Business Insider highlighted 12 headhunting firms that excel at finding talent for the buy side.

• Competition among private equity firms and hedge funds for the best young talent on Wall Street is fierce.
• Many buy-side shops rely on specialized headhunting firms to help them identify and hire the most promising future dealmakers and traders. 
• Some of these gatekeepers have been recruiting for alternative-investment firms for decades, while others have materialized in recent years as trillions in capital have funneled into the strategies and increased demand. 
• Business Insider tapped its sources at investment firms, business schools, and the recruiting world to identify 12 of the top firms that private equity and hedge funds rely on to identify future Wall Street all-stars. 

Competition among alternative-asset managers for the best young talent is fierce. Whether it’s poaching from investment-banking analyst programs or more seasoned practitioners finishing up an MBA, private-equity firms, hedge funds, and other buy-side investors duke it out to ensure they’re landing top prospects to replenish their ranks and shore up their future generation of partners and portfolio managers.

As billions in capital continues to flock to these strategies, the recruiting gauntlet has grown ever more intense. Last year, private-equity firms started their 2021 class search by late summer, locking up 22-year-olds with only a few weeks of banking experience under their belts in the earliest recruiting blitz on record.

Privately, some recruiters have expressed to Business Insider a hope that the recruitment timeline may be delayed given the complications from the pandemic, including disjointed start dates, virtual training, and remote work — but they noted it was still too early to tell.

On the flipside, thousands of young Wall Street analysts with dreams of long and lucrative careers managing investments are vying for coveted positions at prestigious firms like Blackstone, Apollo Global, and Citadel.

Straddling the two worlds are the gatekeepers: A cadre of headhunting firms that specialize in the annual circus of interviewing and assessing aspiring dealmakers and traders and funneling the best of the bunch to their top buy-side clients.

Some boutiques have practiced this brand of Wall Street recruiting for as much as three decades, dating back to when it was truly a niche. But alternative asset classes have exploded — private equity and hedge funds alone had nearly $8 trillion in assets under management globally in 2019, according to Preqin — and other firms have emerged to help fill the need, in several cases with founders splitting off from old-guard practitioners to launch their own competitors.

Business Insider tapped its sources— including contacts at asset managers, business schools, and executive search firms — to identify 12 of the top firms that recruit budding front-office investors to the buy side. While some of these firms recruit at senior levels and for other industries as well, they each have robust businesses recruiting pre-MBA, MBA, and post-MBA employees.

Here are 12 headhunting firms to know if you want a career in alternative asset management — or if you’re an investment firm looking to connect with the most promising young standouts on Wall Street.

[Below is the section as it relates to Odyssey Search]

Anthony Keizner is a managing partner at Odyssey Search

Locations: New York

Staff size: 13

Odyssey Search Partners specializes in private equity and hedge fund searches running the gamut from pre-MBA candidates up through the most senior levels of the corporate hierarchy. The firm was founded by Adam Kahn in 2010. Kahn and Anthony Keizner are Odyssey’s managing partners.

“We narrowly focus on front-office professionals or investment professionals, with a big eye towards helping hedge fund and private-equity firms identify more diverse talent pools,” Keizner told Business Insider in an interview. “These professionals range from partners and portfolio managers at the top of the organizations through associates and analysts at the start of their careers.”

On its website, Odyssey reports having completed searches in 14 cities across the US, with 93% of those searches resulting in a filled position.

Article by: Alex Morrell

https://www.businessinsider.com/top-headhunting-firms-private-equity-hedge-funds-2020-8