Send Better Emails
Like most private equity firms, we receive an onslaught of emails every week from college students looking for internships to bolster their resumes. Lately, it seems every email has the same “personalized” message, waxing poetic about Permanent Equity’s differentiated model. Seemingly every other email I get says something along the lines of, “What particularly drew me to Permanent Equity is your long-term approach to investing and focus on building durable companies rather than pursuing short-term exits.”
Sure, maybe some 18-21-year-old kids are super passionate about long-term investments in family- and founder-owned businesses. But my suspicion is that they are not, and they are using Claude to draft “personalized” messages to an indeterminable number of firms because they are terrified to feel like they’re falling behind.
My advice to these students is not to send better emails and use less AI in their drafting (though that is probably good advice). My advice to these students is to close their laptops and do something outside of resume-building internships and activities. Go to a party! Work at a Chili’s! Join a club on campus just because it’s fun! Study abroad!
The number of resumes I read a month from 20-year-olds that have more professional and extracurricular experiences than mine does is jarring. Yes, be passionate about investing, read interesting books, listen to the Invest Like The Best podcast. But also, open yourself up to experiences that broaden your worldview, push you out of your comfort zone, and have nothing to do with your future career goals.
Our Investing Team genuinely loves what we do, but when we walk into work on Monday morning, we are not typically talking about the Diary of a CEO episode we listened to that weekend or the moves we made in our individual portfolios. We’re talking about whatever game was on TV that weekend, Danny’s cute baby, or the U15 girls soccer team. Our varied backgrounds and interests make for a well-rounded team, and an entertaining and likable one at that.
After all, to be an interesting candidate, or person for that matter, you have to get out there and have interesting experiences.
– Holly
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