What Topics to Research Before Your Private Equity Interview.
Whether you're preparing for a private equity interview or just gearing up for private equity job applications, here's our tips on what topics you should research to ensure that you're well informed and best prepared!
You should research the following 3 perspectives before any private equity interview/application to ensure that you are best prepared.
The Benefits of Research:
Understanding the firm you are interviewing for helps to avoid any misconceptions during the interview.
Prepares you for the qualitative aspects of interviews. For example, the question of ‘why do you want to work here’ is very important and the way you answer this question thoughtfully is by doing the research.
A well rounded view of a firm can help with boosting your response rate for outreaches. For example, if you are cold messaging a potential employer on Linkedin or email, then developing a specific message targeting a firm will make your message stand out from the crowd. For example, “I saw that you made X investment a couple of months ago, this is a sector that I look to develop my career in, would you be free to chat for a couple of minutes?”
Researching private equity firms will help you benchmark firms easily, and you will start to develop your own picture on firms you want to work for.
Where to Conduct Your Research?
You want to focus your research on 3 different perspectives:
1. Understanding the private equity firm
You want to understand:
How the fund makes money
What is their investment focus?
What is their fund size?
Have they recently raised capital? If so, what is their strategy?
What areas are they investing in?
Recent acquisitions?
Research Resources:
Company Website
LinkedIn Page
Coffee chats with employees – this can be with current and ex-employees.
2. The general industry opinion of the firm you are interviewing for
You want to understand:
What is their recent performance?
What is the general opinion of the company?
Salary databases?
Recent news, what is said about them? Any scandals?
Research Resources:
Articles
Databases such as Crunchbase, Bloomberg, etc
3. The internet opinion of the firm you are interviewing for
You want to understand:
The general conception from ex-employees and competitors. However, be cautious about the information as all information tends to be anonymous and may lack some credibility, but it will give you a general opinion of what people feel about the firms!
Research Resources:
Glassdoor
Quora
Other online forums
