some schools have a disproportionate amount of placements into a specific firm (e.g. Columbia placing the majority of people into McKinsey). Semi-Targets We categorized this last tier as fewer than 50 hires over the past 7 years. That equates to roughly 7 or 8 hires per year, which is perhaps 2 or 3 students into each MBB firm every year. Although this data is likely not 100% representative, I think this underscores how competitive it can be to break into a top consulting firm. These semi-targets are still reasonably good schools and the notion that only the top 7 or 8 consulting hopefuls from each school will break into MBB each year is a relatively bleak one. At this "Semi-Target" tier, we also see that some schools have significantly stronger relationships with different firms. USC, for example has virtually no presence at McKinsey. When a school only places 7 or 8 hires per year, hiring trends can be heavily influenced by a group of vocal alumni or a strong relationship at a specific firm. As an aside, I think this is also why investment banking is relatively more popular and why many once hopeful consultants end up pivoting to finance. It’s hard to bet everything on a consulting role if your school only sends a few people per year to the top firms. The McKinsey % For your reference, we’ve also highlighted every school’s “McKinsey %”, with the belief that McKinsey is indeed the best and most coveted firm to place at. In reality, this data point doesn’t reveal anything too insightful. Perhaps it shows us that some of the weaker schools have more lopsided relationships with the different firms, but I don’t think having a meaningfully higher McKinsey % is the sign of a much better school. Everyone Else (Non-Targets) When you review the data, you see there are also a handful of schools that only have between 10-15 hires into MBB over the past 7 years. Schools that barely miss the cut include Southern Methodist, Johns Hopkins, and Williams. If your school is in this range, the statistics are pretty bleak because it implies that only 1 or 2 people per year are getting hired into MBB. There is a much higher onus to be outstanding at those schools to stand out. The result of this screen primarily focuses on U.S. schools, as they place much better into MBB. If you're interested in how Canadian schools perform, you should check out a similar exercise that Atila completed. Management Consulting Target Schools per Capita By popular demand, we’ve also compared the number of hires in this data with the size of each school. The argument we get (mostly from jilted NESCACs who are embarrassed to be outranked by Brigham Young) is that we should weigh the size of each school to determine how “easy” it is to place into a firm. I think it’s a reasonable take, so we’ve conducted that screen below. However, all things being equal, it’s still our belief that it’s better to be at a larger school for the following reasons: A larger school generally means a larger alumni base and a greater volume of people you can reach out to. Larger school means larger student community, so you have more people chasing similar goals. This makes it easier to organize investment clubs, stock pitches, study sessions, etc. Anecdotally, I’ve seen that it’s easier for firms to target larger schools from an expected value perspective. It’s easier to take a trip to NYU knowing that every single person in Stern is going to show up to your info session vs. going to a small liberal arts college where you might get 10 to 20 keen folks who are also juggling offers elsewhere. We are using the overall annual class size per CollegeData to conduct this screen. I do think that using the annual class size poses some issues of its own, but I think it's the best we can do without overcomplicating things. For the Per Capita %, we are taking the total number of hires, dividing it by the annual class size, then dividing that number by 7 because this data includes 7 years of hires. Observations Harvard’s dominance becomes even more apparent in this screen. Their per capita % is nearly double that of the remaining top schools. Most of the target schools have roughly the same ranking as they did in the previous screen, reinforcing the notion that these are just extremely good schools. Most of these schools also have much smaller student bodies when compared to state schools. We see by far the biggest improvement to small liberal arts colleges. Claremont-McKenna is launched into the top 10 and we also see Williams, Amherst and Davidson on this list now. It’s exceedingly true that these schools perform excellently on a per capita basis. The NESCAC schools in particular all do great for consulting. What might be concerning about these small liberal arts colleges is that the actual numbers are still relatively low – Claremont McKenna, for example only has 14 hires over the past 7 years. This implies that you still have to be the top one or two students in order to get an offer. I think the main takeaway from this second screen is that your chances at MBB are still going to be solid if you go to a small liberal arts college. If you want to go the consulting path but still want to recruit for private equity, you should check out our Private Equity Recruiting Course to make sure you're fully technically prepared. Summary Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan and Yale appear to be the best overall schools when it comes to recruiting for undergraduate consulting jobs. Overall, the top of the lists for both banking and consulting list are relatively similar. The lists start to deviate more at the semi-target level and I think it’s reasonable to interpret that many schools only do well in one field. It does seem that traditionally prestigious schools seem to place a bit better into MBB firms than into investment banks. I think this could be because some traditional Ivy league schools don’t have rigorous accounting and finance programs. Finance jobs tend to require a bit more technical understanding from the outset, which gives an opportunity for scrappy schools like NYU, Georgetown, BYU and Boston College to cultivate their skills and land offers.