How to Get Into Private Equity: Paths, Pay and Odds

Most people get into private equity by spending two years as an investment banking or consulting analyst, then interviewing for associate roles, often more than a year before the start date. Associates at US buyout and growth firms averaged $220,000 in salary and bonus in the 2025-26 Holt-MM&K-Buyouts survey, and partners $885,300. Other routes exist: portfolio operations jobs, smaller funds, and running a search fund or a business you bought.

Private equity jobs pay well and are few, which is why the path into them is so narrow. The big firms hire most of their junior investors from a small pool of bank and consulting analysts, through a recruiting process that starts absurdly early and moves in days.

If you are not in that pool, the front door is mostly closed. The side doors are real, though, and several of them lead to owning part of a business, which is the point of private equity in the first place.

What do people in private equity actually do?

Junior investors (associates) build financial models, research industries, run due diligence with lawyers and accountants, and draft investment memos. More senior people (vice presidents, principals) manage deals and sit with portfolio company management. Partners raise money from investors, choose which deals to do and sit on boards.

Hours are long, especially when a deal is closing. The work is closer to the due diligence checklist and the financing guide in this series than to anything glamorous, just with more zeros.

How much does private equity pay?

The Holt-MM&K-Buyouts 2025-26 report surveyed 103 firms with data on 4,976 people. Averages for all buyout and growth equity firms in North America (Holt-MM&K-Buyouts executive summary):

Firm size matters. The same report says senior partners at buyout firms with $6 billion or more under management averaged $1,705,800 in salary and bonus, against $750,500 at small buyout firms. Carried interest comes on top for more senior people and can be worth more than everything else, but it is paid only when funds sell companies at a profit, often years later.

Pay growth has slowed. Heidrick & Struggles' 2025 survey of 656 professionals found half said their base increase was 10% or less, and three quarters said bonuses remained discretionary.

How does the traditional path work?

1. Get into a top undergraduate programme or a strong finance degree.
2. Win an investment banking or consulting analyst job. Large PE firms hire most associates from banking analyst classes.
3. Recruit for PE in your first year as an analyst. This is "on-cycle" recruiting: the big firms interview for associate roles that start a year or more later, all at once. In January 2026, Business Insider reported the process roared back after a roughly six-month pause, with firms hiring for 2027 associate roles and most interviews on a single day, January 5.
4. Work two or three years as an associate, then go to business school or get promoted.

Banks are pushing back. In 2025 JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon called early recruiting "unethical", and Apollo and General Atlantic stopped early recruiting for a time. Fortune reported Goldman Sachs asked analysts to certify every three months that they had not taken private equity offers. A JPMorgan memo said analysts who accept such offers early would be given notice. Even at the big firms, on-cycle is not everything: Apollo told Business Insider it fills less than 50% of its class that way.

What if you did not go to a target school or bank?

The side doors:

• Smaller funds. Lower middle market and regional funds recruit off-cycle, value industry knowledge, and hire accountants, lenders and operators. The pay is lower and the deals are smaller, but you see whole deals early.
• Portfolio operations. Firms hire operators to improve the companies they own: finance, pricing, sales, technology, procurement. A 2019 Heidrick & Struggles survey called the operating partner role "the fastest-growing position within the industry". If you are already good at running part of a business, this is the most direct way in.
• Work at a portfolio company. Finance and strategy jobs at PE-owned companies teach you how owners think, and firms often hire from them.
• Transaction services and lending. Quality of earnings work at an accounting firm, or acquisition lending at a bank, puts you on the other side of the same deals.
• Business school. An MBA from a school with strong PE recruiting resets the clock, at a high price.
• Search funds. Raise money to find and run one company. Stanford's 2024 study found 23% of recent searchers came from investment banking or finance, 16% from consulting and 12% from private equity. The search funds guide explains the economics.
• Buy a small business yourself. It is the same job at a smaller scale, and you keep most of the equity. Start with how to buy a small business.

What skills do firms test for?

• Financial modelling. Build a three-statement model and a buyout (LBO) model from scratch, quickly. Case tests in interviews often give you a few hours.
• Accounting. Read financial statements, adjust EBITDA, understand working capital.
• Judgement about businesses. Why does this company make money, what could break it, and what would you pay? Practise by writing a one-page view on a real company each week.
• Deal experience. Be ready to walk through every deal you worked on: your role, the price, the debt and what you would have done differently.

The business acquisition calculator is a simple version of the buyout maths: price, debt, cash flow, coverage and exit. If you can explain every line of it, you understand the core of an LBO.

Who should pursue it, and who should not?

The traditional path rewards people who want long hours in their twenties in exchange for high pay and a shot at a share of fund profits. It is a good fit if you enjoy analysis, can work under pressure for years, and are already near the pool firms hire from.

If what you really want is to own something, the job is a slow route there. Most PE professionals spend years investing other people's money before they have meaningful carry. Buying a small business, or joining one as an operator with equity, can get you to ownership sooner. It also comes with a personal guarantee, as the risks guide explains.

The full series starts at how to do private equity.

This is general information, not career, financial or legal advice. Pay figures are survey averages for North America from the sources and dates shown, and actual pay varies widely by firm, city and year.