My Path to a leading Tech PE fund as a non-traditional candidate (Part 2)
In Part I of this series, I explained how I transitioned from degrees in Law and Economics into a Private Equity internship at a large family office, followed by a full-time Consultant role at an elite boutique in France. What follows is an overview of a period of approximately 18 months where I made nearly every mistake possible while trying to break into private equity, hitting a severe standstill in my search process.
After my Private Equity internship, I joined a highly regarded consulting boutique in Paris, believing the path to a PE role would be straightforward. However, this perfect roadmap unraveled quickly. Due to cultural misalignment at my firm and some personal reasons, I left my job right after passing the probation period at the six-month mark to pursue opportunities in NYC.
I had personal ties in the US and started receiving multiple interview invitations for Strategy or Corporate Development roles in consulting firms and Fortune 500 companies. It seemed like a good way to reconcile my professional ambitions with my personal life. The interviews in NYC were plentiful, and I felt confident I could secure a new role soon. After roughly four or five months, I landed a Senior Analyst role in the M&A and Corporate Development function of one of the largest insurance firms in the US.
The firm was highly acquisitive and was finalizing one of the largest insurance mergers in recent history at the time I was interviewing, only waiting for regulatory approval. I returned to Europe to work on some freelancing and personal projects while waiting for the visa process to start. Unfortunately, the US offer was rescinded because the employer could no longer sponsor a visa.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 difficult to explain without delving into stories that nobody wanted to hear during an interview. For the next six months, I experienced a truly infernal cycle: getting interviews, having to explain the gap, and then losing out on the role—wash, rinse, and repeat.
In the middle of this mess, I managed to get an interview with a US large-cap PE firm for an internship in London, potentially leading to a full-time role. Remarkably, my story up to that point did not seem to hold them back, and I progressed through the rounds up to the final one. However, my case study model, though good, could not compare to the one from a candidate with one year of M&A experience from Goldman Sachs. This was my last real opportunity to make it into the industry for a long time.
When the new year started, I had a non-traditional background and a CV gap. Both topics dominated all the interviews I managed to get, barely allowing me a chance to get to anything technical. I wasn't even sure why I was being called to interviews at that point, and my defeatist attitude showed more than I wanted. Something I wish I had been more aware of is that getting an interview call signifies that the recruiting team perceives potential, no matter how small.
Depending on how messy your story is, the bar is 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 means you have a chance as a candidate. As a tentative fix, I practiced telling my story to my friends (a few consultants and mostly people working in Law or Economic Research, who did not have a good view on how to explain my story properly in the context I needed it).
I knew my own story but did a poor job of selling myself, as I was convinced I did not have much of a selling point anymore. This is where I believe there would have been tremendous value in having access to objective experts' advice on how to best present my experience. PE firms have access to many strong and standard profiles (top academics, top experience), and I was overly aware of my limitations but had no clue how to leverage my differences as a selling point.
After several months of this, the interviews became harder to come by. I had no luck with head-hunters either. Convincing top PE recruiters to give me that first encounter was a major obstacle, and direct outreach yielded no results at all.
I realized the transition would be more complicated than I expected. I progressed 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 they were doing strong work and were good people to work with. By that point, I had become really risk-averse and ended up taking that offer and moving to London.
The London consulting boutique covered Strategy and CDD work with large clients, comparable to the work done by some 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 received in my previous firm to position myself for the most analytical projects possible in my new firm, hoping 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 Analyst or Associate 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 needed the most at that point. The few people who replied to me on LinkedIn insisted that the transition would probably be extremely challenging for me. Some suggested Business School, but after two masters, returning to school did not seem appealing at all, and with no solid experience yet, I worried it would also appear as a giant red flag once I tried to recruit again.
This period lasted roughly nine months, where I tried different strategies, tweaking my cover letter, trying to make my resume more appealing, and emphasizing all the quantitative work I could. I cast my net and saw how many fish I could pull back from the muddy waters of PE recruiting. The more I owned up to the differences in my background, the more confident I became in my abilities and the closer I felt to my goal—although I was still not getting invitations.
Around the 18-month mark at the London boutique consulting firm, 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. Few would ever answer my emails; those who accepted a phone call often told me they had no opportunities fitting my profile or recommended me for Corporate Strategy roles, which I had no interest in.
Smaller head-hunting firms occasionally put me forward for roles in lower mid-market firms where I typically did 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 never dared to express to head-hunters that larger funds could interest me (I feared ridicule), and secondly, I guessed that even if I managed to get recommended for an interview in a larger place, similarly to what happened when I lost out on the large cap internship to the Goldman Sachs’ M&A banker 18 months prior, I would not make the cut against seemingly much stronger profiles.
With no other options, I thought I had nothing to lose and started reaching out directly to the HR offices of some of the PE houses I was interested in. I wrote targeted emails, highlighting specific deals, and this approach finally seemed to yield 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 shocked to get any interest from them, given that multiple smaller funds had ignored me. The London HR put me in touch with the head-hunter 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 a few weeks prior who had explained they were not in a position to help me.
Following 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. Despite some hiccups, such as not doing the process with the mega fund and not making it to the final round with the mid-cap fund, I felt I started to understand how to turn the situation around.
Two or three more HRs indicated interest in having me interview later, despite not recruiting immediately. The biggest impact of the direct approach to HRs was that it put me back in the loop with almost all the top recruiters in London. Suddenly, I became a candidate worthy of their attention and started getting phone calls and in-office meeting invitations. This part of the journey reassured me that my background could still be appealing to prestigious funds, despite a somewhat checkered path.
The most important lesson for many "non-traditional" candidates or those with "professional accidents" on their resumes is to persevere and stop self-eliminating. I had done it myself, disregarding some opportunities or not voicing my real ambitions. Many qualified candidates likely self-censor from trying to reach their career goals because they did not achieve the perfect combination of school and experiences. While it is true that some firms are too risk-averse to give a chance to an atypical candidate, other firms will still consider an applicant with a compelling story and strong skills demonstrated during the interview.
Having learned from all this, I embarked on a disciplined six-month process that led me to the role I wanted. In Part III, I will cover in more detail the precise preparations I made on a daily basis to land a role in a leading Tech fund in London and some of the final hurdles I had to navigate as a candidate.