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview Professional finance culture is notoriously private and conservative. I would say that most people in the stuffier finance professions (private equity, hedge funds, and investment banking to name the obvious candidates) are going to err on the side of extreme conservatism. Venture capital is the notable exception to these conventions, as venture capitalists often compete on their personability and network. But for most people walking the traditional finance path, you’re better off taking the relatively safe and boring route, especially when it comes to LinkedIn and networking etiquette. Flashy ties, headshots on resumes, and extremely long biographies are a very easy way to get ridiculed by your peers and potential employers. It’s actually almost comical how muted people in finance are on LinkedIn relative to other industries, but this is indeed the game we must play. LinkedIn is still extremely important for modern recruiting, so it’s important to still have a professional and visible presence. Your potential reach is significantly wider if you make good use of LinkedIn and it will probably be your greatest source of leads as a non-target. Honestly, a lot of the stuff in this article is extremely intuitive, but it might be helpful if you’re an industry outsider, young student, or constantly struggle to grasp basic social norms. I would also say that these tips represent what I would view as “industry conventions” right now. Always Add a Note when Sending LinkedIn Requests This is the most important advice to give to a finance aspirant. You need to add a short note whenever you send requests to experienced people you want to network with. There’s virtually no point in sending one otherwise, especially if it’s a cold request. I get several LinkedIn requests per day from students and the only real information I can use to filter these requests is the quality of their message. As a student, you generally won’t have enough work experience to be outstanding, so you need to compete on the basis of your charm and personality (like a venture capitalist!) Similar to a cold e-mail, the note should be extremely concise and straightforward. Here are a couple of examples that I responded well to (and accepted) on LinkedIn: “Hey Matt, my name is [Name] and I'm currently a first year business student looking to break into the investment banking industry. Lately I've been watching a lot of your videos and have picked up extreme value from it. Hope I could reach out and connect with you.” “Hi Matt, I found you on YouTube, I really enjoy your content, I am making a career change right now, it's great to have a channel to watch that helps me learn more about the industry. I would like the opportunity to connect with you.” “Hi Matt, I’m a course student and your course helped me land a job in private equity! Wanted to add you to my network and say thanks a lot!” Just like for cold e-mails and the rest of normal human interactions, the more specific you can be with your comment, the better. Specificity communicates that you’ve done your research. If you’re reaching out to a banker for example, you could very casually mention any of the following items: Has their company announced a deal recently? Does their team have a job opening available that you are curious about? Has the company opened an office in a new location? Is there a cool industry trend (e.g. a conference or interesting company) that made it into the news recently? Here are a couple of successful requests I wrote recently: (to an employee at Teachable, the platform we use to run our courses): Hi [Name], I run Peak Frameworks - we're a private equity / investment banking Teachable school! Congrats on $50mm+ ARR. (to another YouTuber): I run Peak Frameworks on YouTube and thought I'd reach out and say hello! Your channel is really solid and a good inspiration for me. (to someone who left finance): Hey [name], I was looking around LinkedIn and I thought your background was interesting! It's refreshing to see an Ivey finance guy not accept the cookie cutter destiny. I’ve had the most success with short messages that touch upon any common ground that might distinguish you. I realize that I definitely have a soft spot for people who were on the same clubs as me or are from the same hometown / high school. Ask a Question If You Have an Easy, Specific One I’m neutral on whether you should include a question in your note or not. I don’t think including a question will meaningfully reduce your chances of getting an invite accepted, but it can come off as