Summer 2027 recruiting is closing for IB and Buyside roles. If you don’t have an offer yet, you need to be re-focusing your strategy on recruiting across middle markets, regionals, and small boutiques. The “no-name” firms.
Getting an interview at these firms is not easy. They often take very few interns each year. Being first to the app will literally help put your resume into a different pile.
We are running a FINAL Premium Database sale. 30% off until March 7th. $45 Premium Database.
This grants you access to:
Apps updated weekly and delivered directly to your inbox across 500+ firms
Thousands of networking contacts
Hundreds of hours of interview prep material
Recruiting Timeline:
Banking:
Where We’re At:
SA 2027: Lloyds Bank and Zachary Scott opened their applications this week. 88 banks are actively recruiting for SA 2027.
If you need some interview support or just need a place to vent, check out our Coaching Program: Investment Banking Interview Coaching | The Pulse. 95%+ of those coached for the summer 2026 recruiting season received offers!
New SA 2027 Applications:
Llyods: London-based middle market (SA 2027)
Zachary Scott: PNW boutique (SA 2027)
See below to gain access to our premium database, updated weekly, which houses the application processes for over 300+ banks/consulting/buyside firms! Gain an edge over everyone else by not having to spend countless hours tracking applications and deadlines.
Consulting:
Where We’re At:
Only boutiques are opening applications at this point. We will stop tracking these processes at the beginning of March.
SA 2026 released apps:
None
SA 2027 released apps:
None
FT 2026 released apps:
Helio Health Group: Consulting Analyst (FT 2026)
Buyside:
Where We’re At:
SA 2027: Arena Investors opened its app this week. There are currently 74 buyside firms actively recruiting for SA 2027.
Buyside Associate Recruiting: Pantheon and Churchill are actively recruiting. This is a section dedicated towards providing updates for our post-grad Buyside Associate Recruiting platform: Buyside Recruiting & Interview Prep Platform | The Pulse.
If you’re a senior or first year analyst looking to get the fuck out of banking—-you need to be on this platform. Live job updates and 14+ LBO modeling case studies with answers
New SA 2027 released apps:
Arena Investors: Structured Credit investing (SA 2027)
New Buyside Associate released apps:
Pantheon: Credit secondaries associate (immediate start)
Churchill Asset Management: PE (immediate start)
Premium Database:
The database is updated weekly and contains 300+ Investment Banking and Consulting internships/full-time positions along with:
Interview tips for specific companies
Interview prep material
Applications and deadlines linked so that you can apply with one click
Insider information about the application process
Professionals to network with
Buyside deadlines, interview prep, and people to network with for the sweatiest of students
We send the updated dataset every week with the latest banking and consulting job postings. We released our 143rd update today.
Students we have been helping have already landed roles at Blackstone, Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Citi, and Solomon.
To get access to the database and the weekly updates, you make a one-time investment of $45 Credit Card / Debit Card: (ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com) that grants you annual access to the updated database (please reach out for additional payment options). If you don’t find our services helpful, we simply ask for feedback on an area we can improve upon and will refund your $45.
This is a small investment for a huge payout when you secure your dream offer!
Premium Database——>Database for investment banking, consulting and buyside roles | The Pulse
Market Update:
Private Credit’s Liquidity Reckoning
Private credit has been one of the hottest asset classes of the last decade, ballooning into a roughly $2 trillion market on the back of a simple pitch about higher yields than public markets with less volatility.
Source: Lord Abbett
Source: Lord Abbett
The asset class attracted a flood of institutional capital first, and then increasingly retail money, as managers built out vehicles called business development companies (BDCs) to reach individual investors. BDCs are essentially closed-end funds that lend to small and mid-sized private companies, and they've become a primary conduit for channeling retail dollars into private credit.
That retail push is now at the center of some serious turbulence, and if you've been watching the space this week, you already know where this is going. Blue Owl Capital, which manages $295 billion in assets, rattled the whole alternative asset world by announcing it was halting quarterly redemptions at its retail-focused Blue Owl Capital Corp. II (OBDC II) fund.
The firm simultaneously executed a $1.4 billion sale of direct lending investments across three of its BDCs, with loans selling at roughly 99.7% of par. Redemption requests at OBDC II had already blown past the standard 5% quarterly cap, and the fund's tech-focused vehicle, OTIC, saw requests jump to roughly 15% of net asset value.
