The “Second-Jobber” skills shortage in Private Markets: Why the experience gap is finally catching up with us

Post by Lewis Mount, Senior Consultant – Private Markets, Meraki Talent

Over the past two years, private markets firms across London, Edinburgh, and other global hubs have been grappling with a talent issue that didn’t exist a decade ago: a structural experience gap that has started to affect both productivity and salary inflation. The root cause? A pandemic-era shift in early-career hiring that quietly disrupted the traditional development pathway for operations professionals.

Before COVID, the entry-level Operations Associate role was the foundation of the industry. Graduates spent roughly 18 months rotating through a broad remit trade support, fund operations, data, onboarding, settlements, developing a holistic understanding of how private markets operate end-to-end. It was the “big picture” apprenticeship that built future leaders.

But during and after the pandemic, this pathway was deprioritised. Ambitious graduates, attracted by the prestige and compensation of front-office specialisms, moved straight into narrower Investment, Fund Management, or Analyst tracks, usually three-year structured programmes with limited exposure outside the chosen stream. While these roles are undoubtedly attractive and commercially valuable, they lack the wide operational grounding that used to be standard in the industry.

The Result: an emerging skills imbalance

Today’s talent landscape reflects this shift:

• Operations teams lack enough people with a full lifecycle understanding of how front, middle, and back office interact.
• Investment and fund management professionals understand their vertical deeply but can struggle to contextualise decisions within the wider operational framework.
• Salary pressure is rising for the minority who do have broad experience, creating cost and succession challenges for employers.
• The perceived “poor relation” status of operations has created a long-term imbalance that is now impacting productivity and organisational agility.

Private markets are scaling globally, but the talent pipeline has narrowed.

Lewis’s view: The industry must rebuild the foundation

If firms want a stronger, more adaptive workforce by 2026 and beyond, the solution is not complicated, but it does require a mindset shift.

Give early-career professionals wider exposure

Even if a candidate is on a defined Investment or Fund Management track, firms should intentionally build in cross-functional exposure. Let them spend time in operations, investor relations, data, onboarding, and settlements. The breadth will:

• Make them more scalable and useful to the team
• Improve cross-department communication
• Build faster problem-solving
• Strengthen long-term leadership capability

A future portfolio manager with operational grounding is far more valuable than one who has never seen behind the curtain.

Incentivise breadth, not just depth

Breadth of understanding should be positioned as a career accelerator, not a detour. Reward it. Recognise it. Make it the norm rather than the exception. This not only improves organisational resilience, it improves retention, career satisfaction, and internal mobility.

Start building the 2026 talent pool now

If firms redesign early-career training to reintroduce the 360-degree private markets experience, then in 2–3 years the industry will benefit from a richer, more versatile talent pool filled with young professionals who can move across roles. From a business perspective this could lower salary pressure on niche skillsets and develop more resilient teams as private markets continue their global expansion

This is an investment in the next generation and in the long-term strength of the sector.

If I can offer any advice on this, please contact me on lewis.mount@merakitalent.com or connect with me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewis-mount/