In Part I of this series, I explained how I went from degrees in Law and Economics into a Private Equity internship in a large family office, followed by a full-time Consultant role in an elite boutique in France. What follows is an overview of a period of c.18 months where I made pretty much all the mistakes in the book while trying to break into private equity and even hit a severe standstill in my search process.

After my Private Equity internship, I had indeed joined a highly regarded consulting boutique in Paris and thought the path to getting a PE role would be a relatively standard one.  However, this perfect roadmap started unravelling pretty quickly: through a combination of cultural misalignment at my firm and even more so, for some personal reasons, I left my job right after passing the probation period, at the six-month mark in order to pursue opportunities in NYC. I had personal ties in the US and had also started receiving multiple interview invitations for Strategy or Corporate Development roles in Consulting firms and F500 companies. It looked like a good way to reconcile my professional ambitions with my personal life – besides, the interviews in NYC were plenty and I felt somewhat confident that I could get a new role soon. After roughly four or five months, I indeed ended up getting a Senior Analyst role in the M&A and Corporate Development function of one the largest insurance firms in the US. They were highly acquisitive and were actually finalising one of the largest insurance mergers in recent history at the time I was interviewing, only waiting for regulatory approval. I returned to Europe and started working on some freelancing and other personal projects, while waiting for the visa process to start, and…the US offer was rescinded because the employer could no longer sponsor a visa. This is where things became really interesting (or difficult, depending on how you want to call it). I was back in Europe, after roughly six months of interviewing in the US – a significant resume gap that was quite difficult to explain without delving into story times that nobody wanted to hear during an interview. What followed for six months after my return, was a truly infernal cycle: getting interviews, having to explain the gap and then losing out the role – wash, rinse and repeat. In the middle of this mess, I somehow managed to get an interview with a US large cap PE firm for an internship in London, potentially conducive to a full-time role. Wonderfully enough, my story up to that point did not seem to hold them back and I progressed through the different rounds up to the final one – where my case study model was apparently good, but could not compare to the one from the candidate with one year of M&A experience from Goldman Sachs. This was to be the last real opportunity to make it into the industry I would have for a long time. This coincided with the end of the year and when the new year started, I not only had a non-traditional background and a CV gap. Both topics had become the biggest part of all the interviews I was managing to get – barely ever allowing me a chance to get to anything technical. I was not even sure why I was being called to interviews at that point and I think my defeatist attitude did show more than I wanted. Something I wish I had been able to be more aware of, is that getting an interview call signifies that the recruiting team does perceive potential, no matter how small. Depending on how messy your story is, the bar does get indeed higher to convince the recruiters that you are a good choice by telling your story in a cogent, non-defensive manner – regardless, being called into the interview room does mean you have a chance as a candidate. As a tentative fix, I would practice telling my story to my friends (a few consultants and mostly people working in Law or Economic Research and who did not really have a good view on how to explain my story properly in the context I needed it). I obviously knew my own story, but did a fairly poor job at selling myself – as I was personally convinced that I did not have much of a selling point anymore. This is where I think, once again, there would have been tremendous value in having access to objective experts’ advice on how to best present my experience. PE firms have indeed access to so many strong and standard profiles (top academics, top experience) and I was overly aware of what it meant in terms of my limitations, but had no clue on how to leverage my differences as a selling point.  After several months of this, the interviews became harder and harder to come by. I had no luck with head-hunters either: I found that convincing top PE recruiters to give me that first encounter was a major obstacle and direct outreach yielded no results at all.