Blue Owl tried to frame the whole thing as a change in mechanics rather than a red flag, with co-president Craig Packer insisting they were "simply changing the method by which we're providing redemptions." Investors weren't buying it, and the stock sold off hard.
The asset sales broke down as roughly $600 million from OBDC II (about 34% of its portfolio), $400 million from OTIC, and $400 million from OBDC. Proceeds are going toward repaying a Goldman Sachs credit facility and funding a special cash distribution totaling roughly 30% of OBDC II's NAV.
To be fair, some analysts read this as an orderly wind-down rather than a panic, pointing out that the $300 million Q1 2026 distribution is a much better outcome than the roughly $50 million in quarterly tender offers trickling out through 2025. The broader contagion was swift regardless, with shares of Blue Owl dropping sharply and dragging down competitors including Apollo, Blackstone, and Ares.
The deeper issue here, and this is something a lot of us have been watching for a while, is that retail investors are just fundamentally harder to manage than institutions. Institutional LPs understand the illiquid nature of private credit, sign up for multi-year lockups, and generally stay put when markets get bumpy. Retail investors, by contrast, tend to make decisions based on sentiment and short-term performance, and seek quick liquidity when things get rocky.
That behavioral gap creates a genuine structural headache for alternative asset managers trying to serve both audiences. The underlying loans in these funds often have three to seven year maturities and don't trade in any meaningful secondary market, so meeting a sudden surge in redemptions requires either keeping a large cash buffer (which dilutes returns) or selling assets quickly (which can mean taking a haircut). Blue Owl was lucky enough to move its loans near par, but that won't always be the case, and the more retail capital floods into these strategies, the harder that balancing act becomes.
Source: Bank for International Settlements
Worth flagging too that institutional ownership of BDC shares has steadily declined, falling to about 25% on average by 2023, meaning retail investors are now the dominant source of equity capital in these vehicles. That's a pretty significant shift, and it matters a lot when things get rocky. Fundamentally, private markets have historically generated an illiquidity premium because the underlying assets can’t be traded quickly. So, shit hits the fan at an unstoppable force when your liabilities (retail capital in this instance) are mismatched from your assets (3-7 yr. PC loans).
Once redemptions pick up, you get a self-reinforcing loop where more redemptions force more loan sales, which drives the stock down further, which triggers even more redemptions. It's not a fun position to be in.
It's too early to call this a systemic crisis, and Blue Owl's loans selling close to par suggests the underlying credit quality is holding up for now. We wrote about whether it makes sense for retail investors to increase private markets exposure here:"The Pulse" -- #115 / Democratization of Private Equity? .
Disclosure: Nothing written here is financial advice or should be used for investment decisions.
Learning Point of the Week:
The 5 Most Important Skills/Attributes for Consulting: |
Effective communication - This is not just for consulting, but for any job. Communicating effectively is crucial. Whether it be with the client, presenting findings, or even your boss. An earth-shattering discovery/analysis is useless if not communicated properly. Also, throughout the early years of your career, there will be a lot asked of you. Communicating your workload and whether or not you can meet deadlines is a necessity.
Analytical/problem-solving Skills - Given that you will be working with companies to help them tackle problems facing their organizations, strong analytical skills are a must.
Technical skills -You don’t have to be a complete wizard when you start the job, but having strong Excel and PowerPoint skills is a huge asset. Almost every project you work on will require these tools, so becoming an expert provides huge time savings and can make the analysis more effective.
Time management - This one goes without saying, but meeting deadlines (or communicating that you can’t meet the deadline) is an important skill for consultants. You will have short-term, medium-term, and long-term deadlines, so being able to manage your time well (especially if on multiple projects) will make your life so much easier and impress your manager.
Collaboration - Consulting is a team sport. You will be working on projects with multiple team members, so being a good teammate will make the project run more smoothly and also help you develop a good reputation at the firm. A good team is worth more than the sum of its parts.
Going Forward:
Heavy Push on Our Buyside Associate Prep
On the Buyside, models + jobs = offer. We bring everything you need under one roof: Buyside Recruiting & Interview Prep Platform | The Pulse. High quality is what we deliver.
Please reach out to us with any questions about recruiting or if you’re interested in meeting the team! ([email protected])
We are happy to chat, review resumes, or help set up a coaching session.
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