Home ListingDecember 12, 2014

How To Land a Job in Alternatives

<p>Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley produced the highest number of analysts moving to the buy-side, but hedge fund jobs are still hard to come by.</p>

Reported by Featured Author

Wall Street’s junior analysts are moving more to private equity firms than hedge funds, according to recruitment data from start-up firm Vettery.

Some 36% of nearly 1,400 investment bankers found jobs at private equity firms, compared to the 9.3% who were employed at hedge funds after the two-year analyst program. The move to private equity was even greater than the 27.5% of analysts who had stayed at their banks. A total of 47% of the 2012 analyst class had been employed in buy-side jobs, Vettery said.

Vettery data (Source: Vettery)

However, certain banks succeeded more than others in placing their bankers to buy-side jobs.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley recorded the highest number of analysts to move to the buy-side—with upwards of 60% of their graduates securing employment—while only about 30% of Deutsche Bank analysts were successful.

Vettery also found top boutique banks such as Greenhill and Evercore had placed 71% of their analyst class into buy-side jobs.

According to the data, analysts from mergers and acquisition groups were high targets for major private equity firms such as Blackstone, KKR, and Carlyle, and hedge funds, including the likes of Bridgewater, Tiger Management, and Och-Ziff.

About three-quarters of private equity and 93% of hedge fund jobs were located in New York, the large majority of which were taken by Caucasian men.

Vettery found about half of private equity associates at top firms had graduated from Ivy League undergraduate programs. Research showed University of Pennsylvania alumni were most successful in landing buy-side jobs, with 63% of its graduates finding such employment after two years as an analyst.

Charlottesville-based University of Virginia had the highest percentage of analysts that received hedge fund jobs, the data revealed, while Stanford had the highest placement rates into the buy-side for both men and women.

Vettery data1 (Source: Vettery)