Private Equity Recruiting is finally kicking off

Welcome back! We’re getting an early start on 2026.

We were going to wait until January to huddle up but given that Private Equity recruitment is expected to start imminently, we wanted to start 2026 early.

Reminder, every March we drop our annual compensation report. This March, we expect to have an insanely robust report. Notification of the report will come via this email distribution list.

Pricing reminders: We made updates to our pricing models, please view here a refresher if you have an upcoming renewal.

Contribution Access reminders: As a reminder, we bumped up access for sell side professionals, with many earning 3 months now and IB MDs earning up to 6 months now. A massive driver of your length is going to depend on how detailed your culture reviews are. We totally get if your interview was ages ago and you barely remember your interview process, but detailed Pros and Cons regarding the culture at the firm may drive a 3-month access answer instead of only 1-month, or a 12-month access answer instead of only 6 to 9 months.

Private Equity Recruiting appears to be an early January event:

The delay of Investment Banking Analysts getting poached by Private Equity appears to be coming to an end. Previously, IB Analysts were being recruited for their 2 years in advance PE role before they even hit the desk! Now after some pushback by Jamie Dimon, it seems like 6 months in is the new middle ground period where the recruiting window is open. Still, a lot of Banks have restrictive terms if you accept a Private Equity offer while still employed at your firm, so you need to be thoughtful about what you need to do with your current employer.

But these Private Equity processes move extremely fast. Many of the folks that have an inside track are already aware of this and are in constant dialogue with headhunters. If you are not in constant dialogue or some form of dialogue, then you should ensure you are not being forgotten by the headhunter gatekeepers ASAP.

That’s what I fucking hate about finance recruiting. There are no reasons these headhunters should be gatekeeping and be judge and jury on these types of processes. We will work at chipping away with this, but on cycle PE at the megashops are the hardest nuts to crack.

If you’re not part of this Private Equity recruiting process, just know there are several other firms you can be joining instead, particularly on the LMM and MM side. And understand that not all career paths are linear in nature.

The team at Buyside Hub has worked really hard at building tools for finance professionals, and here’s what we have to offer you all - whether you’re recruiting over this period, a future period, or are a current professional:

Tools for future and current Private Equity professionals:

1. Private Equity Compensation Teaser Report

2. Search Individual Private Equity Compensation Datapoints

3. Search for Private Equity Firm Culture

4. Search our Industry Analytics tab for Private Equity Analysis

5. Free LBO Model Template (It’s at the bottom of our website)

6. Crowdsourced Private Equity Interview Questions

We wish everyone who is recruiting the best of luck!

 Job Board: We will have more jobs soon (this is a bit of a slow period) but you can access our job board here.

Talk soon!

-Harry

Work with us in 2026:

Jobs: We are ready to do materially more job placements and recruiting over 2026. With the addition of profile preferences and a strong inflow of Buyside professionals, Investment Banking Analysts, and Investment Banking Summer Analysts over the past few months, the candidate pool is quite robust in nature.

In addition, the High Yield Harry socials and newsletter audience is incredibly strong with 380,000 followers across Instagram, 170,000 followers across X, and 120,000 readers across newsletters.

Contact Us:

For your hiring needs and any other needs: [email protected] 

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