I realised that the transition would be even more complicated than I expected. I was progressing through the rounds for a Consultant role with two MBBs back in Paris, but had already landed an offer with a lesser known boutique in London. I had worked with them as a freelancer during my dry spell and knew for a fact they were doing strong work and were a good bunch of people to work with. I had also become really risk averse by that point and ended up just taking that offer and moving to London. The London consulting boutique basically covered Strategy and CDD work with large clients, comparable to the work done by some of the larger firms (including my previous firm), minus the brand name. Still thinking about making the PE transition later, my strategy became to leverage the training I had received in my previous firm to position myself for the most analytical projects possible in my new firm, in the hope this could help me build a sellable project experience. I would do anything quantitative, CDD-related, anything that allowed me to take the lead on analysis and building models. Given the small size of the firm, the exposure was quite large and I could also present to clients. Once in a while, I would still try my luck with random PE Analysts or Associates openings online. I would also multiply attempts at reaching out to industry professionals just to gain clarity on where I stood – with limited industry contacts, having a bit of direction was what I cruelly needed the most at that point. The few people who would reply to me on LinkedIn would insist on the fact that the transition for me would probably be extremely challenging. Some suggested Business School – but after two masters, returning to school did not seem appealing at all to me and with no solid experience yet, I worried it would also appear as a giant red flag once I would try to recruit again. This period lasted roughly nine months, where I would try different strategies, switching things a bit on my cover letter, trying to make my resume more appealing, emphasising all the quantitative work I could. I would then cast my net and see how many fishes I was able to pull back from the muddy waters of PE recruiting. I somehow felt that the more I was able to own up to the differences of my background, the more confident I was becoming in my abilities and the closer I was getting to my goal – although, I was still not getting invitations…  

Around the 18-month mark at the London boutique consulting firm, and despite my inner intuition that the end was near, it seemed like I had hit a complete roadblock. I had practically no contact with PE head-hunters: very few would ever answer to my emails, those who would accept a phone call often told me they had no opportunities fitting my profile or they would recommend me for Corporate Strategy roles in which I had no interest at all. A couple of times, smaller head-hunting firms would put me forward for roles in lower mid-market firms where I would typically not pass the first selection. Small PE funds saw me as too much of a gamble, with no resources to train a Consultant with limited investing experience. I was not being recommended at all to larger places; firstly because I myself never dared expressing to head-hunters that larger funds could be of interest to me (I feared to be ridiculed) and secondly, my guess at the time was that even if I somehow managed to be recommended for an interview in a larger place, similarly to what had happened when I lost out the large cap internship to the Goldman Sachs’ M&A banker 18 months prior, I would not be able to make the cut in the face of all the seemingly much stronger profiles than mine.

With no other option, I thought that I did not have much to lose anyway and started reaching out directly to the HR offices of some of the PE houses I was interested in speaking to. I redacted targeted emails, highlighting specific deals and somehow this approach seemed to finally yield fast results. The tipping point of my recruiting process was when the New York Head of HR of a PE mega fund forwarded my resume to their London office and they got back in touch with me. I was actually shocked to get any type of interest from them, given that multiple smaller funds had ignored me. The London HR put me in touch with the head-hunter who was running their process later that year and asked them to include me in the loop (incidentally, this was a head-hunter I had reached out to barely a few weeks prior and who had explained they were not in a position to help me). Following exactly the same direct approach, another mid-cap firm in London showed interest in meeting me when their Associate process would kick in a few months later. It is not to say there were no hiccups still: I ended up not doing the process with the mega fund, for instance – somewhere in the back and forth with the head-hunter, I somehow ended up not being put forward. Then, with the mid-cap fund, I progressed through a few rounds and did not make it to the final one: to approach the case study, I had relied on some famous online training platforms, however, during the interview stage, it just felt that the material online were very academic and bore no similarity at all with the expectations from a real case study. The good thing with all this however, was that at that point I felt I started to understand how to turn the situation around. Two or three more HRs connected to indicate interest in having me interviewing later, despite not recruiting immediately. I think the biggest impact the direct approach to HRs had, was that it put me back in the loop with almost all the top recruiters in London – suddenly, I had become a candidate worthy of their attention and started getting phone calls, in-office meetings invitations… That part of the journey was also interesting because it reassured me that my background could still be somewhat appealing, including to prestigious funds, despite a somewhat checkered path. The most important learning here I think, for many “non-traditional” candidates or candidates with “professional accidents” on their resumes, is to persevere and stop self-eliminating. I have done it myself: disregarding some opportunities or not voicing enough my real ambitions. I can absolutely see how many qualified candidates likely self-censor from trying to reach their career goals because in their minds, they did not previously achieve the required perfect combination of school and experiences. Furthermore, I personally was self-limiting in other ways: although my true preference was always for mid or large cap funds (as I am interested in working on large and complex transactions), for over a year, I kept approaching mostly small and lower mid-cap PE funds as I did not really believe I had a chance with the larger firms. While it is true that some firms (regardless of size) are inherently too risk-averse to give a chance to an atypical candidate, it remains the case that other firms would still give consideration to an applicant with a compelling story as well as strong skills demonstrated during the interview. However, there can also be so much mystique around the Private Equity industry, the required standards  (varying with each firm, sometimes at odds with one another) and as a non-traditional candidate, having access to resources that help you better understand your strengths and how to decipher expectations could have made my journey easier.   Having learned from all this, I then embarked on a very disciplined six-month process that led me straight to the role I wanted. In Part 3, I will cover in more detail what precise preparations I made on a daily basis to land a role in a leading Tech fund in London as well as some of the final hurdles I had to navigate as a candidate.

