Access: Halloween Edition 2023
"Halloween is the only time people can become what they want to be without getting fired." - Sylvester Stallone
Hello reader,
Welcome to the 42nd edition of Access - last week’s edition featured our best tips for conducting due diligence on a prospective employer, with a bonus audio version for your listening pleasure.
It’s nearly Halloween, which means your favourite news outlets are busy crafting their punniest pieces for the occasion.
Last year, the FT published the scariest charts in financial markets, featuring catchy headlines like ‘Recession forecasts give investors pumpkin to worry about’. It’s probably a bit early still, but all we could find was an article bemoaning the ‘all-seeing eye of the smart doorbell’. Well, there’s still time.
Without further ado, we are delighted to share our own ‘spooktacular’ collection of Interview Nightmares… read at your peril!
Wishing you all a very happy Halloween -
Liz & Melissa
In case you missed it…
Join Liz & Sahm to find out how to uncover key insights about your next employer 👀
FEATURING:
In Brief: The latest global private markets news, including:
Lights, Camera, Capital
Mid-Market PE is Europe’s Engine for Growth
PE Wire US Awards 2023
In Depth: Halloween Edition 2023 - Interview Nightmares
IN BRIEF
Below, you’ll find a selection of global news stories from people and companies in our private markets network.
Lights, Camera, Capital
We kick off this week’s In Brief with an interesting piece from Carlyle’s Head of Private Credit, Alexander Popov.
“Over the last two decades, the way we consume content has changed drastically. Before smartphones and streaming became commonplace, we relied on television, radio, print media, and live events to stay informed and entertained. Fast-forward to today, and we’re able to consume content on-demand, almost anywhere, and at any time.”
He goes on to outline how the boom in distribution platforms since Netflix first started it’s on-demand service 15-years ago has led to a supply problem. Content might be king, but there just isn’t enough of it to satisfy our insatiable streaming appetites. Or at least, not high quality content.
For private markets investors, that represents an opportunity across several verticals. Popov believes the top three are:
Acquiring the rights to existing content
Financing businesses that support content creation and distribution
Supporting the live entertainment and experiential industry
(Side note: Everyone’s at it… Just last week, FT Alphaville commented that the ‘plan to turn payday lender Amigo into a music company is really, really weird’, as the ailing subprime lender revealed a bid to “acquire” several seemingly connected digital streaming businesses.)
If you’re curious about this topic, we dug out a past edition of Access that features a profile on investor Sherrese Clark Soares 👇
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Engine for Growth
Invest Europe, the world’s largest association of private capital providers, has just released its updated mid-market private equity report, Europe’s Engine for Growth.
Key highlights include:
Europe’s mid-market PE returns 16.55% to end-2022, outperforming other segments & regions. Mid-market private equity eclipsed the performance of funds focused on small, large and mega-scale European buyouts, as well as those from North America and the rest of the world.
Mid-market funds added 6.9% more jobs in 2021, almost 6x the 1.2% growth across Europe. The portfolio companies backed by mid-market PE firms in Europe added 116,800 jobs in 2021, employing a total of 3,678,250 people at the end of 2021 (that’s roughly 35% of all PE-backed jobs in Europe).
Commenting on the report, Eric de Montgolfier, CEO of Invest Europe said:
“The mid-market has been a strong and reliable source of investment for companies, performance for investors, and jobs for citizens. This broad and diverse private equity segment will be crucial in supporting companies through the challenges ahead to ensure they emerge as even stronger European champions.”
***
PE Wire US Awards 2023
And last, but not least, Private Equity Wire has announced the winners of its US Awards 2023, recognising excellence in private equity fund management and services.
The team at Aztec had a “wonderful evening” (pictured above), having won the overall fund admin award. Congratulations also to LemonEdge and 73 Strings, both backed by Broadhaven Ventures, who came first in their respective categories of fund accounting and portfolio management software.
The awards, presented at an event in New York, covered fund performance, fundraising success, and service provider categories. Winners were selected through an online poll of PE Wire users, with Bloomberg data from May 2022 - May 2023 used to judge fund manager performance.
IN DEPTH
“If there's something weird, And it don't look good, Who you gonna call?” - Ray Parker Jr.
In the shadowed corridors of employment, where the boundaries between hope and despair blur, a spectral collection awaits. Behold, Interview Nightmares!
This Halloween, for your reading pleasure, we have curated a collection of bone-chilling tales, each one a haunting reminder of the fears, anxieties, and absurdities that lurk beneath the surface of the professional landscape.
So, dear reader, prepare to be drawn into a world where the mundane meets the macabre, and where the spectres of failed interviews and bizarre encounters linger like restless souls…
🎃
(Describing a video interview)
Red flag #1: the interview was with 10 interviewers (I was told it would be 1-on-1).
Red flag #2: towards the end they asked if I had any questions. When I asked: "Do you all enjoy working here?" they all looked at each other nervously for about 20 seconds until someone said: "Sure. I mean, as much as you can enjoy work, I guess."
