Private credit is hot. Here are 5 dos and don'ts that could help you get a job in the burgeoning field.

• Asset managers are flocking to the lending business, creating a "private-credit" gold rush.
• This has pushed up demand for talent, but how does one break into the burgeoning field?
• BI breaks down the top career pathways and do's and don'ts, according to recruiters and consultants.

Lending is not a new business for Wall Street, but the private-credit gold rush has opened the door to a hiring spree that's only expected to heat up in 2025.

After the 2008 financial crisis, banks removed much of the riskiest lending from their balance sheets. Investment behemoths like Apollo Global Management and Blackstone have been picking up the slack ever since, underwriting loans to real-estate developers and blue-chip firms like Intel or funding corporate buyouts.

According to Morgan Stanley, the private-credit industry is poised to grow to $2.8 trillion by 2028, nearly double the $1.5 trillion mark it reached at the start of 2024. New funds are being launched all the time: Just this week, hedge fund Point72 launched an investment team focused on private credit, and insurer Northwestern Mutual announced that it is partnering with private credit shop Sixth Street to invest insurance money into the sector.

As private credit's star rises, demand for talent has surged, according to financial industry recruiters. Finding the right talent, however, can be challenging — a situation that could worsen in 2025 as demand for corporate lending accelerates.

With so much interest in this field, Business Insider spoke to three financial industry recruiters and two consultants who have worked with private-credit firms to understand what it takes to break into this burgeoning field, where the career path is less obvious than some other financial industry jobs. They said most private-credit shops want people with experience in the field, especially at the senior levels. Given the surge in nonbank lending, however, other pathways are also opening up.

"If you understand credit and you have some stomach for risk or are willing to do workouts to take control of companies if something goes south, there's an awful lot of money to be made in credit," said Robin Judson, founder of recruiting firm Robin Judson Partners.

Depending on the job, it can also offer a better work-life balance —by Wall Street's standards anyway.

"Now, that doesn't mean it's 9-to-5, but maybe it's 9-to-9 or 9-to-8, which is a much more doable day," Judson said, though she noted that there are still some very late nights and early mornings to close deals.

Private credit professionals may also have a more "consistent" workflow versus dealmakers, who are constantly hunting for targets or preparing investment memos that go nowhere, said John Rubinetti, a partner at executive recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles. It also means they may close half a dozen deals a year, well above that of their private-equity counterparts, who may work on dozens of deals in a given year but close just one.

Here are five skills and experiences that could help you get a foot in the door of one of the industry's hottest sectors.

For senior talent, it helps to have private credit experience

"At the senior level, most funds say, 'I'm only looking at people who have direct experience, who have a Rolodex, who know what they're doing, and who've got a track record," Judson said.

Only, it's not so easy to find those people. According to Judson, there are more open roles than experienced people who can fill them, a dynamic that will only increase as more private credit funds launch. In the current talent market, it has forced more firms to get creative about where the scout for talent.

"The folks with the acumen to do it exist. The folks with the experience who have done this before do not exist," said Kevin Desai, the head of tax and consulting firm PWC's private-equity consulting practice.

The investment-bank pathway for junior talent

Investment banks are the most common route for young people to move to so-called buyside firms, whether a hedge fund or a private equity shop. The same is true when it comes to private credit because investment banking analyst programs have proven such a great training ground.

"The most important skillsets are evaluating whether a company is going to make money, how the firm can structure an investment to make money, and how to protect yourself from the downside," explained Jennifer Cragin, a search consultant at BellCast partners who formerly was a director of the capital markets group at Lazard.

"Those are the skills young financial professionals tend to learn in investment banking or credit underwriting," she added.

The investment banking roles firms will want to see on a resume may vary, but all three recruiters said a background in leveraged finance can be very helpful. Leveraged finance, or LevFin, is the part of the bank that helps to finance private-equity buyouts and other transactions through debt. Bankers in leveraged finance need to be able to underwrite loans and predict future cash flow, making it the most direct banking analog to private credit.

Outside of those roles, extensive debt experience in a particular line of business can help, especially if it aligns with an industry that the potential employer is targeting, like infrastructure or climate transition.

"It depends on what their lending base is going to be," Cragin said. said. "If it's infrastructure, you may see people coming from project finance or some of the direct lending seats within the banks or from restructuring."

For senior bankers, it depends on the firm

At the senior level, it can be harder to break into private credit from investment banking, where the focus is on getting the deal done versus thinking like an investor, recruiters said.

"If you're a billion-dollar fund, pulling somebody at a senior level from a bank is very risky," Judson said, adding: "It's not about getting the deal done on the investing side; it's about getting the right deal done."

Unlike smaller firms, some of the largest and most institutionalized firms will still hire senior bankers with the right experience because they have the resources to train them.

Indeed, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan recently said the firm has hired hundreds of senior bankers to fill its growing credit business, including its 16 origination platforms. "For the last five, six years, we've taken 300 to 400 senior bankers from their job inside the banking institution to our firm," he said at the Goldman Sachs Financial Services conference last year. "There's been a movement of knowledge and a movement of relationships and a movement of competency."

Investment bankers with strong connections can also prove to be hot hiring targets.

"They essentially bought those relationships," Rubinetti said of some investment bankers with expansive rolodexes who were poached by private-credit firms.

Private-equity experience can help — to a point

The earliest private-credit firms were launched to provide fundraising to private-equity firms' corporate buyouts, creating a natural pathway from private equity to private credit, recruiters said.

"For private equity candidates, three-quarters of what they need is there. They think like investors, they understand how deals are structured and what they look like, and they understand risk," Judson said. "What they don't necessarily have are credit skills."

The longer you stay in private equity, however, the harder it may be to make a move since debt and lending experience become increasingly important the higher you get on the corporate ladder. Rubinetti said an obvious candidate might be someone who worked in private equity and then went to business school. You would need to get your foot in the door soon thereafter, however.

"Once you're 3-4 years post-MBA, it just makes no sense," he said.

Skip on-cycle recruiting

Although private-credit shops will hire from private-equity firms, the recruiters who spoke to BI suggested that bankers interested in a private-credit career skip what's known as on-cycle recruiting.

Private equity has become notorious for this recruiting schedule, in which they recruit junior investment bankers for jobs that won't start for two years, usually after their analyst training is complete. In practice, this means that some young bankers already have their next job lined up before they even set foot in the office for their first gig.

On-cycle recruiting can backfire, however, for people looking to break into private credit as many private-credit shops don't participate in on-cycle recruiting, recruiters said.

"A lot of the best candidates we see for private credit didn't participate in on-cycle recruiting," Judson said. "Instead, they hunkered down, learned their stuff, participated, put their hands up, and got extra work, which as an analyst means that they basically don't sleep. They then decide to pursue what they want to do next, once they're better equipped."