Gail McManus is stepping back. 30 years after founding Private Equity Recruitment (PER), the firm that’s both literally and practically synonymous with getting a private equity job in Europe, McManus is working part-time. She handed leadership of PER to long term colleagues Charlie Hunt and Rupert Bell last year in a management buyout and now has the luxury of regularly switching on her out of office. But she hasn’t disappeared entirely: McManus is the well-established queen of private equity hiring, and she still enjoys wearing that crown.

“Jobs in this industry are all about trust and judgement and potential and whatever you do people remain gloriously diverse, difficult, charismatic, challenging, awkward and entrepreneurial,” says McManus of private capital firms and their employees. “This is why I love it.” READ MORE