Breaking down all the recruiting drama rocking the PE industry

Business Insider

19 hours ago

A prestigious corner of Wall Street is having a bit of an identity crisis.
The private-equity industry is on the cusp of some massive changes to how it recruits young talent. Big-name firms are putting their foot down about the early recruitment of junior bankers, leaving young Wall Streeters scrambling.
There's a lot to unpack here, so let's dive in:
On-cycle recruiting? Offers for jobs that are two years away? What is going on in private-equity land?
Some big-name firms are trying to stop incoming investment-banking analysts from interviewing and accepting future-dated private-equity jobs. JPMorgan formally warned incoming analysts last week that they would be fired if they accept​​ed a PE job offer. PE giant Apollo followed up by informing junior bankers it would hold off on recruiting associates for its 2027 class this year.
Then, as BI's Reed Alexander and Emmalyse Brownstein were the first to report, General Atlantic told young bankers that those job offers they had been prepping for won't materialize this year.
Wait, these are for jobs two years from now? How does that even work?
OK, this is very dumb, but try to stick with me.
Private-equity firms hire entry-level talent almost exclusively from investment banks, which train them in dealmaking skills through analyst programs that last two to three years. The trick is that they don't want to wait too long to recruit for fear of missing out on the best talent. That's led to the process, known as on-cycle recruiting, creeping earlier and earlier. Some junior bankers started lining up these PE gigs before even starting their jobs at the banks.
And the banks are OK with that?
Not really. It's just one of those things you learn to live with, like the dent in your bumper.
In theory, the setup should be mutually beneficial. Banks get first crack at undergrad talent and send their alums to firms they hope will turn around and give them business. PE firms get to outsource dealmaking training to banks.
So, how did it all go wrong?
PE recruiters flew a bit too close to the sun and annoyed the banks enough to get them to react. Over the past three years, the process has crept up from late August in 2022, to late July in 2023, to late June in 2024. This year, there was talk of informal coffee chats starting before some students had even graduated. It's also disruptive, as some juniors were skipping training sessions at work to prep for the PE interviews.
But ultimately, the tipping point came down to one man.
Who?
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon hasn't hidden his annoyance with the practice. The bank's decision to formally threaten termination, as opposed to just discouraging junior bankers from doing it, was definitely a turning point.
So what does this all mean?
We still have to see how things play out. Pledges from a few firms, as big as they are, don't guarantee anything. But if they do hold, I think it could benefit PE firms by allowing them to draw from a much wider pool of talent. And since it's basically PE's world and we're all just living in it, that should benefit the rest of us.
You don't sound entirely convinced …
I've seen this play before. Back in 2020, a bunch of PE headhunters made a pact to hold off on recruiting. (Back then, things didn't kick off until the fall.) It wasn't long before one of them broke the truce.
Lovely. Anything else? As always, I want to know your thoughts on this stuff. You can email me here. You can also ping Reed, Emmalyse, and Alex Nicoll, who are all following this closely for BI.
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