Recruiting News from a Co-Founder

Hey Guys — Rohit here — as I’m sure most of you know by now, I haven’t been as involved in the day-to-day intro calls as much as I once was nor have I been directly writing as much… Asif and I are genuinely lucky to be able to have OfficeHours Coaches really be the front-face of the business these days. Honestly, we’ve been more focused on the macro level with OfficeHours making sure the ship is steering in the right direction while also helping out some of our higher touch corporate clients with training, headhunting, and personally working with some of our favorite Mentees.

Why I wanted to contribute to today’s newsletter is to speak more about a recent trend that we’ve been witnessing — we are in for an upcoming bumpy ride when it comes to recruiting/lateraling/moving jobs.

I have personally been taking some calls this past week and hearing that MANY investment banks are letting go of people through multiple rounds of layoffs (even Associates and VPs that have recently gotten promoted) — more than that, even a COUPLE of Private Equity firms are letting Associates go due to performance and lack of training issues… this last one has really been surprising.

This isn’t to scare anyone but it is a wake-up call on all fronts. It’s actually crazy how much we’ve experienced in the last 3 years that we’ve been in business — we started the business in the thick of a pandemic where layoffs were common which then turned to the opposite side of the pendulum where multiple offers were being thrown at kids within the same day and now back the other way to layoffs… this time feels a bit worse because we’re hearing of Buyside firms even laying people off (which brings up the question, did they over hire or hire individuals that weren’t really prepared in the first place?!).

I look at it as a wake-up call for OfficeHours because our Coaches work tirelessly to make sure our Mentees place well and are doing their best to see as many opportunities as possible — however, it’s honestly tough to get multiple offers in a market like this, something that is generally rather common for our Mentees… The other side is that for anyone that has gotten laid off from an IB or was thinking about Private Equity — this could honestly be a very good time to pursue it. I know that it sounds difficult pursuing a better role than the one you may have gotten kicked out of, but it’s called failing upwards and a lot of people get away with it.

After all, ask yourself this: During a recession and a non-competitive market — will the firm that has money to spend do well acquiring assets (Private Equity Firms) or will the firm that is dependent on small advisory fees on less deal flow do well (Investment Banks)?

All being said above, I found it interesting that one of our favorite EB’s (Evercore) is still hiring lateral analysts…

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