Are Vista Juniors the Worst in all of PE?
We have interviewed 4 juniors from Vista over the past few years, all of whom have been among the most incompetent people I've interviewed. It's honestly shocking. I was blown away by some of the things they were saying / what they weren't able to do -- modeling, basic finance knowledge, SW basics & SW trends, process etc.
I worked in PE several years ago and didn't have anyone from my banking class exit to Vista, but is this consensus today / does this not come as a surprise to many of you? Is it because they don't do deals / don't get modeling reps in? I just found it really surprising that the 4 left-tail interviews came from this one firm...what are they doing over there???
Yes - you’re not the only one who feels that way LOL.
I love how the first 3 comments on this post are evenly distributed with 5 monkey shits at the time of writing this. 5 unhappy vista juniors lurking in the thread at this moment lol.
Edit: The 'diversity' comments on this thread are getting insane damn
Interviewed an analyst from there for an ASO role and talked to another through a networking call, both <2 years in the role and they were surprisingly unknowledgeable. No idea what they're doing to train juniors over there and maybe I just got bad picks from the litter, but it didn't seem great from those interactions and made me not feel as bad about not getting in from undergrad... The ASO/VPs I've spoken to all seemed sharp so I'm curious what metamorphosis happens in the interim years or if I just got bottom bucket kids who have somehow gotten 0 exposure.
Edit: well gee golly we're not allowed to talk badly about analysts now?
Having also interviewed a Vista candidate, albeit associate level, who on paper had done a bunch of deals (platform + addons), I think it comes down to a few things:
Those 4 interviews were just mind boggling. It's really sad. Do they purposefully hire people with zero finance background, and then deprive them of experiences to get better? Especially sad when I compare them to juniors at other firms. HH won't be making that mistake again.
You want the honest answer? They look for "diverse" candidates. In interviews, they barely ask technicals. Literally the only way you can even get an interview there is through SEO or some diverse program. In other words, the junior talent there is terrible because they don't interview kids on merit. I know the kids who have interned there and what I am saying is 100% accurate. Too much focus on prestige, diversity, and behaviorals.
Hilarious I'm getting downvoted for this. I know everything about their juniors, including the story about the kid this past summer
You're getting downvoted because anon An2 with a "I know a guy" story about diversity and prestige is just old and tired at this point. At least get creative.
A kid faked diversity this past summer (got in via SEO - literally did not anything about finance) - got sent home early.....you can downvote me all you want but there's a reason only 1/4 of the incoming kids know their stuff
I think there is a lot of both true information and pure information on this thread. As someone who has worked very closely with a friend from Vista (and Vista in general) who has seen a few classes of juniors, I’ll share my thoughts.
First, to clarify what I believe “juniors” refers to on this thread, it is the analysts. As someone mentioned above, the ASOs/VPs and up are incredibly sharp, which has been quite true in my experience.
First, I do not agree with most of Principal in VC’s points above. Analyst competence is not derived from or affected by Vista’s culture (which is honestly good, especially for MF PE), IC is definitely not just a formality - no investment firm reaches $100B and 30% IRRs with “fake ICs”, and yes, most of the modeling is done by 2Y Analysts and ASOs, but the complex modeling/structures is not what actually develops the critical thinking skills. I’d argue that the analysts develop better critical thinking skills as the ones extremely close and responsible for the data, and it’s actually the ASOs who are the “cogs” who can just model out somewhat brainlessly. Side note - the ASOs who were former analysts are almost always the very sharp ones, and the same logic applies and amplifies for every level above.
Next, onto the big reason - recruiting. Any IB/PE firm, Vista included, recruits candidates with profiles based on the following: (1) diversity, (2) “standard”, (3) nepotism. #3 is obviously also paired with 1 or 2.
Sadly, I would have to agree on some of the points Analyst 2 in IB - Cov makes above. They have an extremely diversity-heavy junior class - way more (1)s + (3)s than 2s. I’ve found that in any analyst class, just about all of the (2)’s are incredibly smart and talented - the types of profiles who Vista (and any firm) should fill their entire class with, and definitely had offers at top IB and maybe even other PE firms. The (1)’s is what starts to fuck stuff up, honestly. Many of them are bad and get cut after even just the summer analyst program, but if you compare the raw (1)s to the (2)s - it’s not even close. You have T10 universities, valedictorians, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude, top school club officers vs. standard finance kids at best.
This stems a lot from the interview process - the (1)s from what I’ve heard get absolute softballs and little-to-no technicals, whereas the (2)s get absolutely demolished, which is honestly what a MF PE interview should be like, regardless of background. There is also something very strange with the initial rounds of the recruiting process. When I was younger and personally knew my school’s college sophomores who would be a phenomenal fit and competent at Vista, many of them would get rejected after the CCAT, and then I’d hear through the grapevine that some kid I’ve never heard of, not even involved in any clubs, gets a first round interview. Bottom line, I don’t think there’s a shortage of talent in the pipeline - Vista can 100% fill their entire class with Ivy League / GS kids if they wanted, I just clearly think at some point, a reasonable amount of “wrong candidates” are chosen year over year.
