- Top private-equity recruiters told Business Insider during a recent webinar they are increasingly observing junior-level investment banking professionals opt out of entering the recruiting cycle.
- Traditionally, PE firms rush to compete with one another to court and scoop up exceptional investment banking analysts, sometimes after they’ve logged just a few weeks on their IB jobs.
- “What I see is first-year analysts coming in and realizing how ill-prepared they are,” said James Cherubim, head of talent acquisition at The Carlyle Group.
- Cherubim and other top recruiters from Apollo Global Management, Bain Capital, and Odyssey Search Partners spoke to Business Insider as part of our exclusive panel on landing a job in private-equity.
- You can watch our full panel here.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Investment bankers are investing in something new in order to benefit their careers: time.
Indeed, top recruiters in the world of private equity told Business Insider they are increasingly observing junior-level investment bankers delay entry into the frenzied arms race that is the recruiting cycle.
Traditionally, PE firms rush to scoop up the top investment banking analysts, sometimes courting them after they’ve only logged just a few weeks on their IB jobs. The goal? To lock them down for jobs some two years down the road.
But now, recruiting experts are signaling that they’re seeing evidence that the recruiting cycle could be losing a bit of its luster, as more and more junior investment bankers are opting out of it altogether to give themselves more time to get their feet wet in their IB roles and learn the ins and outs of what they do.
Candidates are “not necessarily better prepared for the technical assessment,” given that “on-cycle recruiting has moved earlier and earlier,” James Cherubim, the head of talent acquisition at The Carlyle Group, told Business Insider in a live webinar in early December focusing on landing a job in the competitive private-industry world.
Cherubim said in the last two to three years he’s seen more first-year analysts opt out of taking part in on-cycle recruiting.
“Some might have dipped their toe in but ultimately pulled out,” he added. “I wish more candidates would do this. Frankly, what I see is first-year analysts coming in and realizing how ill-prepared they are, having just been on the desk for one month in the case of last year, and getting discouraged by that.”
The result, Cherubim said, is that candidates settle for jobs they don’t particularly want, or might end up “putting aside their aspirations to move into private-equity altogether,” he said. “That is the worst outcome of it all.”
In addition to Carlyle’s Cherubim, recruiting experts from Apollo, Bain Capital and Odyssey Search Partners participated in the webinar, which can be viewed here.
PE recruiting has been pushed back in 2020
As Business Insider has previously reported, the private-equity recruiting cycle was pushed back this year in light of the uncertainty and confusion unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Rather than beginning in the fall of 2020, the cycle this year — which will be hiring for jobs not intended to begin until 2022 — will in fact kick off next year, in 2021, instead.
That’s according to a truce between the private-equity search firms and their clients, who have collectively elected to wait until some time in the first or second quarter of the year, sources told Business Insider. The exact start date remains unknown.
Matt Breitfelder, the global head of human capital at Apollo Global Management, agreed that he’s observed trends similar to what Cherubim described.
It’s a change he described as being healthy for the industry.
“We’re incredibly supportive of helping the talent take the time that they need to be get started in their role in banking, to practice the craft that they’re currently practicing in banking, to build those technical skills, and to think pretty deeply as they get to know the industry: Which of those firms is the right potential home for them?” Breitfelder said. “There’s no downside to that.”
Breitfelder also noted that he looked positively on the delay to the start of the 2020 recruiting cycle into next year.
“I think the search firms that, particularly this year, have advocated to wait deeper and deeper into next year — we think that’s very healthy,” he said. “We’re very supportive of that for all parties.”
Cherubim said that by giving themselves more time to increase their banking know-how and avoid feeling the pressure to participate in the recruiting cycle, junior-level investment bankers can ultimately become even better professionals in their respective part of the industry.
“I know in the time that they’d have in the first full year of banking and perhaps even the second,” he said, “they will have all the tools necessary to be successful, not only in our interview process, but also as an employee here at Carlyle.”
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