Febrile private equity hiring has turned feeble

In 2010, we understand there was a lot going on in terms of junior private equity recruitment. During the horrors of 2009 there was a near failure to hire anyone; last year, this was remedied with rapid remedial hiring at the junior end.

This year won't be quite the same.

"At the junior associate level, most of the hiring private equity funds were going to do has now been done," says David Howell, managing director at recruitment firm EM Consulting. "A lot of funds are fearing the wall of debt which needs to be refinanced in 2012-2013 and there's an unwillingness to do a lot of extra hiring at this stage."

"There was a peak in hiring last year because there was a bit of a backlog," explains Gill McManus at Private Equity Recruitment. "This year it will be a bit more normal."

The return to normality doesn't make the move from investment banking to private equity impossible. Logan Naidu at recruitment firm the Cornell Partnership says still lots going on.

"We're quite busy when it comes to analyst and associate level people," he says, encouragingly. "It's early days, but we've got quite a few mandates to find people with anything from two to six years' experience."

Later in the year, Howell is predicting demand for a different kind of beast. "Private equity funds' focus is going to turn to people with a leveraged finance or financial restructuring background," he predicts.