Network your way into Real Estate Private Equity with Excellence

This is the detailed guide containing all the learnings from how I managed to network my way into Real Estate Private Equity.

Having been on both sides of the networking dynamic over many years, drop me a comment below and I will give you my advice.

Why networking is so effective in Real Estate

One of the great challenges of breaking into this industry for candidates can be that it is seen as opaque, with much less formal recruitment processes than other industries. This challenge however gives astute candidates a great opportunity to find a back-door in, where networking can have an out sized impact.

But exactly why is it that networking can be so significant in this industry? I think a few things are at play here:

1. Real Estate is a pretty fragmented industry, with a long tail of firms with a few hundred million assets under management. The consequence of this is that many, many firms do not have any internal resources to deal with hiring;
2. The industry itself is so relationship driven in terms of how deals come about and are executed, it is impossible for this not to bleed over into recruitment as well;
3. Many people in the industry have come from all sorts of different academic, professional and personal backgrounds. I think this makes them more open to recruitment from more alternative channels.

These three key points then lead to three things to have in mind when approaching networking:

1. You need to cast a wide net in order to mine this long tail of firms;
2. You need to not be purely transactional in your approach. A given relationship should not be treated like something that needs to yield an instantaneous (or indeed ever) return;
3. Where possible, you need to hone in on what makes you unique but what overlaps with the person you are networking with.

How to identify firms / people to approach

Identifying Firms

The first and most obvious place to make reference to is the famous PERE100. This is a list containing a ranking globally of firms, that have raised the most closed-end value-add or opportunistic capital over the past five years.

However, the PERE100 is not perfect:

• When approaching networking, the PERE100 may not have a lot of companies in the cities you are looking to work in. If you are in London / New York / Chicago or Singapore, perhaps you have a bit of choice, but once you are going out of these cities, limiting yourself to this list is obviously absurd (even in these cities it is absurd btw);
• The scope of the PERE100 is quite narrow. It excludes open ended funds, balance sheet investors, sovereign wealth funds (GIC and ADIA are some of the largest and highest profile real estate investors in many markets), family offices (Family office of Armancio Ortega is a huge real estate investor) and funds with core / core-plus strategies. It is also naturally going to bias against firms that are newer and don’t have a full five years of fund raising track record.

Here is the good news, undertaking this type of research to find additional firms to reach out to is exactly the sort of thing that is involved in working in a real estate investment role. Here are some places to start:

• The same publication of the PERE100 also does a list of the Top 150 Real Estate Investment Managers. This has some overlap, but broadens the scope a little to introduce some more firms to your list;
• Another invaluable resource is the “Research” or “Articles” sections of the major brokerage houses, where you will often find major quarterly transactions and who the counter-parties are. As a starting point, below are some examples but all major brokerage houses will do this:
  • CBRE Insights & Research
  • Cushman & Wakefield Insights
  • JLL Research
• If you are based in a regional market, another good idea is to use google to search the market name and transactions. When google searching, if you include search terms in double quotes, it will only give you results that include those terms. For example – “Florida” “Logistics” “Transactions”. Another useful tip is that you can restrict the time frame of the search results, to limit to only transactions that have taken place say in the past year (so you know the firm is active!).

identifying Who to reach out to

When looking for someone at the particular firm to reach out to, the general principle I would follow the more senior the better. That way, if they actually have the time and speak to you, then they are more likely to have decision making power to offer you a job. If they don’t have the time, often someone in their team will be directed to follow with you.

Obviously this needs to be taken with some good judgement here. Stephen Schwarzman is not the right person to reach out to, as it needs to be someone who has some part of their job that is impacted by an individual analyst / associate being hired. I think typically an MD or VP level is appropriate, but if it is a boutique firm, the CEO / Founder may be ok as well.

Also to note here – do not reach out to multiple people at the same firm at the same time. It is just too awkward to be talking to multiple people in the same team, and comes across as too spammy. Having said that, if you don’t get a response from someone for say, 2 months, then feel free to reach out to someone else on the same team.

