If you've decided that you would like to pursue on-cycle recruiting and are willing to put the time and effort into preparing for it during your senior year, navigating "headhunters" should also be on your radar. While important for off-cycle recruiting as well, headhunters are especially important for the on-cycle process.

Headhunters are the facilitators of the private equity recruiting process. Private equity firms hire them to scout investment banking analyst talent, as headhunters ensure that private equity firms are interviewing the right candidates. For on-cycle recruiting, your traditional investment banking networking / cold outreach to those from your alma matter, which you may have done for your current job, isn't as relevant -- in fact, I'd personally recommend against cold networking / outreach unless it is to a friend or existing mentor that you already know in the industry. It is important to "trust the process", and do what the headhunters instruct. In my experience, headhunters set up "coffee chats" (much more than coffee chats! Explained in Step 7) with the firms that I was interested in to compensate for the lack of networking opportunities ahead of the process, which helped give me a flavor of the firms and its people... remember, it is as much of a process of you interviewing the firms as it is them interviewing you!

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There are a few ways to ensure you are on the headhunter outreach list:

• In my experience as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, headhunters reached out to the analyst classes above me (i.e. the 1st year and 2nd year analysts that were already on the desk in my group while I was a senior in college) to obtain our names and emails. That being said, this might not always happen... I made the transition from real estate investment banking to technology private equity, so I had to ensure that my name was getting across to headhunters who "covered" (i.e. hired by) the firms I was most interested in

• To ensure I was getting on these lists, I dug through the headhunter websites (listed below) and filled out the forms on their websites.

• Important Note: These online forms will typically ask for your latest resume... do not worry, headhunters understand that you will not have had a significant (if any!) amount of deal experience by the time this process kicks off. That being said, it is important that you format your resume (see Step 2) in the expected way and detail your summer internship experiences to the fullest extent possible prior to submitting these forms.

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Headhunters who typically represent the majority of firms in the private equity universe are listed below. As a reminder, only fill out the online registration forms when your resume is in proper format (see Step 2):

1. Amity (Link)

2. BellCast (Link)

3. CarterPierce (Link)

4. CPI (Link)

5. Dynamics Search Partners (Link)

6. Glocap (Link)

7. Gold Coast (Link)

8. Henkel Search Partners (Link)

9. Opus Advisors (Link)

10. Oxbridge (Link)

11. Ratio (Link)

12. SG Partners ("If you are a candidate recruiting for new opportunities, please send your resume to resumes@sgpartners.com")

13. Dartmouth Partners (Link)