Hello reader,
Welcome to the 41st edition of Access!
We’re adding audio for this week’s newsletter, with a bitesized careers conversation about how to dig up useful information about a prospective employer.
For your reading and listening pleasure, we’ve included an audio walkthrough of due diligence considerations for jobseekers, with a full transcript below and our best tips for where to look, what to search for, and how to stand out from the crowd.
Our regular private markets jobs edition will be out on November 2nd, and next week we’ll be sharing our very spookiest Halloween Horror Stories… 🎃
Until next time -
Liz, Melissa, and special guest Sahm
In case you missed it…
For last week’s edition we looked at some of the biggest and best known private equity transactions in history to explore what factors impacted the ultimate success of the deal.
FEATURING:
In Brief: Due Diligence for Jobseekers, including:
Where To Look
What To Search For
How To Stand Out From The Crowd
In Depth: Career Conversations - Uncovering Insights About Your Future Employer
IN BRIEF
Below, you’ll find a selection of our top tips for conducting due diligence on a prospective employer.
Where To Look
Start with the basics - most companies have an online profile, so get Googling…
The company website is a good place to start (but check out our advice below on why it’s vital to go beyond the headlines).
Take time to review their LinkedIn company page, as well as recent posts, and lists of employees. You might find it useful to sign up for the company newsletter, or you can set up a Google alert to stay informed of any news.
Glassdoor reviews can be biased but we’d still recommend taking a look at these. Occasionally there will be some useful tips to help you prepare for interview.
Build a sense of where this company sits in the overall private capital landscape by using industry-specific resources to look at lists of close competitors, or firm rankings. Luckily, we’ve got you covered with our updated PE Essentials! 👇
***
What To Search For
Probably more important than where to look, is what to look for. Critically assess the information you find - how reliable is this? How does it relate to the role or team I’m hoping to join?
Lists of clients (or for a PE fund, portfolio companies) are a fast way to improve your understanding of an organisation, as well as hinting at the sort of network you’d be able to build working there.
It’s a cliché, but the vision and values may well come up in conversation, especially during an HR interview. Some larger firms also use these to build their interview questions, so make sure you take a look.
Case studies can help paint a clearer picture of the work that this company delivers. Just bear in mind these are often used as marketing tools, especially for software firms and consultancies, so they might be glossier than the reality.
Where do people join this firm from? Where do they leave to work next? A bit of digging on LinkedIn should tell you everything you need to know. These details will help you learn more about prospective coworkers, and what your future career opportunities could be.
***
How To Stand Out From The Crowd
In a competitive selection process, it’s vital to showcase your best knowledge and skills. One way to do this is to prepare some insightful questions for the people you meet along the way, so use your due diligence findings to inform what to ask.
If company values are mentioned on their website, you could ask more about how this translates into practice, or how leaders in the organisation keep these values alive through their actions.
Does their LinkedIn company page mention a recent investment or client signing? Explain that you’d spotted this and would love to know more about their strategy and how this investment or client fits in.
How long has the person interviewing you worked at the firm? Ask them about why they joined, or if they’ve been there a while, why they stayed.
Seen any red flags? Find the right moment to ask about this, respectfully and with an open mind. It’s important to give the company chance to respond to any concerns, and it’ll help them understand what’s important to you if you decide to make a move.
IN DEPTH
“You want to give the interviewer the best idea of you and your capabilities as possible. But you've also got to be thinking, is this right for me?”
Liz: Hello, and welcome to the 41st edition of Access, the private markets newsletter for finance and tech professionals. This week, we're doing something slightly different… I've invited my colleague, Sahm, to join me for a conversation. Hi, Sahm!
Sahm: Hi, Liz. Thanks for having me today.
LH: You're very welcome. I thought that we would have a look at what jobseekers go through when they're trying to consider what company to join, or maybe when they're looking ahead to an interview and trying to research about the company.
We're also doing this a little bit differently - we've got an audio recording of this conversation and we'll also be publishing a transcript for those of you that prefer to read, so let us know what you think about the format.
“We're trying a few different things… It's been about a year since we set up Access, and we really enjoying writing & being in your inboxes every week, but also conscious of trying to weave in some of the feedback we've had.”
So, along with some of the private equity focused newsletters that we've been pulling together, we know that there are a lot of you who are curious about making a move or just seeing what's out there. We wanted to do a couple more newsletters to think about the process for jobseekers, trying to draw on some of our experiences and to try and guide you in your job search.
