Alpine Investors: CEO-in-Training
The Position
Search on Salary. Run a company the firm already owns, as its chief executive, from the first day of the seat.
Cycle: Rolling campus recruiting; the program has run since 2015.
The firm publishes an application route and no dates against it.
A talent page that describes the program and closes by inviting an application. The door is a contact link rather than a form or a posting, and nothing on the page names a date, a deadline or a cohort.
At a Glance
- Location
- Alpine portfolio companies nationwide; firm offices in San Francisco, New York, and Austin.
- Pay
- Salaried
- Compensation
- A salaried CEO or senior-executive seat from day one.
- What You Do
- Step straight into operating a company, with no search phase of your own.
- Recruits On
- It recruits on campus, through schools rather than from operating experience.
- Who Can Apply
- MBA candidates at top schools; in 2022 the most-applied-to job at Stanford, HBS, and Wharton.
The Company
Alpine Investors is profiled as an acquirer, with the trades it buys in and the evidence behind each one: read the Alpine Investors profile.
Interview Prep
These programs do not publish their interview scripts, so this is the shape a search on salary program hires on, what it is really weighing, and how to arrive ready.
The Typical Arc
- A written application and resume screen, weighing operating exposure as much as deal exposure.
- A case or deal exercise: a target to assess, or a plan for one of the firm's portfolio companies.
- A panel with the partners who would back and govern you.
- Reference and background checks before an offer.
What It Is Assessing
- Whether you can operate, not only analyze: the firm is hiring a CEO, not an associate.
- Deal judgment: telling a good acquisition from a merely plausible one.
- Fit with the firm's stated playbook and the cadence its portfolio runs at.
How to Prepare
- Know the firm's thesis and portfolio cold before the first call. Investors
- Bring a real deal you would pursue, underwritten end to end. Underwrite a Deal
- Have an answer to why you would operate on salary rather than own outright. Path Economics
- Make the operator case on one page, not a resume. Buyer Profile Builder
More on the Board
A salaried seat is a form of capital: the employed lane on Investors weighs these programs beside the funds, and the Path Economics Comparer prices it against searching on your own money.