A VC recruiter explains how to stand out when 2,500 strong candidates apply for analyst roles. The industry draws young professionals chasing glamour and money, fueled by shows like Shark Tank. The firm's filtering process determines who gets a real look.
There is not a week that goes by without talented young people that want to break into venture capital and private equity. It looks very sexy on the outside, and it's a great industry, obviously, to be in, and you can make a lot of money. And, you know, it's just— it's become sexy, you know. Shark Tank, it's like, oh, I'd love to be a shark and just criticize people and make money off their labor. I mean, it sounds like a great job, right?
I hope people don't view that's what I do, but yes.
You said something pretty wild. When you look for an analyst, you said you got 2,500 resumes, and I assume these are quality resumes. These aren't just random people from Indeed or something. Going after top talent here. How do you even filter for that? Like, what does that process look like?
And just clarify, we got 2,500 resumes in a week and then we had to shut it off. I think there's a lot of demand where people want to get in this industry and there's very limited supply or job openings. There's a lot of other firms who will hire people that have done 2 years of banking or consulting or something. We tend to like to hire out undergrads. We kind of train them into our philosophy and our underwriting style, and that's been a successful process for us. We have a talent team. They used to have to kind of sift through them and sometimes we divvy that up. It is so hard to differentiate from the unbelievable resumes that we get. Everyone has a 3.8 to a 4.0 GPA. That's like the standard, like you gotta have over a 3.8 at this point. All of them have really impressive internships. I feel like everyone speaks multiple languages these days, et cetera, et cetera. So ultimately what we're looking for is someone that has exceptionality in something. For some people that's an instrument, for some people that's sports, for other people, That could be the arts or photography and just something that they've excelled at in their life that points to this is like someone that knows work ethic and will be gritty and a good analyst for us. So the way that we, so we kind of have fed that framework into an AI platform that helps us go from 2,500 down to 150. So now we're down to 150 and those are kind of manually reviewed. We have set up a hiring committee 'cause this is one of the most important things we do is hire. We're in the people business. All the partners are very involved in it. We have a hiring committee and a process where 2 people interview. We, you know, rank them based on some attributes that we think are important for the analyst role. If they pass that, they then come in for a super day where they meet the rest of the team.