a bit pushy if you don’t do it tactfully. If you do include a question or request, make it simple or easy to answer over text. Sometimes you’ll ask an interesting question that strikes a chord with someone and they’ll be compelled to answer, which can get a nice conversation going. Do not ask anything that could potentially be sensitive. Don’t include multiple questions or an essay outlining your entire situation and dilemma. I would also not include anything that is probably outside of their domain. E.g. just because someone works at JPMorgan does not necessarily mean they’re going to know the intricacies of every group and every opening available. Also don’t be too pushy right away. E.g. don’t send a Calendly invite or ask for a specific time at the outset as it can appear very forceful. Have a Relatively Minimalist Approach to Descriptions I’m not 100% sure why people in finance like being so minimalist, but it’s pretty deep-rooted in corporate finance culture. From the bare bones nature of the Berkshire Hathaway website to 90% of hedge fund websites, you’ll quickly realize that people in finance don’t like to disclose things if they don’t have to. A lot of hedge funds have disclosure requirements that can prevent you from publicizing anything that could be considered company information. It’s almost a meme at this point, but it’s not uncommon to see an investment professional’s title as “Analyst at Hedge Fund”, completely removing any sense of personality or identity. As a result, I think most finance people will use one of the following approaches to LinkedIn descriptions: No job description A very basic description that is under 10 words (e.g. “Technology private equity”, “Distressed debt restructuring”, “Consumer long / short equity at $5b fund”) A short list of key transactions or portfolio companies I think it can be appropriate to include a longer description or a company website if your work experience is unique or unintuitive. If you work at a tech startup or a small fund, it can be helpful to give a reader slightly more context. Here is what I use to describe my old work experiences. I was on the private equity team at Silver Lake, but I still just described myself as a "Summer Analyst" in conjunction with my actual job title. Relatedly, I think most people in junior to mid-level finance roles should not have biographies or should have very, very short ones. Biographies are useful if you have a non-standard path or something that is bit harder to explain, but otherwise may come off as a bit showy and unnecessary. Consider Sticking to Minimalist Titles Aside from VC, I think people in finance also tend to have relatively minimalist titles. I see very few “combo titles”, where people stack all of their different experiences (e.g. “Investment Banking Associate | Thought Leader | Karate Enthusiast”). This is not an opportunity for you to be creative. Just stick with the normal title that most of your peers are using. I would say that it can be helpful to include your specific job function. E.g. although it is a bit more flashy, it can be instructive to have your title as “Investment Banking Summer Analyst” vs. “Summer Analyst” because it will convey your job function. This can also help you appear in more searches. Including the specific function you are doing in your title will also remove any ambiguity about what role you actually have. For example, I see a lot of business development and investor relations people at private equity firms put “Associate” (which is totally fine), but I do think it’s worthwhile to brand yourself as a “Private Equity Associate” to communicate that you are on the investment team. Include Your E-mail in Your Profile If you're actively recruiting, I would recommend that you include your e-mail somewhere in your profile. Lots of headhunters like to lurk on LinkedIn and many will prefer to reach out via e-mail. Consider Reducing Visibility on Social Media when Recruiting I’m relatively neutral on this, but a lot of my peers made their Instagram and Facebook profiles private when recruiting started to ramp up. Employers will check social media to make sure that you’re a reasonable and normal person. Even if you have a relatively innocent or harmless social life, you might stand to benefit from extra privacy. I definitely know people who were passed over for a first-round interview because of a controversial or bizarre online profile. Have a Reasonably Clear Photo Your photo does not have to be great. It just has to be not awful. You generally want something where you’re taking up 50%+ of the photo, the photo has reasonable lighting, and you’re wearing business attire. Don’t overthink this, but try not to have a bad photo. Conclusion These are the absolute basics. I just want to stress again that LinkedIn in finance is really not the domain to express your burning creativity. Most people excel by sticking to the conventions and finance is an industry where most people are very quick to cast judgement.