Without further ado, myself and Sahm are going to walkthrough how you find information about a job or a company that you might be interested in. Sahm, where do you want to start with this?
SA: Well, I’d like to know what the challenges are that jobseekers face when they're trying to do their due diligence on companies?
LH: Okay, so great start point.
I guess probably the best way to explain this, is to give you a bit of background on Access. I set up Hertalis five, maybe six years ago now. We do an awful lot of hiring for private equity firms, for the tech companies that provide PE with the software to run the firm, and also with some of the fund administrators and consultancies.
We got to a point where we realised that for people outside the industry, or for people looking to maybe make a move between different companies, there is so little information out there about private equity, or what is out there is very focused on front office deal making. That's the bit of the industry that more people know about as that's what tends to hit the headlines.
What you don't often hear much about is what it's like to work in a finance role or a technology role, which is predominantly what we focus on.
So finding information - and finding reliable information - when you're looking to do a bit of your own due diligence can be quite tricky. That's why we set up Access as a newsletter just over a year ago. What we try to do is share some of the things that we know and also surface some of the information that is out there, but is a bit harder to find.
SA: That's super interesting Liz, thank you. On the back of that, I wanted to ask, why do you think those challenges do exist? Why do you think there is this lack of information publicly available out there?
LH: Do you know what, I think it's probably got a little bit to do with… ‘private equity’, I mean it's ironic isn't it, it is a very private industry.
“I think for a lot of us, we don't know about it unless we know somebody that works in it. That's how I got into private equity in the first place.”
It isn't necessarily something that gets covered in detail on your school careers fair, for example. It's also a relatively unknown part of financial markets, because none of us get involved in it.
Now that is changing, so there's a little bit more of a push towards what you'd call retail investing, and Moonfare and iCapital are two of the higher profile companies that are offering this. And really what that is doing is giving individual investors the opportunity to get involved in private markets investing. Typically, the only way that any of us would be involved in private equity is if we're invested through a pension.
So we've all got a savings account, a lot of us have got a mortgage, you're going to get an insurance product, but the concept of providing private investment for - often companies but not exclusively - in order to help them to grow or to go through a particular transition, it's a little bit alien. We don't know much about it and I think that doesn't help.
So you know, I think that's part of it. [Private equity] has also got massive influence but it's relatively small in terms of the way that we think about the high street banks and think about the companies that we all know about, and so while I really like the industry and I like working in it, I'm also conscious of trying to share a little bit more about it with others. We also try to make sure that the information that's out there is better quality and a little bit better rounded so we're not just talking about the deals that get made.
SA: Have you noticed that Access has helped job seekers with getting hold of this information?
LH: Yeah, so I mean I'm massively biased obviously…! But I do think it's been it's been really helpful.
I know that you work alongside the guys that are helping our clients and helping job seekers to find that right match, and so you know that we've been in a position where we can point them to some of these newsletters.
“The two types of newsletters that seem to be the most helpful are probably the Jobs Edition, which we did sporadically to start off with, then got so much positive feedback that we’ve made that a monthly thing.”
So that’s a roundup of all the jobs that we can find out about, including ones we’re working on. We do a lot of research to make sure we cover as many locations, and companies, and types of roles as possible within the finance & tech space.
So that's been really helpful, I think, to get all of the job opportunities in one place, and whether or not you're looking for a role or you're just a bit curious, it's a great snapshot.
And then I think the other one is the resources edition, which we put out for the first time, I think earlier this year, and we've just updated it.
That’s essentially a one stop shop for some of the best long reads and podcasts, plus some of the training modules as well. There’s actually a couple of really good places you can go if you just want to find out a little bit more about private equity, or ask what's private credit?, and, how does infrastructure investing differ?
I think for the people that maybe haven't come across private equity before, or are really keen to get into the industry, but want a little bit help to find out more about it, those are probably two great places to start.
And that's where I've seen Access make the most impact for, you know, most of the people that signed up to it.
SA: That's fantastic. So Access is a great place to start. But what if I'm interested in, say, a specific firm, what would I want to do my due diligence on a certain company to help me prepare or give me more information around a process?
What are the common mistakes and or advice that you give to people in your network?
LH: Okay, so let me let me chuck this back at you, because I actually think you're probably better placed to answer this, given that you're working with jobseekers quite a bit….! But what I will say, is what not to do.
I think it's quite common for folk to - particularly if you're short on time - the temptation is to open up the company website and then have a look, you know, what's their strapline and what are they talking about on there.
