What Bain Capital Seeks in MBA Hires

What advice would you give to students who have their hearts set on working for you? How can they enhance their job prospects?

The number one thing is to network with people who are in the industry, but also more particularly at Bain Capital. I find that the people who do well are those who – over the course of 2-4 years – are trying to get to know people at Bain Capital. They end up at Harvard Business School, Wharton or Stanford Business School and (sure enough when they are reaching out to me) they’ve already found a way to talk to five or six people here.

What does that do? At the end of the day, our culture is a huge differentiator. And a lot of students self-select at a different firm. But the way to prepare to do really well in the interview process is to get to know the culture. It could also be a hometown, friends, or someone you met at a conference. Any way you can network – I find the people who are well-prepared have done a fair amount of that.

The second way, I would say, is to practice. We have an interview process that is very case-based. A lot of private equity firms give people a four hour model and they have to do a lot of technical analysis. Our process is not like that. It feels more similar to a consulting firm in the sense that you’re going to have a number of cases where we’re really trying to evaluate your judgment and have a conversation with you asking, “Do you think X company would be a good investment? Why or why or not?” So to prepare is really critical. Students will be sitting with people from Bain Capital from both their business school sections and maybe their home states or countries. But if you can find a way to practice with people here and get a feel for what that process is like, I think that puts you on a really solid footing in our recruiting process. It’s pretty intense.

What is it about the culture at Bain Capital that is different and that students should understand?

We find that our culture is a huge differentiator in the industry and is very unique. Our heritage comes from a consulting firm Bain & Company, so there has always been a professional development mindset and a professional services firm mentality at Bain Capital. And I contrast that with a number of other firms where the heritage is investment banking and the Wall Street world. So we’ve always been very different and I think the value of having someone spending a lot of time getting to know the culture of the firm – I can’t underestimate how important that is.

The core tenets are, first-and-foremost, we operate with very high moral integrity and transparency. That is something, time-and-time again, all of our people at Bain Capital say we do every day on every deal in every interaction. Second, we very much have a one team attitude that is really grounded in trust, respect, and accountability. And that one team attitude prevails across everything we do at Bain Capital. There’s very close collaboration, and a notion here that you don’t succeed unless your partner is succeeding. And I think that has been consistent for the past 30 years and really embedded in our culture. Another aspect of our culture is that we look for people who are very creative, intellectually curious, and tenacious. They’re not willing to give up; they are showing that kind of drive and ambition from an early age. Finally, we are very humble. We’re very passionate and committed in everything we do, both inside and outside of work. Family-life balance is a differentiator for our firm. That is very important to all of our people. So those are the things that make our culture very, very unique.

Recruiting can be a two-way street. What has Bain Capital done to make itself more appealing to MBA candidates? (i.e. new initiatives being rolled out)

I think the things that make us most appealing when MBA candidates come in is our mentorship, professional development, and training process. Again, coming from consulting heritage, these are things that are very important to us and have been instilled in the firm since our founding 30 years ago. So let me describe a few of them.

First, our mentorship program: We take mentorship very, very seriously. You don’t just receive a mentor when you start working here for the first month. We have principals being promoted to Managing Director who are still working with the same mentor. They still go to lunch once a month or have coffee every four to six weeks with their mentor. When you come into Bain Capital, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out who would be a great match. So we do that over the course of the first month or two that you’re here. And It could be based on industry or having a similar background. It could be based on being around someone you aspire to be like or really like this person’s investment style. So we attach you to this person as a formal mentor. And that starts a very close relationship. I think in today’s world that mentorship is really very important for MBA students. And not everyone does it – and some that do it don’t do it very well. It might be something some firms only do for 3-4 months. We’re committed to our mentorship program long-term.

Second is our review process: We always tell MBA students not to accept an offer until they ask the firm you’re going to work for, ‘What can you tell me about the review process? How is review process run? How serious is the firm about the review process? And when can I expect to receive reviews?’ So those are some things that really differentiate at Bain Capital. In addition to the formal mentor I just mentioned, you also have what we call a ”consensus reviewer”– someone who is going to be responsible for your development throughout your time here at Bain Capital. We view the relationship as a triangle between the recruit, a mentor, and the consensus reviewer. Those three people work very closely with my team to make sure [that] someone is getting all the opportunities that he or she needs to develop as a successful investor.

We do our formal review process twice a year. We spend a lot of time on it. There is no other firm that spends as much time as we do [on reviews]. You get a very thorough report on how you’re doing and what you need to focus on to improve. So we’re very focused on the development part of it: ‘How do you get to the next phase? How can you be the next better version of yourself?’ (That’s a common phrase that we use around here.)

The other thing that we do, outside of those formal twice-a-year processes, is you’re getting informal feedback after every deal you work on. And that’s just part of our culture. It could be a two week assignment or it could be a six week assignment. After the assignment, you’re getting instant feedback from the person leading the effort. And that helps you get to that next level. When MBA recruits hear how thorough our process is and how much time we spend, it makes our program more appealing to them.

If an MBA was weighing an offer from Bain Capital and another firm, what would give you the edge?

Hands down, it’s our culture and our people. It’s the number one thing that everyone says. Unlike many other firms, we don’t believe in trying to get recruits to sign on to their offers quickly. We actually tell recruits, ‘Take as much time as you want.’ We encourage you to get to know people at Bain Capital, to come in for a day and meet people they’ve never met before.

And hands down, over my nine years at Bain Capital, people come back, time-and-time again when they’ve had competing offers, they say, ‘I love the people, I love the culture at Bain Capital. And that’s the number one reason why I’m accepting an offer at your firm.’ At the end of the day, folks are going to work really hard in this industry. So you want to be doing it in a place where you enjoy the people, not to mention all of the professional development, coaching, and training we do.

This is an apprenticeship industry, and we really take that to heart. We have to train these people to be well-rounded investors. So I always say to people, “Take as much time as you need because if you do your homework and your diligence, you’ll realize how much time we spend on development, mentorship and training and how critical we think they are. And don’t go to a firm that doesn’t spend a lot of time on these issues. So when there’s a competing offer, and people do their homework, this gets us the win at the end of the day.