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Whether you are a private equity firm, a venture capitalist, family office, sovereign wealth fund, endowment, or corporate M&A team – chances are that my large team and I have interacted with you in some capacity.
Given the increase in demand for strong Analysts & Associates and dwindling volume of regionally available talent, I felt it necessary to share the reality of why it’s more challenging to make these hires and how our team is continually solving for it.
The ceiling of who you can hire is typically dictated by a combination of factors – your budget, AUM, dry powder & volume of transactions, culture, existing team’s credentials & track record, their ability & willingness to coach, examples of career progression within the team and flexibility – I perceive these to be the most important factors for Analysts & Associates. The first part of the exercise needs to be to align these to various talent pools available to you – it is key here to be realistic with what can be achieved in changing market conditions.
Consciously or subconsciously, most hiring managers take comfort in hiring professionals like them – the same school, background, interests, IB firm – some commonality persists even in the most unbiased processes. Often, there is need to secure talent which has been professionally schooled – at an investment bank, the Big Four, another buy-side firm. I clarify that this isn’t necessarily a rubber stamp of a brand on a CV – but a grown perception & an innate understanding of how they may have been technically trained & what exposure they may have had. But herein lies the next challenge.
A remote working culture – originally by need & now by design, has numerous pros but one very clear con – financial modelling skills are just not the same, and they can’t be. Having hired similar roles in 2015-’18, I was used to seeing that most candidates had done a Wall Street Prep or Corporate Finance Institute course at University, or just after. I knew VPs & Managers who had the benefit of having more time – to train, coach & fix models – and a lot of this used to happen at the desk. There was just a lot more happening in addition to the core job.
Fast forward to 2020 (and onwards) – most VPs & Managers concede that they have been busier, we’ve seen a bumper year in terms of transactions with record bonuses being paid, all in combination with a growing remote work culture. This, combined with a lack of consistent initiative or time on part of today’s Analyst or Associate to upskill in their own time, is the reason why most candidates don’t meet your expectation when they do a case study – whether a financial model on excel, a presentation on PowerPoint or an interpersonal oral presentation. But frankly, there is no right or wrong – it just is. We must align with this and an increase in salaries across the industry – and we need to solve for it.
As specialist consultants in this space, we speak to & connect with far more candidates than a singular hiring organisation going through multiple processes ever could. Expectations today are:
We also hear your expectations – you want someone technically sound, exceptionally presentable, schooled & groomed. Someone intrinsically motivated, willing to go the extra mile and a team fit. We also hear that you’re swamped, you needed them yesterday & you may not have the time to coach on the modelling – it’s why you need to hire someone who will hit the ground running. This is very real and an authentic challenge.
The candidates you want to see, don’t match your budget. The candidates available within your budget, don’t match your expectation of professional schooling or technical skills. But at least there’s a need on both fronts.
A good parallel example & solution here is this: if you want to buy a house but don’t want to have all your cash tied-up, you’d go to a bank and seek leverage. When you want to hire a strong Analyst or Associate and don’t want to have all your time tied-up, why not leverage their appetite to learn: outsource, go back to pre-2018 and get them trained on modelling & presentation the way you would have liked in the first instance?
Hire for softer skills & competencies even for the more technical roles – are they resilient, do they have strong initiative, are they dependable, will they fit your team’s culture & organisation’s ethos, are they committed to learning & willing to accept that they aren’t the finished article yet? Yes, it will take them 4 weeks to 3 months to get up and running – but your faith in them benefits you from their loyalty – to stick around for longer than average and go the extra mile for you, because you saw what they needed and gave it to them.
All in all, anything longer than 3 weeks for an Analyst, or 4 weeks for an Associate – is either an overkill of an assessment or demonstrates two ghastlier realities: your process is inefficient, or the hire isn’t a priority. These realities haunt you, us and candidate at the end of the process – with lower engagement, monetary expectations rise: either the candidate withdraws from the process, or leave with rejection because they’re no longer bought in.
As an investor, it is likely your personal portfolio isn’t all regional – so why should your talent pool be concentrated? Even with the above perfect process, realistic expectation, it remains possible there just isn’t enough critical mass to find the right hire here – but it’s okay to accept that it’s okay. We’ve been solving for this for years – look at Asia-Pac, look at Europe, look at Africa – there’s a talent pool there which may be willing to relocate, and has relocated. A large expatriate population implies that.
We have the largest, most diverse, most academically aligned and most motivated team of buy-side recruitment experts on the ground. We’ve solved for this time and again – and continue to do so. If you’d like to have a chat about hiring talent, exploring new challenges or better understanding the market, please reach out to me on wanchooananya@michaelpage.ae or request a call back here.
