The race for jobs that begins right after college move-in day
– AMObserver, UPDATED March 31, 2025.
Every summer, a select group of college graduates embarks on their first full-time jobs at prestigious investment banks. But before they even settle into their analyst program desks, many of them have already secured their second job at another firm—one that won’t start for another two years. The most recent graduating crop will receive and accept their second offers at private equity and credit firms within about a month of tossing their graduation caps without ever having worked a day in a full-time role.
While most college juniors and seniors are still figuring out their post-college plans and tidying up their resumes, these investment banking hires already charted a career path in their first or second year of school and effectively locked in two consecutive jobs before the end of summer after sophomore year. They understood that while sophomore year is the half-way mark of their undergraduate journey, it’s the actual finish line for most who pursue a sellside investment banking analyst spot and want a buyside associate offer at a private equity or private credit firm immediately after completing their banking program.
Class of 2025 graduates, for example, will have lined up two consecutive two-year jobs: one as entry-level analysts in investment banking (2025-2027), followed by a future-dated associate position (2027-2029) at a private equity or credit manager. Some even plan to fast-track their careers by then skipping the once-essential MBA and jumping straight into more senior roles at their buyside employer in the Fall of 2029.
While compensation varies by firm, by team, and individual performance, these hires can expect to earn around $1.0 to $1.2 million over the next four years, based on most recent years’ compensation data. Their private equity or credit pay stubs will account for approximately two-thirds of their total income during this four-year period.
Every year, over 10,000 well-qualified college seniors from an expanding list of target undergraduate schools compete for these concurrent employment offers. Yet, only a few hundred succeed. Those who do typically receive ‘exploding’ deadline offers from their prospective second employers, often requiring them to accept the position within 24 hours.
Around 20 private equity and credit firms engage in this talent rush, securing future hires after their two-year investment banking stints and bypassing the need to train recruits from scratch. Most of these firms are industry giants like Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle, and Apollo, alongside upper middle-market private equity funds handling up to billion-dollar business transactions. Even the largest among them employee no more than 1,000 full-time investment professionals.
While a handful of the largest hedge funds, including Point72 Asset Management and Citadel, have built their own internship and full-time investment analyst training academies, hedge funds don’t extend offers to candidates years in advance, and follow a ‘just-in-time’ full-time hiring model, recruiting based on actual rather than expected need, typically months—not years—before employment start dates.
A few of the large PE firms also incorporate this model for a portion of their analyst hires and train this cohort themselves. These candidates have typically worked at least one summer internship at an investment bank before landing at a PE firm right after college graduation.
The appeal of transitioning from the service-provider sellside of investment banking—where professionals pitch, represent and advise clients on their investment and finance needs—to the client buyside of asset management, hasn’t waned. It’s about more than just the perceived pecking-order prestige of being the deep-pocketed client versus advising the client for a fee; it’s about making actual investment decisions and taking investment control, and of course, potentially reaping extraordinary financial rewards.
Buy-side professionals often see seven-figure compensation by their 30s, and for those who reach the senior partner level, eight-figure paydays aren’t uncommon. While today’s private equity associate roles often feel like an extension of investment banking—or “Banking 2.0”—with a heavy focus on deal processes and financial modeling, many view the work as a step up in terms of decision-making power and responsibility.
Lifestyle also plays a role. While office hours at some investment banks can log 80-100+ per week during peak deal activity, private equity and credit firms demand fewer hours, with associates averaging 60-80 hours per week. For many, the prospect of fewer grueling hours and transitioning away from an “on-call 24/7” work culture are significant incentives to make the leap.
Moreover, these candidates generally view private equity and credit as having relatively stable career paths, thanks to long-term capital commitments from public and private capital allocators, as well as low staff turnover. This also means fewer opportunities to join these firms, which promote heavily from within, at more senior investment levels.
The road to securing a private equity or credit associate offer remains largely unchanged. With rare exception, it still requires a couple of years of full-time investment banking analyst experience, ideally at major firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, or J.P. Morgan, or at elite boutiques like Lazard, Centerview Partners, or PJT Partners. Some candidates hail from middle-market banks like Houlihan Lokey and Jefferies, or from large international institutions like Nomura and HSBC.
Receiving a full-time investment banking offer still almost always requires a “rising senior” summer internship at an investment bank between one’s junior and senior year of college. Most full-time analyst roles are extended to strong-performing interns within weeks of completing a firm’s 10-12 week summer programs. Many of these successful candidates will typically have worked in a finance or business-related internship in their sophomore or “rising junior” year.
What has changed dramatically is the timeline. First-year college students are now caught off guard by the ever-accelerating starting point requirements for this career path, while graduating seniors and their future banking managers are startled by aggressive buyside hiring cycles.
Private equity and debt firms now snap up talent earlier than ever, locking in associate talent 25 months in advance of a job start date—often before their banking analyst training even kicks off. A few bulge-bracket banks are reportedly beginning to counter these aggressive recruitment strategies. In 2024, JPMorgan Chase & Co. indicated that accepting future-dated buyside offers “could result in us reconsidering the status of your employment.”
Meanwhile, these days there are many more ‘four-season’ internship options in the first half of college to grab the attention of investment bank hiring managers for the mission-critical rising senior summer internship between junior and senior year.
And students do manage to secure buyside investment roles without having landed that summer internship or capitalized on that initial wave of buyside recruiting immediately after college graduation.
But competition is fiercer than ever. With many investment banks having expanded their recruiting efforts to include more schools and with the allure of private equity growing—driven by an associate path that may now include carried interest (a share in firm profits) and bypassing the traditional MBA—securing a spot on this career track has become an increasingly competitive battle among top candidates.
Originally published September 30, 2024.
READ PART 2: How to Navigate Buyside Hiring from College Move-In Day through Sophomore Year
READ PART 3: Junior and Senior Year Alternate Paths to the Investment Buyside
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