Status of PE Recruiting
On-cycle kicked off Monday and it’s been an absolute shit show. Around 10-15 firms went and were not even recruiting with the purpose to fill up their entire class (except for maybe 1-2, but unlikely). Many firms stopped due to extreme lack of preparedness (wtf you expect in June) and lower amounts of candidates available to interview, since many were probably out of the country.
I wanted to write this post to touch on rumors I’ve been hearing from HHs the last couple of weeks, as well as testimonies from friends and classmates regarding what off-cycle is going to look like and what occurred these past 72 hours. I also was very fortunate to receive an offer throughout this dumb fucking process, so I’d like to share some things I learned through the interviews.
On-cycle:
- HHs began reaching out in the first couple of weeks of May. Immediately turned my attention to prepping lightly.
-Towards beginning of June I prepped heavily each day and by the second week, I had been receiving emails to coffee chat w a handful of firms for the following week (last week). By the sounds of it, it seemed like on-cycle was beginning to happen
-HHs at the end of last week began saying that they think firms are gonna move in the next couple of weeks with there being a chance that they move this week, which ended up happening
-Many HHs claimed that regardless if On-Cycle starts this week, the majority of their clients are not going to start until late July
-5pm EST my phone began blowing up with texts from friends, interview invites, and HH emails.
-Began interviewing and made it to 3 rounds of first process and got cut after interviewing with a VP. Answers wernt as crisp and was grilled on more tech focused industry trends and deal trends
-Took another interview which ended up being the firm I signed with. Did a couple rounds, then did 4-5 rounds the following day and signed on the spot.
-VERY IMPORTANT: Most if not all firms did not fill up their class sizes this cycle. I was in HR zoom lobbies with considerably fewer people than I was expecting. Heard that Apollo for example paused their process after delivering some offers bc of lack of prep.
By Tuesday night/Wednesday HHs we’re reaching out seeing who signed an offer and who didn’t, saying that a lot of their clients are planning to go later in the summer.
So what’s next?
Well, we’ve officially began “off-cycle” but I don’t think this term means anything anymore. There couldn’t have been more than 5% of total jobs taken off the market during this wave. Roughly only 10-15 firms went, not filling up their entire class sizes, with a large majority of the market waiting. There are some MFs that didn’t go and so many UMMs that are waiting as well. As per exact timing, I’m not sure when the second wave will begin, but I do know some firms are keeping their ear to ground and opportunistically interviewing candidates to see if they can steal some good talent. A lot of the firms that recruited this cycle will hit the market again either later this summer or potentially even start of 2025. Prep as much as you possibly can and don’t be thrown off again. If you bombed an interview, that’s fine, tell the HH you will recruit off-cycle and rengage later. DO NOT SCREW YOURSELF BY TAKING INTERVIEWS YOU ARE NOWHERE CLOSE TO BEING PREPPED FOR. The amount of texts I received from people who studied for maybe 5 hours and got an H&F/Apollo invite, and absolutely humiliated themselves was absurd. Just bc they want you know doesn’t mean they won’t want you later.
Lastly, figured id share some things I did in the last 6 weeks to get prepped:
- technical question preparedness: went over all the guides, made sure my LBO and accounting questions were sound, and then studied industry specific metrics. This was the groundwork for everything else
- Firm Research/Company Pitches: using the above info, I put a lot of work into researching the firms I wanted to interview at and developed opinions on their specific strategy and their differentiation as well as what they’ve succeeded in. This led to finding LBO candidates to pitch
- Behavioral/deal walkthrough: PF does a great job prepping for this so refer there.
-model test: hardest part to prepare. Most the models this wave all had templates with some room to have to make from scratch. I would recommend BOTH PF and WSO for this portion, bc the models themselves actually seemed more tailored to WSOs materials, but I think PF does a great job teaching and has some good modeling tests to go through. Also prep your assumptions and find ways that make sense to make this
-philosophical questions: when you get past the technical portions, you’ll be speaking w senior folks who will ask things like “what does success mean to you, where do you see yourself in 5 years, what does teamwork mean to you” things like that
Best of luck everyone, and don’t panic. I think 95% of jobs are still out there and will hit the market in a few weeks. Prep tf out and get you a god damn offer
Bump
Congrats on securing an offer! The first years at my firm haven't started training yet and don't even have valid work emails...how were HHs reaching out to people in May...
I had my personal email on my LinkedIn and they reached out there. They also reached out to my school email bc they had a couple events in the spring
95% of jobs are still out there, but majority of MF PE seats are filled. There will be a small handful of MF PE seats that go off-cycle, but those will be quite difficult with literally everyone in investment banking / MBB gunning for them.
Crazy how this whole process moved - kids who went to Europe for a week now will never be able to work in KKR/APO/BX corporate PE (at least in 2026) because all their spots were taken in 24h.
That could be true. I just know HHs “claim” that “most of our clients are only filling 50% of their headcount”. To the degree this is actually true, I’m unsure, but a few did not go this cycle, like Vista, SLP, TB, BX, (Warburg?),and I did hear of Apollo pausing
This does not feel true at all – would not be surprised at all if the final numbers are something like 10-15 firms giving out less than 100 offers, meaning that there would have to still be at least a decent amount of MF PE availability.
All HH meetings I had prior to on-cycle (in which I always told them I was going to sit it out) seemed to follow the same trend of "on-cycle will happen, it'll mostly be quiet afterwards, then activity will pick up significantly in Dec/Jan." Based on convos I've had this week (usually when they call me to ask if I'm doing on-cycle and I reiterate I'm not), it sounds like the super-early start date means that there will be more activity over next few months than predicted.
My read on it is a bunch of firms that thought they were going to do "on-cycle" weren't down to do it quite so early, so the flurry of activity will be spread out over a few weeks to a month instead of being concentrated all at once. But for the firms that were committed to leaving some or all seats for off-cycle, their plans don't change as much – on-cycle happening mid-June instead of mid-July doesn't make a ton of difference if you're already planning to wait until December or whatever.
Only other anecdotal evidence I can add is that, of the two MFs that reached out to me directly to ask about on-cycle participation, one said they were leaving seats for off-cycle and would reach back out later in the fall, and the other confirmed they weren't filling their class but didn't give a timeline for future processes.
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