When looking at the profile of PE Analysts or Associates in Europe, most tend to have similar characteristics: one or several M&A internships, maybe a PE internship on top of this and then 2 to 3 years in investment banking in a large bank. A minority of more “diverse” candidates would have hailed from MBB firms or elite boutiques as ex-Consultants and more recently, a few Accountants from Transaction teams in Big 4 also seem to be making the cut. In Continental Europe and in France especially, you also are very unlikely to have gotten there without a top undergraduate degree in a quantitative subject. In that sense, my background was extremely uncharacteristic for a PE Analyst, especially in a large and reputed fund. My undergrad was in Law from Oxbridge, I later got a Masters in Economics from an Ivy League. I did not go into IBD, I did not go into MBB. I worked as a Consultant, first in a well-regarded boutique firm in Paris, and then in a small, unknown to most PE firms, Consulting boutique in London. Let us not forget a gap period between the two consulting roles. I somehow still made it into a leading European Tech fund in London, joining their the mid-market team. Is that to say that as a “non-traditional” candidate, you have exactly the same chances as any of the sweet spot candidates to make it there? In all honesty, and having been in those shoes, no. The cold truth is that as a non-traditional candidate, you will have fewer cards to play in an incredible competitive field, meaning that whatever cards you indeed hold, need to be played to perfection. For me, it was a long, frustrating and difficult path and in all honesty, was probably bumpier than it would have been for an ex-Banker, an ex-MBB – or if I have had early access to selected and targeted high-quality information to guide me better through the pitfalls of the recruiting process in Europe.

I had initially entered my Masters’ in Economics with the intent of pursuing a PhD in Economics and maybe do research later for an Economic Think Tank or preferably for the World Bank or the IMF. I realised during my first semester that a 5-year PhD would probably not be the life for me. I enjoyed analysis but my Master’s thesis had inspired me to focus on areas that would also be a bit more action-orientated. A few weeks to the end of my programme, we had a few alumni coming over for a presentation. One of them had worked at the IFC – the Investment arm of the World Bank, where they were leveraging Private Equity strategies to finance transactions that changed communities especially in Healthcare and TMT. The alumni explained their background: undergrad in Finance, Masters in Economics, a few banking internships, a few years in M&A, a few years in a large cap PE fund as a Generalist before moving onto their Impact Investing Team and finally the IFC. There it was – what I wanted to do “when I was a grown up” (at 22-year-old, it was about time). This looked indeed exactly like the type of career I wanted, with enough analysis to keep my brain engaged and enough action to feel I was making a difference. The issue was, at that point, my background was only made of a few law internships, a research externship for a South Africa-based consultancy, and a stint in marketing and project management in the summer prior to moving to the USA. I first thought that having done research on Impact Investing would position me well for Analyst roles at the IFC. But apparently, they were more interested in meeting people with a full-time M&A stint, followed by Private Equity experience. I personally was not really sure how the whole M&A internship process worked – most of my class, a research-oriented Masters, did not care one bit for banking. They were all heading to Stanford, Harvard, LSE, Oxford, MIT to do pre-doctoral research. I did not dare asking the Director of my program either as I did not want to appear a sell-out and finally, I felt too embarrassed to ask people at the School of Management as I feared nobody would take me seriously. By all accounts anyways, by March, it was too late anywhere to apply for a role for that summer. I tried my luck for entry level full-time roles, with no more luck as all required that critical prior relevant internship experience.  

