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Private Equity Recruitment - advising on your investment in people

Generating deal flow- sourcing candidates

Due diligence - screening people

Getting the price right - reward packages

Portfolio management - retaining your people

For all your recruitment needs call Gail McManus, Managing Director on +44 (0)20 7747 7877 or send her an email

Recruiting the right people is like making the right investment decision. And just like an investment there is significant cost to getting it wrong and incredible upside if you get it right.

PER is founded and run by private equity investors. As private equity professionals ourselves we’ve brought private equity investment practices to the practice of recruitment, reward and retention of people.

There are precise parallels between investing in business and investing in people. The sourcing, due diligence and portfolio management of your investments is directly comparable to the recruitment, reward and retention of your team.

Generating deal flow – sourcing candidates

Before any investment can be made you need deal flow. You get this from your network of intermediaries, by getting to know good companies and from direct approaches. In order to build your deal flow you need to educate the market about the type of investment you find attractive and build a reputation that attracts the best opportunities. And it is exactly the same when recruiting.

PER is one of the leading intermediaries giving you access to the best people to invest in. We source our candidates from our network of contacts, from direct approaches and by identifying and building relationships with the best people. And exactly as is the case with your deal flow, there will often be competition for the best people, so it’s vital to be seen as an attractive company by your target candidate pool. As your adviser we can help you present yourself in the best way to attract the best talent.

"PER highlighted an issue that one of our less experienced interviewers was creating a poor impression with candidates. As a result we were able to coach the interviewer and resolve the problem. We value the open and honest relationship we have with PER that allows us to give feedback to each other in an open and constructive way and improve the effectiveness of the recruitment from both sides."

Leading International Private Equity Business

Just like the intermediaries who source deal flow for you, we’ll filter out the people that don’t meet your criteria. We can do this best when we know your firm. Our own private equity backgrounds mean we understand the subtleties and nuances between private equity firms, the types of investments that you support and the culture within your business. All of these factors play a part in our identification and screening of the right people for you.

At PER we’re constantly looking for those people whether they’re making their first move into the sector or developing an already established private equity career. We use technology to the full and through the web, social networking and web 2.0 networks are able to access people globally for our clients.

We’ll give you access to a steady flow of talent, filtering out the people that are not going to fit your criteria and focusing on those that are going to add value to your business. We’ll supply you with the best people from in the market at any one time.

"PER knows exactly the sort of people we like, both in terms of experience and personality. Our standards are exacting. I will always meet the people PER puts forward and am confident our criteria will be met."

Leading European Buy-out Firm

Due diligence – screening people

Before any investment you’ll want to do your due diligence and it’s the same when recruiting. We can advise you on how to balance subjective with objective assessment. We’ll always pinpoint the critical issues to explore with each candidate as well as highlighting the areas where they’ll add value quickly. We’ll design assessment processes and steer you towards appropriate objective tests such as modeling and case studies as well as psychometric profiling to help in the analysis.

"PER helpfully provided examples of modeling assessments that we could use in order to assess technical skills. The results gave us much more confidence in our hiring decision."

Independent Growth Capital Investment Firm

Before you make your final selection you’ll want to reference your choice externally. We can provide a third party perspective on the people you’re thinking of investing in, with informal comments from our network, as well as more formal referencing.

Getting the price right – reward packages

Like all investments it’s important to pay the right price – one that secures you the investment and allows you to make a return in the future. We’ll advise you on package and assist in negotiations, managing expectations between you and the person you’re considering bringing in to the team. Just like adding a business to your portfolio, you may sometimes need to pay a fuller price on entry in order to secure that person for the future. We can advise on market rates and regularly produce compensation reports for all levels and types of role.

"PER played an instrumental role in securing the candidate for us during the compensation discussions. PER was able to help the candidate understand the value of the long term incentives in the package and reassure them that the package on offer was market competitive."

Independent German Private Equity Firm

It’s also vital to ensure your team remains motivated by their compensation and we regularly help our clients benchmark compensation across the disciplines and levels within their business.

"I value the annual discussion I have with PER to set the base salary for each of my team. In this way I can be sure that I am paying market competitive rates and that I have consistency and appropriate differentials amongst the team members. This wider consultancy service is extremely helpful to us as a growing business."

Alternative Asset Manager and Sector Specialist

Portfolio management – retaining your people

In order to get the best out of your investment once your people are on board, a good induction process, regular assessment, feedback and development are essential. We regularly work with clients to help in setting up appraisal schemes, recommending consultants who can help or recruiting HR professionals on a full or part time basis. We also maintain a dialogue with you and the people that you have recruited through us. We encourage them to gain skills and experiences that will take them to partnership in the expectation that they will stay with you for the long term.

"PER did an excellent job of sourcing an experienced HR professional to work part time for our growing investment business, helping us professionalise our approach to the recruitment retention and reward of our people."

Leading Specialist Manager of Listed and Private Equity Funds

Getting it wrong

No matter how objective the recruitment process, occasionally the wrong person gets recruited. This is usually spotted early on. We’ll help you manage the situation and re-fill the position as part of our terms of engagement with you.

What we offer

We offer a consultancy service for the recruitment, retention and reward of private equity personnel. This includes investment professionals, investor relations and placement, financial control and HR. We use a combination of search and recruitment techniques to identify the most appropriate people at all levels throughout your organisation.

How we work together

By carefully scoping your needs we can advise on the most appropriate search route for any role and are confident in our ability to find the right people for you. As a result we charge our fees largely on a success basis with a non-refundable consultancy fee in some situations, perhaps where we need to produce detailed market maps or search for a highly specific set of experiences.

We offer