Nope.
paesanossbits
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Showed up looking good in my suit with a ton of knowledge on Capital Partners.
It turned out I had researched the wrong company named Capital Partners.
Anonymous
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The interview was to work on a very small web services team for the Chemistry department at my university. It was an absolute mess from start to finish.
Their office was the most depressing physical location I've ever been in. An old, musty university basement with bare walls and sketchy fluorescent lighting. Basically a dungeon.
They'd printed out several pages of interview questions. Like, an intimidating stack of paper. Most of the questions had acronyms I'd never heard of. To this day I think I would fail that interview.
They asked my thoughts on Python. I said in my experience it was a little slow, pretty good scripting language though. (This was 2010.) They said it wasn't slow, it was one of the fastest ones. Still not sure what they were talking about.
The hiring manager FELL ASLEEP halfway through the interview. His employee had to complete it without him.
A day or two after the interview they sent me a one-line email response. It said "We cannot hire you because you do not know much about the Internet."
Dodged a bullet, I guess?
Isaac Lyman
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At an interview for a tech startup, they asked me "If you could be any animal, what would you be?"
I answered "Otter" because you know, fun, active, work well with their hands and cute as f***.
They really debated whether or not to hire me because of that answer because, and I quote, "We only hire predators, never prey." and they weren't sure how to quantify an Otter, because none of them had ever paid the least bit of attention to any sort of animal documentary or read biology or you know, visited a zoo recently.
God that job sucked hard.
rileysweeney
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In a group interview, the interviewer crossed a line through my name on the list he had after I told him what I graduated in. This was within the first 5 minutes of a 40 minute meeting...
Testosteroxin
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I once got a call from a prospective employer asking why I hadn’t shown up to the interview. Apparently I calendared it for the wrong day in my phone. Needless to say I didn’t get that job...
Panama_Scoot
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The entire company interviewed me. It was a startup years ago, but still, nine people interviewing you at the same time asking you questions non-stop at a roundtable was rough.
Nick Taylor
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The interviewer talked about himself for an hour.
Sillynb
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…the building had black windows so I was fixing my hair in the mirror effect it gave off. When I went inside I saw that the receptionist could see exactly what I was doing as I was basically face to face with her but outside the building.
SlowDevice420
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Skyscraper in Tokyo. I arrived an hour early so I waited in the lobby. Didn’t account for a split elevator system where you have get off on floor 80 and transfer. I was late and the interviewer half my age thought I was a joke. I was that day for sure.
The-Real-Bob-Smith
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I walked up the stairs to the very top and met the woman. I thought she was gesturing to the door ahead of her so I walked over, opening it and went inside. It was a storage cupboard. She stood there and watched.
Milly Thomas
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It was a phone screen for the first interview. Got it completely mixed up with another job, with a completely different title/duties, I was applying for and when they asked what made me apply for this position I went on and on about how I wanted to do X. The lady politely told me that wasn’t the position I was being interviewed for. Safe to say I didn’t get another interview.
btoms96
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I thought I would impress the interviewer in a programming interview by doing the coding questions in a trendy language that I had just started learning, instead of in C or Java.
It did not go so well.
zoqfotpik
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I was interviewed by a panel. They asked me to wait in another room. After an hour or so I went to find someone to find out what was happening. Turned out the panel had argued about me, and gone home. They forgot they'd asked me to wait in the other room & didn't tell anyone…
Anonymous
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My leg fell asleep during the interview, and I almost fell over while leaving.
Anonymous
🎃
I had one of my first interviews after just graduating college. I was visibly nervous, but I think the interview went okay overall. That is... until I got up, shook the interviewer's hand, and promptly walked into the wall. I then fumbled nervously and bolted for the door.
Needless to say, I didn't get an offer on that one...
Handfulofnoises
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I got asked what I do for a hobby, I felt put on the spot so I answered entirely honestly and said ‘I play video games and watch TV.’ Extremely embarrassing, would not recommend.
lgstarfish
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Without getting too detailed, at the end of the interview when the interviewer asked me if I had any questions for him, I asked: "Is this going as badly as I think it is?"
Yes, it was.
RyanPelley
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Started as the worst, and ended as the best. The beginning started like this: "I'm so sorry to have to inform you of this, but we pulled the wrong resumé contact information, we didn't mean to call you in for an interview." Before leaving, the interviewer gave me a brief tour of the company grounds (because they felt so bad for wasting my time). They introduced me to the department head that I would have been working for, (if that department was actually hiring). Had a great conversation and the department head was convinced that I would be an asset to them, and they hired me on the spot.
…I have been with this company for over 8 years now, and they are an awesome bunch of people. It was a very unlucky/lucky day for me!
Rhinosauron
🎃
And finally… The Wrong Guy
In celebration of the most awful job interviews ever, we dug up this classic from 2006, showing Guy Goma (who turned up for a job interview) being mistaken for music industry expert Guy Kewney, and shepherded into the BBC News studio for a live on-air interview…
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