Spire Search Partners reveals market insights in private markets – accounting and finance for 2Q 2020.

We are happy to announce that Spire Search Partners was ranked this year in the “Hunt Scanlon PE Recruiting Power 75”!

Talent Demand

This quarter’s update is one of mixed market insights. Investment firms are talking about making the hires they had originally planned for earlier this year (but which have been on hold since the pandemic took root).

Many firms are raising/have raised new funds, but these shelved talent requirements are based on needs going into the 1q ’20; perhaps the added overall industry growth will create a second-half spike in hiring. Firms are working to get comfortable with new interviewing and onboarding processes.

Talent Supply

While fantastic opportunities are still worth investigating, more talent than ever has turned passive and not at all open to investigating new opportunities.

The current state of the world has raised concerns about making any moves or taking undue risks. Most talent is also busier than ever in their current firms — WFH generally has people working more, not less.

Diversity & Inclusion

58% of our placements in the last 18 months were diversity hires; while it’s been an important topic for us for several years, firm’s efforts to build diverse teams internally and in portcos is being more closely examined than ever.

Over the past few years, we’ve built a network of diverse talent, enabling us to provide a diverse slate of top talent to firms interested in building diverse teams or installing diverse leadership.

Job Postings / Market Demand

The buy side as a whole, as well as the PE/VC subset, have experienced a continued drop in demand for talent in 2Q compared to 1Q – we expect this to ease upward again in 3Q as firms get comfortable/get back to filling requirements from earlier in the year.

That said, June showed a sizable drop in demand across the board. As always, these numbers are a proxy for the broader market – many firms don’t advertise openings in the PE/VC space, instead leveraging outside search firms who specialize in that world.

We are happy to discuss deeper market insights (compensation trends/benchmarks, D&I, interviewing/onboarding during WFH) whenever it is convenient. ~ Dennis Grady