The next name of the game here is finding someone you have something in common with:

• In the best case, you get an intro from someone you already know. This has got a significantly higher strike rate than anything else;
• Someone who attended the same university / college as you, perhaps with the same major or same sports played;
• If you are in a major city, but are from a smaller city (or indeed another country), reaching out to people from the same place can be another point of connection.

These are just some ideas, but the point is, some point of connection can help to warm a cold email / message somewhat.

And then finally, you have to remember, a lot of these people you are reaching out to are busy. You most certainly should not take it personally if you don’t get a response. The conclusion of this is, you need to reach out to a lot of people for this networking strategy to pay off (again not from the same firm).

The above is theoretical, but I can hear you asking, how do I actually find these people?? Well here is where the LinkedIn search function is your friend.

You can see here how to use the search filters on LinkedIn, but here is what I would do. I would, start with the following:

• Use the keyword “Real Estate”. This helps to narrow down when your search includes large firms with many departments and divisions;
• Then include the “currently works at” filter, and fill in with all of your target firms. I suggest you do this on the desktop version, as if you have followed this guide so far, this is probably going to be in the dozens of firms;
• I would then play with other filters to help narrow down some “commonality”. The most obvious one would be to filter on attending the same university / college that you did, but you may also filter by mutual connections or previous places of work for example.

Now that you have identified who you are going to cold reach out to, the next step is, you want to try and do this by email and not by LinkedIn. This is not easy, and may require some luck to work out / find their work email, but the benefit of this is, it will make it much easier for them to forward internally and is less likely to be ignored. This can be a long shot though, so don’t be too disheartened if you have to revert to LinkedIn Mail.

Opening message template (what to say?)

What is the outcome you are hoping for when reaching out to someone? I think there are three outcomes (in order of desirability):

1. The first and best outcome is that the firm is actively recruiting, and reaching out results in you getting an informal interview that places you in a live recruitment process;
2. The firm is not actively recruiting, but it is a firm you want to apply for, and so you want a connection to mention in your interview (when that comes about) that you have spoken to;
3. You are genuinely interested to understand more about the firm, as there isn’t much information available online, and/or you want to speak to this individual person about the industry, the career etc.

But here is the thing, everyone can read between the lines that if you are reaching out, you want a job. But there is an unwritten rule here that it probably isn’t something you say in your opening message. Essentially, the message needs to always come from the place of point 3 above – you want to learn more about the company that they work for, or you want more general advise about careers in the industry.

Overall, it needs to be short and to the point.

Dear [x],

I hope you are well.

My name is [x] and I [study / am currently studying] [x] at [x].

[If you have a point of commonality, mention it here].

I am interested in pursuing a career in real estate investment, and was wondering if you could spare some time to discuss your career and any advice that you have.

Kind regards,

[x]

Unlike after an interview, I don’t really recommend pushing too hard here if you don’t get a response. If I don’t get a response, I would drop another message after two weeks, but that is it. I would then leave this person be.

Important to note here – you need your LinkedIn profile to be up to date and optimized. If a team is actively recruiting, your LinkedIn profile will be like a stand in CV for them to take a look at to see whether it is worth their time speaking to you.

Informational Interviews – What they are and what to do?

What is dubbed by some as the informational interview is what you are aiming for when reaching out to people. The opportunity to interview the person, to understand more about their firm, their role or their career.

Any managing direct at a real estate fund with exposure to western office markets is going to be a firm advocate of the return to the office due to the benefits of in person meetings. Ideally you want to do this in person, as any relationship formed is going to be multiple times stronger than if it is over the phone. This is pretty simple, you go somewhere near their office and get a coffee. However, it might be challenging to arrange, in which case, do it over a call.

You want to be attentive and listen to the person, and ask them the questions that you have, for example:

• Can you tell me a bit about [a deal that you have researched before the meeting that they have worked on]?
• What is the culture like at your firm?
• What sectors are you currently focused on?

If things are going your way however, the tables may quickly turn, and you become the one answering questions. This is a good thing, as you are now being interviewed, and you may just manage to land a job out of it. Check out my interview guide to make sure you are prepared…

And that is it – good luck.

I have been on both sides as both applicant and candidate here, so leave a comment and I can give some advice.