Why GI Partners: Interviews, Careers, & Portfolio

GI Partners Overview

GI Partners is one of the leading upper middle market private equity firms located in San Francisco, CA – with additional offices in London, Scottsdale, Greenwich, Chicago, Dallas, and New York.

The firm’s real estate team focuses on specialized real estate which includes sciences, healthcare, and tech properties. The private equity team mainly invests in companies in the software, services, and healthcare sectors. Lastly, the data infrastructure team invests in hard asset infrastructure companies supporting the digital economy.

GI Partners was founded in 2001 by Rick Magnuson, who is also a member of all GI Partners investing committees. Mr. Magnuson also is the Chairman Emeritus and Co-Founder of Digital Realty (NYSE:DLR).

GI Partners AUM

According to GI Partners publicly available data on LinkedIn, the firm has over $42 billion in assets under management.

GI Partners Interview Process & Questions

Despite the changes in the interview changes for each candidate, the general nature of the process stays the same for the most part. In fact, you can anticipate the following:

• Interview rounds: 4-6
• Initial interviews are supervised by junior professionals, while later rounds are handled by more senior folks
• Unless it’s on-campus or on-cycle recruiting, expect that the entire process will last for multiple weeks

Get ready to answer a mixture of behavioral questions, technical questions, and fit questions when you interview at GI Partners.

To help you with preparation, I’ve created a Growth Equity Interview Guide. Feel free to check it out.

Why GI Partners

One of the questions you must prepare for is the “Why this firm” question.

If you’ve met employees at the firm during your networking efforts, make sure to mention them and how their experiences and testimonies helped in choosing their firm.

Also, do your homework and research the firm. You can try listening to interviews with its founders, management team, and investors to get to know them better.

For starters, check out these insights from Mark Prybutok, Managing Director at GI Partners:

More Interview

• Keys To The Private Equity MBA Recruiting Process with Timothy Lee, Principal at GI Partners

GI Partners Case Study

Communication skills and technical knowledge are two traits that investment firms highly value. To evaluate these, firms like GI Partners ask candidates to perform case studies.

Most case studies will have you do financial modeling and investment recommendations. But for junior roles, a cold calling case study may also be part of the process.

Check out my Growth Equity Interview Guide if you need more help regarding case studies.

GI Partners Salary & Compensation

According to Glassdoor, associates at GI Partners have earned salaries of $173,942 per year, while there’s no recent data for analysts. Actual figures may vary depending on several factors.

Associate

GI Partners Careers, Jobs, & Internships

View open roles at GI Partners inside our job board where we also feature all open roles for similar firms.

GI Partners Portfolio & Investments

As per Crunchbase, GI Partners has made 19 investments and manages five funds. Some of their notable deals include Sectigo, Aras, and DAXKO.

Notable Transaction: American Residential Services

September 15, 2020 – American Residential Services (“ARS”), one of the largest providers of residential ventilation, heating, HVAC, and plumbing services, received a majority investment from GI Partners. Charlesbank Capital Partners, who is the existing investor, also made a significant new investment at ARS.

ARS is a company based in Memphis, Tennessee, that operates over 70 service centers in 23 states, with around 6,500 skilled employees and the largest team of plumbers and HVAC technicians in the US.

The Managing Director of GI Partners, Hoon Cho, said that they are really impressed with the resiliency and growth of ARS, hence the capital commitment.

GI Partners look forward to expanding the national footprint of ARS and keep it in a leading market position.

Next Steps

If you decide to send your application and build your investing career at GI Partners, I would highly recommend that you check out my Growth Equity Interview Guide first before attending interviews.

Growth Equity Interview Guide helps professionals get a good grasp of topics that are typically covered during interviews such as financial modeling, case studies, and more. Check it out and start learning today!