Is anyone still hiring in private equity?

Private equity is not an easy industry to break into. The Carlyle Group employ only 200 people in Europe and the Middle East and hire fewer than five additional juniors each year. Senior opportunities are equally rare - carried interest payments ensure that once in private equity, few people leave.

However, recruiters specialising in the private equity industry assure us there is hiring currently taking place, and that recruitment may even have picked up compared to 2009.

"Lots of people are recruiting," says Gail McManus at Private Equity Recruitment Ltd. "For the first time in around 12 months we're seeing something which could be described as growth - rather than merely replacement hires.

The apparent optimism comes on the back of a strong fourth quarter for both KKR and Blackstone, both of which reported better than expected results this week. After a dire few years when bank funding dried up, deal making is coming back. KKR and Blackstone announced a combined $221bn of deals in 2006; that fell to $11.3bn in 2009, according to Bloomberg.

The sheer weight of un-invested funds (estimated as high as $400bn across the private equity industry as a whole) means funds should do plenty of deals in the years to come - and ought therefore to need the services of ex-bankers.

However, David Howell, chief executive of recruitment firm EM Group, says there's little sign of this yet. "Funds increasingly want people who can fix things and unlock the embedded value in their assets," he says. "We're finding that they're more interested in ex-management consultants than former bankers."

But McManus says bankers are still popular and that management consulting types have always been sought after by funds in the mid-market: "It's a sweeping generalisation, but the big LBO funds tend to prefer investment bankers, the upper mid-market funds tend to like investment bankers and strategy consultants, and the mid-market and smaller funds tend to prefer accountants and due diligence professionals."

Funds currently recruiting in very small way are understood to include the likes of CVC, Permira, Isis, HG Capital, and Bridgepoint. Large funds like KKR are rumoured to be 'reviewing' their associate hiring with a view to coming back to the market later this year.