What Bain Capital Seeks in MBA Hires

Could you give us an overview of your MBA recruiting and interview process? What are the steps that students should expect? How can they make a good impression and stay on your radar?

We go to a variety of schools, but we’re a small team so we can’t go to every top school in the country. But we will accept resumes from any school. So if you’re interested in private equity and you have a great resume, we encourage people to send resumes to us. We post at a number of schools. Students submit their resumes for either particular summer internship postings or full time positions. From that list of people, we decide who we want to interview. On top of that, lots of people from schools where we don’t formally recruit send us resumes. And we literally look at every resume we receive.

It is a two stage process. The first round is typically two interviews. We do case-based interviews where you’ll be speaking with a member of our investment team about an investment that we might be considering or something that might be on your resume if you’ve worked in the industry or on a deal. Essentially, we’re trying to really evaluate a person’s investment judgment or business judgment and logical thinking around a particular problem. Typically, we are asking people to think about an industry or a particular investment and have a 30 minute conversation about that.

Our final round interview process involves 4-6 interviews. And one of the interviews is with me. My interview is completely leadership and behavior based. I’m asking people to answer, ‘Tell me about a time when you led a particular initiative.’ And I’ll get a variety of answers. After me, you’ll have 4-5 additional case-based interviews. Typically, we’ll fly people to our Boston office for that final round interview. There is no modeling component; no one is building a model on Excel – nothing of that nature.

In terms of staying on our radar, I really do think that the more people can prepare for the interview process and the more they talk to people here and understand our culture, they tend to do better in the process. I’m not saying that’s going to get them an offer, but it will surely make a good impression on us if people have done their homework and try to understand what the Bain Capital experience would be like.

Our interviews are like conversations. People find it very different from other firms that grill people on the technicals and ask if you know how the balance sheet works and throw five math questions at you. We’re really not doing that. What we’re trying to understand is if people have good business judgment, have ‘first step quickness’ and are logical thinkers. You might be talking about the airline industry – and you might never have worked in the industry or really even thought much about it.  But you can instantly engage on that topic because you are a good, structured, logical thinker and have good business judgment.

[Regarding case prep], I would recommend students not buy a book on case studies. Again, I go back to what I said earlier: Prepare with people who work here. A book may make someone look very, very canned if they come in with all kinds of frameworks. That’s not what we want. We want to understand how a person thinks, and have a good conversation.

What types of onboarding, training and ongoing support do you provide to incoming MBAs?

In the first couple weeks of your program, you’re going to have formal training. We don’t outsource any of our training; our people do all the training. It’s a two week global, pretty intense training program that you do here in Boston. After that, everyone goes out to their regions and has another week of specific regional training around office practices, different vertical industry assignments.

Secondly, we have what we call a “subject matter series.” This is something that we do throughout the post-business school years every couple of months for a day or maybe three hours. This training covers things like preparing for an IPO. It could be bringing our lawyers in to talk about legal issues that arise.

Informally, as I mentioned, we always provide post-deal feedback. I know in a lot of places you don’t get any feedback. At Bain Capital, we are definitely what I call a ‘feedback-rich, developmentally-oriented culture.’

The last thing that we do, and I see this as a differentiator, is coaching. A lot of firms won’t provide coaching until you’re at the Managing Director level.   Business school associates may come to me and ask to work with a coach on a particular issue. So we provide that service to our MBAs. It can be something as simple as, ‘I don’t know how to grab the attention of an audience’ or ‘I’m nervous speaking in front of a boardroom.’ Whatever it is, you’ll find we have a number of coaches who will work with you on particular issues. And I think that is a huge, huge advantage in helping someone improves early in their career.

When it comes to Bain Capital, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that students may have about your organization (and your industry)?

The biggest misconception is that we are huge and have hundreds of people in private equity. We are managing about $80 billion of assets across our five business units, but in private equity we have 60 people in North America, 45 people in Europe and about 55 people across our Asia operation. I don’t think that’s very big. But they are right in the sense that we are working on the most complicated and interesting global deals that are transformational. We are doing that, but we are doing it with lean and what I’d call relentless, hard-working diligence teams. Whenever I have that conversation with people, they say, ‘I never would’ve thought you were that size.’

What are your expectations for entry level MBAs? What are your most successful new hires doing to hit the ground running and quickly add value?

I love it when recruits ask me this question. The answer I’m going to give you is not typical. A lot of people think the expectation we have before they start is that they should go to a Wall Street course or read five or six books on the industry. And it’s none of the above.

Our expectation for your first year is that you can come in with a fantastic attitude. Be someone who is really willing to learn and is an excellent listener. This is an apprenticeship business so you’re going to have to soak it all up. We want someone who is really, really proactive. Be a team player and tell your manager when you’re hitting walls or having problems. Be someone who is willing to be exposed to a lot of different industries and investment styles. We really have what we call ‘a method to our magic.’

We offer a generalist experience for our recruits. They’re not just working in one industry. And my job, heading up professional development and staffing, is moving you around. We want to get you exposed to different people and different styles, industries, investment challenges, and issues, whether it’s a sale of an existing company, an IPO, or an acquisition of a business.

Try to look at your experience base after one year. We really want to make sure you hit a number of those different boxes. So the expectation we have for you coming in is that we’re going to listen to what you want to do. If you really want to do a retail deal, we’re going to definitely make that happen. But be someone who’s willing to move around and understand the importance of different experiences. If you do those things, after one year, we will be very happy with you. Obviously, the expectations rise as you continue with the firm. But the first year is a really, really heavy dose of listening and treating this like a massive training ground in your first year.