A career in private equity often conjures up images of high-stakes dealmaking, billion-dollar buyouts, and sharply dressed financiers turning companies around. According to Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire cofounder of Blackstone, it also means embracing change.
In a June 4 talk with the firm’s 170-plus interns, the firm’s CEO and chairman suggested its summer trainees learn to go with the flow if they really want to make it in the fast-changing world of Wall Street.
It’s an industry where “nothing ever stays the same,” Schwarzman said, according to a Blackstone spokesperson. “So if you have a mind and a curiosity that fits with that kind of world – constant new things, new learning – then you’ve come to the right place.”
Schwarzman made the comments from a conference room at the firm’s 345 Park Avenue Manhattan headquarters while speaking to Paige Ross, the firm’s head of global human resources, in front of dozens of interns. (Interns from some of the 14 other global locations watched a video recording later and London interns got a visit from Schwarzman last week, a spokesperson said.)
He told them that his objective was to give them a sense of what it’s like at Blackstone — “and in a broader sense, what it is like to be in finance.” He added: “It’s not a black box. It’s infinitely accessible. It’s a great way to spend a career,” he said. It means coming into contact with “high-quality people” and “fascinating stuff.”
The remarks come at a time of sweeping changes for an industry that long relied on rock-bottom interest rates to buy companies on the cheap. Now, private equity returns are more likely to come from transforming a company’s operations than from financial engineering.
The yearslong slowdown in deal flow has some declaring the golden age of private equity to be over. In fact, many of the biggest buyout firms, including Blackstone, now focus more on private lending than corporate buyouts.
Shifting hiring practices
This summer, Blackstone is hosting more than 170 interns, up from more than 150 last year. The class is made up of both college students (summer analysts) and graduate students (summer associates) who will be trained in the world of dealmaking.
A spokesperson said the summer analyst program is the firm’s main source of talent for its full-time analysts, but declined to comment on how many analysts it might hire out of colleges this year. Last year, the firm accepted just 0.3% of applicants to its analyst class, an acceptance rate that is more than 10 times that of Harvard.
Hiring undergrads is not new to Blackstone — Schwarzman’s heir and firm President Jon Gray famously got his start as an analyst. Campus recruiting has become a bigger focus, however, with Ross telling the Wall Street Journal in 2020 that the firm was building out its campus recruiting efforts and stepping back from recruiting junior investment bankers via an annual tradition known as on-cycle recruiting.
The firm now recruits from over 1000 schools, up from just 9 in 2015.
It’s also pushed its associate recruiting process later than many competitors to give junior bankers more time to develop skills and an understanding of the industry before assessing whether they might be a good fit for Blackstone.
“Blackstone recruits from banks but does so on our own timeline and only after candidates have experience,” Ross told BI. “We want to allow candidates time to learn about Blackstone and acquire skills. We will continue to provide educational opportunities to support that.”
Blackstone’s head of campus recruiting, Taylor Kanfer, told BI that the firm’s summer internship program begins with an orientation week, followed by three weeks of technical,business-specific training. Then, analysts are separated into their specific groups to do more training.
A select group of summer interns will also get the chance to go on a run with Gray this summer, who has turned his love of running into a series of social media videos.
In his June 4 talk, Schwarzman acknowledged the difficulty involved in landing a job at the firm, telling students they should give themselves a pat on the back just for landing the internship.
“The world is your oyster. You’ve got an enormous capability, you’ve got the energy,” he said. “You made it through our process. So, you’re somebody that’s special.”