Upon returning to Paris in the summer, I started applying to various roles in finance, hoping to get an internship for September. I had no real idea how to get there as I had not developed the right network for this type of roles back at University. I think at that time that I really would have welcomed accessing BIPE (Break Into PE) which would have catered to my interest but lack of exposure to this specific arena. My only prep material was my set of notes from the Valuation and Financial Accounting Class I had taken in semester 2 of my masters as one of my electives. I got lucky to obtain a Leveraged Finance interview with a fairly large asset manager in Paris. I was very excited because I had read on some internet forums that Leveraged Finance offers some good exit opportunities in Private Equity. My preparation was clumsy to say the least: I was still trying to figure out the subtle differences between various areas of finance and explaining convincingly my motivations was a bit tortuous. On the technical front, I had limited understanding of how much depth was expected. I reviewed again my accounting notes from University the day before and I went to the interview… While I could credibly answer questions on Enterprise Value, Equity Value or debt types,  when it came to more practical things, I did struggle a lot.   

I believe that having a place like BIPE would have been a powerful starting point to my interview plan and would have helped me concretise some of those early opportunities by getting a better sense of the preparation resources available. What I really needed when I started, was not the overload of (often unverified) material I faced: I would have needed a platform that centralises vetted information on all you need to expect for Private Equity recruiting in Europe. I would have also welcomed the opportunity to get direct advice from experienced industry professionals with exposure to the European scene. Instead, I spent an inordinate amount of time on various online forums presenting information of inequal (and sometimes questionable) quality or even veracity, spending hours combing through message boards for advice. I often took unsubstantiated guidance from posters that could write convincingly but, as it later turned out, did not seem to know much about what they were saying. A good recommendation that came up from those hours online, was to get a copy of Pearl & Rosenbaum’s “Investment Banking” book: the book was indeed very complete and seemed accessible to a Liberal Arts graduate with not much finance exposure and was the first game-changer in my preparation. I then spent ten days going through the book every day, and combed every single part, sometimes referring to online boards when I was in doubt with some concepts. I would dedicate roughly 2 hours looking for job opportunities everywhere in the world and refining my cover letters, tweaking slightly my resume for different roles then 3 hours going through the P&R’s book, 1 or 2 hours on forums to learn about the industry. Later in the summer, I got two interesting interviews via online applications: one in the M&A team of a Big 4 and one for a PE Analyst role in a large family office. Both were in Paris, both were internships. This time I was ready, I had done my homework – I knew the type of questions they would ask, I knew how to answer. I ended getting both opportunities and had to pick one. The Big 4 opportunity could potentially lead to a full-time role. The PE Analyst role did not. But it was in PE… also, the online forums kept on hammering how Big 4 (including Transaction teams) were the worst choice if one ever wanted to break into PE full time (as it would turn out, this was one of these pieces of disinformation I wish I had not listened to and for which I  wish to have had access to a more credible platform for expert advice).

The PE internship went beyond my expectations. The team I worked with was lean and I got to participate in everything: I read incoming CIMs, would form an opinion and prepare notes. I helped with research, attended meetings with Consulting firms, worked on operating models and towards the end of the internship I was left to update a few small LBOs. This convinced me that PE was absolutely what I want to do. At this point, although I knew I would have to search for a job right after, I did not care – seeing for myself what PE is really about seemed worth the risk. Two months before the end of the internship, my Mentor took me for lunch and asked about my plan after the internship. I said I wanted to continue in PE, ideally in London. We talked about the different ways to get there, with Investment Banking and Strategy Consulting being the two main avenues to junior investment professional roles. Given how much I enjoyed reading the CDD reports from our consulting advisors, it looked to me that it made more sense to focus on Consulting interviews (I would later find out this also was a mistake – my answer should have been to be open to both). Ultimately, I joined an elite boutique in Paris.

There I was, the road was finally laid down for me: I would be doing my two or three years in Consulting, in one of those firms the online forums said had some decent exit opportunities in PE and then move back to Private Equity full-time. Everything would be easy flowing and a well-chartered road towards my dream career from then on.

Well, actually…no. In Part 2 of the series, I will tell you about everything that went wrong in the next three years of my career and how a set of unfortunate decisions almost entirely derailed my plans, taking my background from “non-traditional” to “frankly weird”.