Obviously correlation does not imply causation, and take any of my points as you will, just my observations. I would encourage you to take a look at the background of the 4 kids you interviewed - I don’t think it’s just a Vista thing at all, but having a “brand name” does not imply someone is competent at all. It is a very good indicator many times, but from personal experience, there are definitely morons that slip through the cracks at everywhere from Centerview/GS to BX/KKR, and Vista is no exception. Who knows, maybe the 4 you interviewed were just 4 of those duds, because I can personally name 4 Vista analysts who could ace a PE/HF on-cycle interview right now.
Overall, when you think about it like this, Vista is partially a winner as well. They are very well known for being a MF PE firm with arguably the best upward mobility, Bain Cap and WP are the only ones who are even close in that regard. And if a majority of your analyst class is not competent to make it to the next level, or at least realize they can’t and leave beforehand, well that makes promotions nearly automatic for the competent ones, hence why I think the ASOs/VPs and up are all sharp - the “fat” was cut before that level.
Bottom line though, I would not call Vista juniors the “worst in all of PE” - that is a bit ridiculous. It’s unfortunate you had 4 poor interviews, but I know of plenty of Vista analysts who had also received offers from Silver Lake, GS TMT, other top IB/PE - and it would be ridiculous to call any of them the “worst in all of PE” just because it seems some of their class is incompetent.
Promise this is the last thing: It seems like Vista gets a lot of shit on WSO, and I’m not entirely sure why. I wouldn’t let something like this detract from Vista at all - there are still hundreds of IB analysts who would sell their soul for a seat at Vista, and “junior class competence” won’t detract from all the great parts of Vista - culture, returns, promotion visibility, learning experience at the top software investor in the world (only TB can rival that experience), pay, benefits and more. I hope one day they fix their recruiting, but as long as they are still an attractive firm for these hundreds of analysts to work for (I doubt they will ever not be), why would they change - anything to keep the LPs happy after all.
can confirm
I think it's worth pointing out that the poor quality of the (1) analysts can bleed into the overall analyst experience as well. PE analyst is a tough job because it requires difficult, high-context tasks from kids who have little experience to draw on. It's already a challenge to get analysts materially involved in a deal process in a firm where analysts are broadly trusted and their abilities are reliable. Senior and mid-level people at places like WP or Bain have years of experience working with fresh analysts and many were analysts themselves, so the culture runs deep. I can see why it would be tough to get the same level of experience and investment from more senior folks at a firm where analyst quality is bimodal.
I mean, eventually folks will figure out who are the sharp analysts and who sucks, but this process takes a while and is reset whenever an analyst works with someone new.
Also, agreed on the CCAT process. This is very highly weighted and leads to some weird outcomes like cracked candidates with golden resumes not getting first rounds and mid candidates who guessed a few more questions right on their CCAT and memorized a bunch of SaaS metrics getting offers. I understand the logic of finding "undiscovered gem" candidates with intellectual horsepower, but in my experience a 10 minute IQ test is an extremely noisy way to do it
Do lateral associates take the CCAT?
Great summary. It may come as no surprise that the analyst I interviewed was a 1 (and gave off some 3 vibes). Makes total sense and perhaps that's why they were interviewing around in the first place re fat getting cut before promotions. I know damn well they have tons of top tier talent which is why it was so outside my expectations.
Lol some salty vista juniors handing out MS like candy over here
Look it is what it is. I'm done wasting time interviewing people from there, and HHs / friends at other funds have been made aware of how bad it's been. It's almost comical how bad they were
I might be playing a clear devils advocate here, but let’s step back and be realistic here. I’ve worked with several headhunters (both as a recruiter and as someone getting recruited) throughout my finance career.
Just because a few candidates did very poorly (at least how you are describing it) almost definitely does not mean that firm’s analysts will be totally blacklisted from the HHs or anything like that. This applies for Vista, GS, Blackstone, whatever. Do you really think there haven’t been 10-20+ terribly incompetent candidates from JPMorgan/other IB each year in the buyside recruiting processes? Are any HHs going to blacklist JPM - no.
HHs evaluate each candidate, even those at the same firm, on a highly individual basis, which especially in this case, may even favor the (2)’s, or the sharp analysts as mentioned above.
I am assuming you are recruiting for your HF based on your title. Some of these “cracked” analysts from the past years at Vista (when the analyst program was arguably very new and less built up than it is now) have exited and been promoted through the ranks of places like Coatue, Dragoneer, Citadel, one even just left Lone Pine, and more.