If you're interested in breaking into finance, check out our Private Equity Course and Investment Banking Course, which help thousands of candidates land top jobs every year. Overview “Walk me through your resume” is by far the most common interview question you will get. Regardless of whether you are interviewing for investment banking, consulting, private equity, or product management, there is a 100% chance that you will get asked this. It’s pretty much the default starting point for all interviews and there’s very little reason for an interviewer to not begin with this question. As such, you need to make sure you have a well-crafted, authentic-sounding answer that appropriately sets the stage for the rest of your interview. You want to make sure that you hit on all of your key accomplishments and accolades without the answer being too wordy or rehearsed. Having been through multiple on-cycle recruiting processes and having helped hire a number of folks, I understand what differentiates a good and bad response to “walk me through your resume”. Remember that most finance firms are looking for intelligent, well-spoken, hard-working individuals, so a good answer to this question will help communicate that you have all those factors. Also note that this question is sometimes asked as “tell me about yourself” and your answer will be the same. You should also check out our Resume and Cover Letter Course if you're interested in perfecting your resume for finance interviews. A Good Answer to "Walk Me Through Your Resume" 1 Minute to 1.5 Minutes in Length This is more than enough time to cover your background and relevant job experiences. Think about what you included on your resume and talk through the main aspects of the two or three most important roles. If you’re a career switcher or have had many jobs, then you’ll have to pick and choose what to touch upon. Depending how interesting or strange your story is, an answer could potentially go up to 2 minutes. But any longer and you run the high risk of over-emphasizing experiences the interviewer doesn’t really want to talk about. As I recommend for all qualitative questions, give slightly less information and let the interviewer ask follow up questions. On the other hand, if you’re a freshman with very little experience, you’ll still want to try and fill up to 1 to 1.5 minutes. You can go into slightly more detail about your different projects and club experiences. You can talk a little bit more about your personality traits, your ambitions, and why you think the firm is a good fit for you. Highlight Experiences Relevant to the Role Think about what’s most relevant to the job you’re applying for and what information best conveys that you’ll be a good candidate for the role. Try to name a few specific projects or companies you worked with that will highlight that you have directly relevant knowledge. Think about what neatly fits in a concise narrative. You don’t need to mention small, short-term projects that didn’t directly influence your career arc. For example, if you’re already at the MBA level, it’s unlikely you need to mention your college internships. It can also be confusing if you mention 4 or 5 different roles to your interviewer because they definitely won’t remember everything you mention. Explain Your Initial “Spark” and Why You’re Applying to this Job A lot of great answers to this question will discuss how they initially got interested in finance in the first place. This is often referred to as the “spark”, or the experience that triggered your interest. Employers want to know that you have a valid interest in this career and a history of demonstrating that. It’s OK if this is somewhat manufactured, as long as it’s still believable. The “spark” can be a pretty broad array of things… a notable internship, a mentor, a course you took in school, a side project, a book you read. The more tangible the better. If you're a university student who doesn't have a good "spark" yet, then there are a couple of things you should do. Speak in Clear Sentences with A Normal Amount of Eye Contact You don’t need to be extremely charismatic to do well in finance (though it can help). But you do need to be able to speak in clear, coherent sentences. This means not too many pauses, not too many “umm”s, and no muttering. You should be able to speak into a diction device (like Google translate) and have it pick up what are you saying. What is a normal amount of eye contact? The 50/70 rule is that you should maintain eye contact for 50% of the time while speaking and 70% while listening. Every five seconds or so, look slightly away so they know you’re a normal person. Don’t look directly into their pupils. I don’t want to belabor this point too much, but it’s good to be mindful of if you spent most of your childhood playing video games like I did. If you’re still confused or have trouble understanding basic social cues, try recording yourself in a mock interview and watching it back a few times. This helps you pick up your own weird mannerisms and potentially appear more normal. Connect Points to the Job You are Applying For You should also try to connect your own life experiences to the job you’re applying for and flatter the firm when possible. Applying to a tech PE firm? Mention your internship at a start up or the fact that you hold a lot of SaaS businesses in your PA. Applying for a search fund? Casually mention that you took an entrepreneurial finance course or read the Stanford search fund primer. I also like to start answering “Why this firm?” for the last few sentences of my answer. They are probably going to ask you that question next anyways, so it helps also steer the flow of the conversation. Try to summarize your experiences in a few lines and