This post is part of a short series that covers the who / when / where / how of landing a private equity job. This post is about the “where” of PE recruiting. You can find all the posts in this series here.
Where to Get a Private Equity Job
While you can certainly move around geographically as you recruit for private equity jobs, there is generally more “local” activity than not in PE recruiting — meaning there is somewhat of a tendency to recruit locally in whatever geography you are already in. In other words, if you are in Los Angeles, LA recruiters and LA firms will be more likely to talk to you — for LA opportunities. Same for New York City. Or San Francisco. Or Chicago.
It’s not that you can’t move from east to west coast or vice versa if you wanted to. It’s just that there will be more of a tendency to look at local candidates first, since there is simply less logistics and coordinating needed to get interview candidates in front of hiring managers.
Think about it: New York private equity firms have direct geographic access to armies of New York analysts at New York investment banks. They can get them in for interviews quickly, efficiently, on a moment’s notice, and virtually cost-free. If you are the world’s greatest analyst based in San Francisco, it’s just harder to coordinate (time zones, flights, etc) to get you in for an interview, so they are more likely to look at local talent first before really branching out to other geographies.
Again, lots of exceptions to this, but generally it’s true.
Found this series useful?
Be sure to check out our PDF guide “How to Nail Your Private Equity Interview (whether you have finance training or not)” for in-depth tips and strategies on how to successfully interview for jobs at top private equity firms!
Also be sure to check out our step-by-step Private Equity LBO Modeling Training Videos for walk-through tutorials on how to build an LBO model, navigate Excel with ruthless efficiency, and rapidly create an LBO PowerPoint deck to present to your PE interviewers.
