Where Junior Investor Relations Professionals in Private Equity Come From?

Where are PE firms hiring junior IR professionals from? Of the 200 or so candidates in these roles, many come from a few key areas.

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Many firms are adding junior resources to support senior IR professionals, however we have also seen examples of junior level talent being the only dedicated talent to the IR function and reporting to Partners and/or senior members of the investment team. Responsibilities can cover both the project management side of IR mixed in with some capital formation/fundraising responsibility as well.

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First on the backgrounds. We identified about 200 existing junior IR candidates at PE/investment firms across the country. These candidates can have different titles, but generally are titled as Analyst or Associate.

The largest portion, a little more than 25% of the around 200 candidates we identified were hired directly from an investment banking program. Whether that was M&A, coverage groups, capital markets, etc. the largest group was had more traditional IB experience.

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Close behind, a little under 25% were candidates who had some IR experience. Whether that was a purely IR focused role or some exposure to IR, that made up a good amount of current junior level professionals. It was interesting to see the breakdown especially related to prior IR experience for analysts vs. associates, see below.

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IR talent who had mostly administrative experience also made up a healthy percentage almost 15%. A relatively common path for people who start on the admin side of things, a lot of times coming from being an EA or in firm operations, had led to junior IR roles.

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Over 10% of current IR junior professionals came directly from undergrad. Some firms have put a priority on recruiting talent right from school, and having them work their way up in the IR department.

The last group was a combination of other types of experience, which made up a little less than 25% of the total. A good amount of this group came from communications or marketing programs, investing roles, BD/Sales positions, and wealth management opportunities, among others.

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If you look more closely at the break down between analyst and associate though, you see a shift in the percentage of the different experience groups.

The analyst breakdown still has IB experience basically the highest, but has more direct undergrad as well as administrative level experience increased while IR experience/exposure decreased.

While for the associate breakdown, again still has IB experience as the top, but a higher IR experience percentage, and a lower direct undergrad/administrative experience percentage, basically an inverse of analyst.

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What to take away from here? Well if you are still reading, thank you! But in terms of the numbers, I think major takeaways include, IB experience does seem to be the top among junior level IR professionals. The analyst program focuses more on direct undergrads as well as administrative experience, while firms looking for associates would prefer more direct IR exposure. Which would make sense considering it's a position while junior, has more responsibility.

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And I think the biggest takeaway is that there are a lot of different paths for a career in IR. There are a lot of different ways to break into the function.

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For those in IR roles or firms aiming to expand their IR teams, we're always open to conversations and collaborations. Reach out anytime!

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