The race to poach freshly minted bankers from Wall Street’s biggest firms has finally reached its limit.

Private equity shops looking to fill out their 2024 associate classes were forced to do a second round of recruiting this year after initial efforts fell short, according to an analysis by recruiter Odyssey Search Partners.

Eager to beat competitors, many buyout shops started reaching out to banks’ first-year trainees just a few weeks after they began work in 2022. But the newly arrived dealmakers, dubbed analysts, weren’t quite ready to boast about their prowess. Some had yet to complete a single deal.

“Many of Wall Street’s prominent institutions were left with unfilled positions,” according to the Odyssey report. “From the perspective of many investment banking analysts, the acceleration of recruiting timelines has reduced their willingness and ability to participate.”

Private equity firms have long sought to lure away junior bankers from the likes of Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in a frantic process known in industry parlance as “on-cycle” recruiting. Over the past decade, buyout shops have tried to get an edge in landing top talent by starting earlier and earlier.

The process has always been a somewhat fraught one, with recent graduates discussing and agreeing to their future jobs while just beginning their first. Banks have occasionally tried to put limits around the hunt, but the buyout shops are often some of their biggest clients.

Back in 2010, private equity firms typically waited for junior bankers to soak up about 11 months of training before poaching efforts started. For the associate class of 2024, private equity giants began recruiting less than a month into their program. That was the earliest kickoff to on-cycle recruiting ever, Odyssey found.

“Many analysts during the on-cycle period in August 2022 held off,” the Odyssey report found. “To do well, bankers typically believe they should have closed at least one transaction in order to have material to discuss in interviews. The slower M&A environment has reduced their level of experience compared to that of prior classes.”

Offering ‘Workcations’

In a separate survey, Odyssey found alternative investment firms are divided over whether to offer more flexibility to work remotely this summer. Roughly half plan to keep their current polices in place.

Among those willing to loosen up, popular concepts include “workcations”: letting employees log on from anywhere for two or three weeks in the summer — or even for all of August, according to the survey.

“It’s refreshing that investment firms are allowing their employees to take a break from the traditional office setting during the summer,” Odyssey said. “Though most firms are back to the office on a hybrid model, the war for talent isn’t over, and firms are being concessionary.”