The good analysts are certsinly capable of doing what it takes, and yes, it is unfortunate that Vista analysts seem to have a completely bimodal talent pool according to the thread. The biggest thing from my experience is that this problem becomes exacerbated because of how bimodal it is. When you have the 5-6 sharp analysts realize that they are great relative to the rest of their class, and are almost guaranteed to be promoted - they’re not the one’s recruiting. They are going to stick at Vista and keep raking in the MF PE money and carry because they know they’re better than their peers. Hence why the ASOs/SrASOs/VPs are quite sharp. Hence do the math and guess what analysts that leaves for outside recruiting, for the most part at least.
Recruiters just have to make sure you’re recruiting candidates from the correct side of that talent pool, no matter what firm or role.
Vista is very generous with upward mobility up to senior associate level. If you are interviewing juniors below that you are likely seeing a pool over-represented with lower performers.
As far as diversity programs, I promise you are overestimating how diverse Vista is - the handful of people being given a hand up in overly prestige obsessed industry are not defining the quality of a $100B megafund. Building models are not the intellectual feat you all seem to think they are.
I don't think you understand how big of role diversity plays for their incoming summers...
let’s just say I know EXACTLY how diverse the summer class is and also EXACTLY how much brainpower it takes to build a model. You don’t need a Physics PhD.
It’s extremely telling that people on this forum glorify building a deal model as if it’s something hard. First couple are hard as anything new is, but after that it’s dead simple.
To be perfectly frank - the reality is that very little in PE is intellectually difficult.
Oh and btw… I also know EXACTLY who the top rated Analyst (now Associate) was last year. He was a “diversity” hire.
Clearly you didn’t read OPs comment - I don’t think he mentioned anything related to race. He just seemed disappointed with the juniors from Vista…let’s not make this seem any different.
I would love to hear the backgrounds (“1” vs “2”) of the Vista juniors interviewed by OP. Private Techquity GME above already admitted who he interviewed, and that top comment’s logic makes perfect sense.
I’m not shitting on the firm - it’s Vista fucking Equity Partners after all. It’s just extremely extremely strange how certain juniors are not as competent as some of the others who are highly competent, and coincidentally, Vista’s recruiting processes definitely results in some poorer quality candidates, who also happen to fit under the (1) bucket.
It’s not all juniors at Vista, clearly. The sharpest analysts end up being the best senior employees. There is no doubt there are some other behind the scenes factors at play in their recruiting resulting in these adverse outcomes, and OP had a few of those bad apples when recruiting for his firm, hence why he started this rather inappropriate (now at least) thread.
This is pretty much what every thread on WSO devolves into.
New to this thread, not reading about any bullshit about diversity and nepotism.
Vista is an elite private equity firm, I see 33 comments on this thread and I bet every fucking user here (most if not all are probably college sophs up to analysts arguing under disguise) would sign on the spot if offered an associate role there.
If you’re a candidate who wants to do tech investing, certainly in private markets, this is the best role you can get, hands down. Thank god I haven’t seen any IB analyst comparisons to the program on the thread, yet.
Quit complaining about a few kids bombing a hedge fund interview, and it’s extremely pathetic to keep trying to attribute them to certain “profiles”. Maybe the Vista analyst program doesn’t translate well to certain hedge fund interviews, but they’ve got former analysts at all kids of top hedge funds, so obviously not a blanket statement that it doesn’t translate well. And it goes without saying that if you want to stick on the private/PE side, you’re pretty much in the best seat possible. Only Thoma SL H&F can compare, but culture and promotion at those shops is hell compared to a place like Vista.
This is a pretty sad thread overall.
OP here - not sure who brought race / minorities into the equation here, but just to very clear, I AM an URM myself…so obviously that has nothing to do this post. If you couldn’t tell from my initial post, I didn’t mention anything remotely related to race, because to be honest, I just don’t care and it doesn’t matter.
And to the moron who pointed out Vista founder also being a URM, guess you’re not able to realize that URM founder and worst-in-class juniors (analysts and associates…SKILLS WISE) can be MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE EVENTS.
Good lord. For the remainder of this thread, please do not mention race / diversity / minorities — no one cares and no one is talking about that. I am purely talking from a skills, experience, knowledge perspective. It has been made abundantly clear to me that Vista juniors are miles behind juniors at other firms (many of whom are also URM for that matter…). Abundantly clear. And many of my HF friends have had very similar experiences.
Just curious - miles behind in what way?
I'm sure in HF recruiting (which you seem to be), yes, the Vista analysts fall behind the Blackstone, KKR, and Warburg folks in terms of recruiting. It's hard to come to that same level (without any outside work) in a software-PE only environment.