“That, I think, is probably one of the most unhelpful things that you could be doing because a website is written by the marketing folk and it doesn't really give you the best insight into what the culture is, or what people really think about working there, or what they’re doing.”
It’s the ‘shop window’ and a decent place to start, but I think there's other little nuggets of information that you want to be trying to capture.
So, what is it that you think jobseekers need to be finding out about a company or, you know, what do you think they should be looking for if they're interested in doing their due diligence on a role or an organisation they want to join?
SA: Yeah I think that's a great question. I completely agree with you on just opening up the website but - as you said - it is a good place to start and it's a portal to find the information you need.
Going a bit further than just a website, you need to be doing a deep dive into ‘who does this company work with?’, ‘who are their customers?’, ‘who are their clients?’. Have a look at the types of firms that they're working with.
You can also look into the visions and values that are posted on their website, looking into the kind of vision they have going forward. This could be a good indicator to what kind of strategies and motivations they have, when you are in the interview with the company.
Are there any interesting case studies that might be posted on the website that might shed some light on day to day activities?
Or, take a look at the company's marketing, for example. Are there aspects that you like about it? Do you think that there may be holes in the marketing that you could think that there could be a way to improve upon?
There's so many things, so many pieces of information that you can get to via the website.
You've got to make sure that you're actually looking for the right pieces of information.
LH: I think that's fair. I mean, it's interesting what you pull out there about like customers and clients and maybe case studies… I think that's often a little bit more relevant to tech companies or consultancies, for example, but it is such a useful way to try and get under the skin of what you might be doing or what a company does day to day.
And I think particularly for people that might be joining those sorts of organizations, looking at what the company's external client base looks like, gives you a really good indicator of the types of companies that you might then be interacting with.
A lot of the people that I've spoken to over the years that are interested in consultancy careers, or they want to work with a particular tech product, what they get really excited about is the opportunity to, I guess, kind of get to know so many people in the industry, because you've suddenly built relationships with people at lots of different firms. You're not just limited to the company that you're working in. So I think being able to get a sense of what types of firms & what size of firms are these companies working with can be really, really helpful.
I think we're nearly at time for the conversation so I wanted to reflect on a couple of things because it's one way to think about it - I want to do my due diligence what can I find out right? - but I guess the flip side of that is that you can't ever know 100%.
There are going to be unknowns and a lot of people will say - how do I handle that? If I'm going to walk into this interview, I'm going to do all my prep, I'm going to look at the website, I'm going to go on LinkedIn, I might even see if there's any news about the company, and I'll have a look at what they're saying about themselves and what other people are saying about them…
… but there's going to be so many unknowns, so how do I handle it?
I think it's worth saying there's probably two things. One is that, like you're saying Sahm, have a look at the website but use it to form opinions. Have a think about what you're looking for, and have a think about how this fits.
And if you can, try to use it to come up with a list of questions because ultimately, and this is I guess my second point, any kind of selection process, job interview, it's a two-way process.
SA: Absolutely.
LH: I mean, you want to try to impress when you go in, of course you do, and you want to give the interviewer the best idea of you and your capabilities as possible.
But you've also got to be thinking, is this right for me?
And I think it's really important to be able to go in with some great questions, because not only is that going to help you to answer, you know, your big question, is this the right role? Is this the right company?
But it also shows a real interest in the organisation and you'll get a much richer conversation if you've actually had a bit of a think about what you genuinely want to know. There are some really cliched questions you can ask at interview (and it's not that you shouldn't) it's just that, if you want to stand out, I think some of the things you were picking up on Sahm - like case studies for example - if you can use that to form an intelligent question that you're genuinely interested in hearing the answer, that's got to be something that's going to help you to stand out and it's also going to give you the information you want.
So that's kind of my take in a really short conversation about how you might want to approach a bit of due diligence if you're thinking about joining a company. Sahm, thanks so much for joining me for this.
SA: Thanks for having me.
LH: You're very welcome! I think it's been really good to have this as a bit of a conversation.
And for those of you that are reading or listening to this, let us know what you think about the format and let us know what you'd like to hear about. Because ultimately, we produce all of this content but it's for you. I love writing, I love having conversations about the industry and talking with people about their roles, and this is something a little bit different… Considering, if we put ourselves in the shoes of jobseekers, what's the information that they might find really helpful?
Let us know what you think - we might try to do this again maybe next month, and we'd love to get your feedback on what you'd really like to know.
So thank you very much for reading, and for listening, and we will see you next time.
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