then say how you think it’ll make you a good fit at the firm. E.g. “My university internship at Framework Capital really introduced me the value of hands-on investment management, which is why I’ve been focused on landing an activist investing role and why I truly believe in the investment approach of your firm.” E.g. “I’ve always been interested in the healthcare space, which I think is evident through my minor in biochemistry and my time in the healthcare group in the student investment club. It’s for those reasons that I think I’d be a great fit on the healthcare services team at your firm.” Answer Structure Your answer should be structured somewhat similarly to the below. You have some flexibility, but you still want to be covering all of the content below. It’s generally best to move reverse chronologically. 1. A one or two-sentence introduction of your biography (10 seconds). Your name. Your school and degree. If you’ve graduated, include your current or most recent job. I like to mention where your hometown is in the event that your interviewer has some connection or understanding of it. 2. (20 seconds) Explain your initial “spark”. Discuss how you initially got interested in finance or the role that you’re interviewing for. 3. (30-45 seconds) Discuss your most relevant experiences. Pick the two or three most relevant work and extra-curricular experiences you have and describe them. Talk about the main projects or responsibilities you did at each role and try to mention one salient point of how it makes you want to work at the firm you’re applying for. 4. (10 seconds) Summarize your experiences and communicate why you want to work at the firm. It’s a bit of a meme, but lots of people end their answer by saying “and that’s what brings me here today” (including me). You can also say “and that’s why I want to work at [Framework Capital]” or something else to that effect. Example Answers to "Walk Me Through Your Resume" Here are a couple of sample answers that you can repurpose and steal from: 1. My “Walk Me Through Your Resume”, which I used for buyside interviews in university: Q: Thanks for joining us today, Matt. Why don’t we begin by having you walk us through your resume? A: Thanks for having me here and I’d be happy to. So, my name is Matt Ting and I grew up in Toronto, Canada. I’m a junior-year student at the Ivey Business School, where I study business administration. I decided to attend Ivey because I was drawn to its case-based style of teaching and its exposure to finance roles. At school, I spend a lot of my extra-curricular time as an investment analyst for the Western Investment Club. In this club, we apply a fundamental investing philosophy and valuation approach to invest in North American public equities. We invest out of a $200k fund and one of my investments has been Ambarella, a fabless video semiconductor company. I have a strong interest for technology and investing, which I was fortunate to build on last summer at Auxo Management, which is a Canadian search fund. At Auxo, we invested and managed a remote surveillance company that helps businesses efficiently monitor and protect their physical assets. During my internship, I helped improve the inventory management system and assisted the corporate finance team with the cash flow modeling of the business. From these experiences, I’ve continued to build my finance acumen and am now extremely interested in working in technology private equity. My exposure to fast growing technology businesses and private equity is why I am interested in interning at Silver Lake Partners and why I’m here today. 2. A sample “Walk Me Through Your Resume” that a university senior might have when recruiting for full-time investment banking positions: Q: Will, thanks for joining us today. I see you’re interested in a full-time investment banking position in our New York office, could you maybe begin by telling me about yourself? A: Absolutely. My name is Will Du and I’m a rising senior studying at Berkeley, where I double major in engineering and business in the MET program. I’m a born and raised Californian and have had a long interest in both capital markets and technology, dating back to a high school program where I got to sit in on a venture capital accelerator. I’ve found my double major to be a great way to blend my interests and I’m now confident that I want to pursue investment banking upon graduation. I spent this past summer working as a finance and strategy intern at Salesforce and I helped support corporate development initiatives. I was exposed to the acquisition engine of Salesforce, which had already been working on its takeover of Slack. Specifically, I helped the acquisition team track public trading multiples of Slack’s peers in support of the company’s valuation. It was this exposure to the M&A engine that really piqued my interest in investment banking. Outside of my work, I’ve spent a lot of my time tinkering and programming other projects. I built an e-commerce plugin for the Shopify app store, which helps Asian business owners translate their stores and configure it properly for North American customers. I’m extremely interested in working in investment banking full time. My deal exposure at Salesforce and my entrepreneurial endeavors outside of work lead me to believe that a fast-paced environment like banking is the best place for me to grow.