But "miles behind" in only a HF sense is .... fine? Take a complete flip side of the coin, and if we talk about tech PE/GE/VC recruiting - Vista analysts come out miles ahead? Definitely relative to your general BCP,KKR,Bain Cap analysts.
I'm just trying to understand the full picture here before further accusations get thrown out. I don't think it really matters if Vista analysts are 50 light years behind a Blackstone analyst for HF ... if they want to stay in tech PE.
Not trying to add any more fuel to the fire, just want to clarify things.
Wasn't you. Just the typical "diversity stole our spot" shitheads running their mouths and the ultra reactionaries hitting back.
imagine thinking there's no advantage
Dude, there's no way you're a hedge fund analyst and can't predict something as obvious as WSO users bringing up race/diversity/minorities any time underperformance is mentioned. Especially when the founder himself is a minority, which will naturally support WSO users' confirmation bias regarding diversity.
Let me paint you a picture of what I believe the average WSO dweller is like.
To preface this, I am a non-diverse Harvard alum and I didn't even create a WSO account nor really use the website until I was An analyst. Why, you may ask? Well frankly, I didn't need to. Seniors were extremely helpful when guiding me through recruiting, pretty much giving me a complete plan to land a role in a BB/EB. On top of that, I had the opportunity of networking with an obscene amount of Harvard alum already in the field, some of whom gave me the actual rundown of the top groups, best culture, super day advice etc. (Also, I am from a middle-class background)
Now let's take the average IB applicant and let's call him Tim. Tim is also from a middle-class background and goes to a random state school, let's say Mississippi State. Tim wants the same insights I had in regard to recruiting, but he has no seniors to help him. Even if some have full-time offers, there are too few to equally distribute their knowledge to juniors. So what can Tim do here? Well, he obviously has to get an insight into how to even submit a competitive application so he creates a WSO account, searching for threads related to anything to do with ib recruiting. Feeling more prepared now with his resume ready to send off, he remembers one key point about recruiting and that was the networking aspect. So like me, he looks on LinkedIn for all of his college alum at Goldman Sachs IBD. His search results yield him a whopping 0 results. He repeats this process with Evercore and then CVP and then Morgan Stanley and so on and so forth. His results again, yield nothing. Even if he went to a slightly better college, he would probably be still seeing less than a handful in each BB/EB on average anyways. So with a sheer lack of people to network with he has resorted once more to WSO to learn about the culture and unique insights into firms. Using all of his acquired knowledge and having truly tried his hardest he shoots all his shots for iB anyways. He ends up striking out on all his BB/EB apps and is now going to be interning at a LMM then consequently at a MM boutique. During this time, as a young kid who hasn't even had his prefrontal cortex developed yet, Tim is so disappointed in himself to the extent he is angry. Tim Occasionally sees the successes of others on LinkedIn 'Tyrone Marquis, SemiTarget - I am thrilled to announce I will be joining goldman sachs as an investment banking summer analyst'. Tims's initial thought before linkedin was that goldman was secured for the kids of the ultra wealthy, almost exclusively from HYSWP and maybe if they were getting diversity hires they would be from Cornell or Dartmouth. So when he see's a few of these 'Tyrones' he starts to get visibly infuriated. Some of the times its to the extent where they actually start commenting on WSO now pretty much insinuating every black kid that gets in is a diversity hire. Hey, they may even start getting ballsy and making threads questioning the entire quality of an elite institution cause they saw quite a few black kids who didn't meet their Harvard-only expectations of Centerview partners.
Tim is 70% of the WSO population, I.E. the average IB candidate
If you reject my hypothesis, please just take a look into any 'diversity' themed wso thread for which there are many and by looking at comment histories you will see a surprising amount of seemingly middle class, non-low semi target kids who made their first comments in relation to recruiting. I dont personally really care about it, it's just kinda boring to see, I want to see a more critical analysis of why vista juniors are actually bad instead of the brandead repetitive diversity comments. Just personally think having more thoughtful conversations would be more interesting.
On Vista junior skill, one consideration above that stood out to me (as someone with several peers at this "level" and making these decisions to move or not currently) is that if you are at a solid firm with a clear path upward, high pay / carry potential, and job security (especially in this job market), you'd look to stay, especially if the "logical" progression for such a highly motivated professional is opening oneself up to, say, the initial, elevated career volatility of a HF role. While PE's future might be uncertain (re. Sea Change), I think you certainly get nice insulation from that at a place like Vista. More generally, the primary drivers that I've personally seen motivating good juniors to jump roles over the past 1-2 years have been (i) particularly uncertain firm-level prospects / future due to returns, organizational shift, etc. or (ii) very top-heavy Sr. ASO / VP presences such that there really is no pathway forward. These don't seem to be the case for Vista so would imagine that's at least part of the equation here regarding the split of talent people have seen interviewing from Vista
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