Bain & Company Hi folks who’ve exited to PE ops, could you share your experience? How did you structure your search process/get the interviews (besides recruiter reaching out to you), what was the interview process and content, how did you prep for it? How did you know you’d like the work/wanted this path as opposed to other types of exit opps? What’s your day-to-day like once you’re on the job? Boston Consulting Group McKinsey & Company Bain & Company
I like it
Yes could you talk more about how you narrowed down the specific spaces (fund size, industry focus, etc.) within PE that you wanted to focus on? How did get interviews? I’m in the very initial stage and just trying to get some interviews at this point. There’s the classic “just look up people on LinkedIn and network”, but I also want to get some specific advice, tactics, resources, or data points from people who’ve actually gone through the process and gotten an offer.
I made the move from MBB to PE ops and am pleased with it. For me there were a few major considerations when thinking about what fund to join:
1) Is Ops ‘core’ to the fund, i.e. are we equals with the deal team in terms of creating value, comped well etc
2) How much day to day interaction with portcos will I get and how much leeway
3) Culture of the firm and WL balance. Ops is generally better than deal side, but it will vary firm to firm
So re your first questions:
- I went through a recruiter(s), but you can work out how important ops is through the firm and ideally meeting people on deal side as well as the ops side. Basically I didn’t want to feel like a back office / 2nd class citizen
- Re assessing culture, agreed on recruiters spewing generic gibberish. I would use the recruiters to gauge at a high level, but once at interview I would ask about culture through concrete examples etc. It’s also just something you’ll learn through multiple processes / gauging people you meet
- For example, in (my opinion here), London, a large-cap fund (BX, TPG etc) is going to be more Asshole-heavy, as is anywhere that is full of people from the large American banks
As others have said, actual details will help. There is variation
What industry, what types of funds are you looking at?
I’m in the very initial stage haha, so I haven’t really narrowed down my search criteria. Also, I think I want to be open to various stages and fund sizes, just so I have more opportunities to go after and can learn about different opportunities before deciding on a narrower space to focus on (and also cuz I don’t know if my profile is competitive enough to afford to be super selective). Tbh I wasn’t even thinking about PE ops until about a week ago, so I’m in the very beginning stage. That’s why I’m asking how did you go about reaching out to people/learning about the difference spaces within PE. Thanks!