Raising the curtain on 2025

Heading into 2024, we were greeted with the remainder of economic challenges that plagued the buy-side recruitment market for the lion’s share of 2023. On the one hand, several funds continued to be hamstrung in their ability to raise or deploy capital and, in turn, either could not hire at all, or had to hire in lower numbers with an even higher or more specific quality bar. On the other, funds that were well-capitalised and able to transact were confronted with comparatively less competition when seeking to recruit the industry’s best talent at scale and had the luxury of abundance when electing who to add to their teams.

This feast or famine environment was rampant throughout 2024 and forced us, in part, to think more broadly about how we can support our clients’ hiring needs. We have pivoted even further into a wider set of geographies where our clients see investment opportunities, we have doubled-down on our existing footprint in recruiting Investor Relations and Marketing professionals as funds look to build this capability in-house, and we continued to not only find industry-leading junior talent, but worked with our clients to recruit senior deal-makers across all asset classes who bring seasoned investor acumen, sourcing, and execution capabilities to investment teams.

These evolutions solve for some of the short-term recruitment needs that the low grass of a challenging market has exposed. But, they are equally a sustained, longer-term, and thoughtful response to how the operational set-up of our clients is evolving with time. These additions to our business offering are also a symptom of a key learning that we have taken over the past two years of a volatile market: not reacting to market changes but having the wherewithal to respond to how the market and our clients’ needs are changing. This means harmonising the need to evolve, whilst maintaining consistently high standards of search and client service at the same time. This balancing act is a key feature of our business and serves to support our clients as they head into 2025 and beyond.  

Alongside the evolutions in our business, 2024 also served to highlight the value of simplicity and consistency with how we deliver searches for our clients. As I cast my mind back to the previous year as a whole, the value that funds place on a search firm who can demonstrably access high-quality talent, at an adequate volume, and at a high pace has re-emerged as the principle priority for several funds. Whether it be a fund seeking to make a one-off senior hire with a highly specific skillset or a large fund seeking to add a class of Associates, delivering search with a laser focus on these fundamentals has been a real difference-maker in keeping our clients ahead of the competition. Kea was set up as a business that revolves around consistently delivering against these search fundamentals and 2024, therefore, was an oddly nostalgic year where funds have realigned their focus on the principles that made Kea Consultants the business it is today. These search fundamentals therefore have not only stood the test of time, but have also stood the test of challenges that both the market and our clients have thrown our way, resulting in some phenomenal search results for clients across Venture Capital, Growth Equity, Credit, Special Situations, Public Markets, and Private Equity over the entirety of 2024.  

If the latter half of 2024 is a sign of things to come in 2025, then we are certainly anticipating continued market recovery. Inertia and cautiousness have been melting away and hiring volumes are starting to rebound more steeply as we head deeper into the new year, albeit not to the gung-ho levels of post-pandemic hiring in 2022. However, the pragmatic focus from funds on ensuring that they only hire those who are quantifiably the best-in-class for their specific needs, a view respawned from the market volatility over the past 18 months or so, is rightfully here to stay. Prospective candidates will therefore continue to feel the weight of expectation from funds for them to be well-prepared from both a competence and motivation perspective, as well as delivering to a high standard in their existing positions.  

With increased recruitment activity across a wider aperture of investment and investment-adjacent roles coupled with this sharpened focus on accessing the industry outperformers, we expect more competition for talent heading into the new year. For us, this means supporting our clients with a renewed commitment to running industry-leading research and search processes designed to unearth the best talent and doing so with accuracy, integrity and transparency at the core, across a wider breadth of industries, geographies, and strategies.