“Back in 2010, private equity firms typically waited for junior bankers to have completed about 11 months of training
before poaching efforts started, but that’s steadily narrowed. The pandemic also had an impact, allowing juniors to
stealthily take interviews from home. Odyssey Search Partners found that private equity giants began recruiting less than a month into their training programs in some cases, it said in an analysis published in 2023.

“There’s a finite pool of candidates, and a lot of private equity firms — it creates a situation where firms don’t want to
miss out on hiring top talent,” Adam Kahn, a managing partner at Odyssey, said. “It’s unclear how much will
fundamentally change: There needs to be a big concerted effort to make a change.”