The art of getting a job in a family office

If you want to progress in your financial services career, you might aspire to move to a hedge fund, or into private equity. Maybe you even want to work in private credit. But maybe, if you're especially ambitious, you might want to work for a family office. 

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Family offices are the vehicles by which the ultra-rich (often billionaires) stay ultra-rich. They manage the money of some of the richest individuals and families in the world, with the aim of perpetuating their wealth for future generations.

Family offices aren’t part of a regulated industry, so it’s hard to give an exact number of how many there are. Forbes, quoting the Economist and DBS bank last year, said there were around 10,000 single-family offices and 5,000 multi-family offices at the start of 2024.

Single-family offices employ staff in the service of one family; multi-family offices employ staff in service of many. Some of the best known family offices include Cascade Investment, which manages Bill Gates' fortune, or Soros Fund Management, which manages George Soros'.

People want to work for family offices because they can be more interesting than other employers in finance. Some family offices have broad investment remits that will allow you to invest across every asset class as appropriate. Some have interesting approaches to risk. You could be investing in everything from gold mines to gaming companies. You might get use of the private jet, or you might not - family offices are all different.

They don’t advertise much. You shouldn’t expect family offices campus recruiters, for example, or family office recruitment events. You shouldn’t even expect family office websites, in the vast majority of cases. If a family office wants to hire someone, it will either network or rely on a recruiter. The art of getting a family office job is not to apply, but to be an attractive (prospective) discovery.

What is a family office? 

Very broadly speaking, family offices are on a spectrum based on how "institutional" or "traditional" they are. 

"The most important thing is to figure out what type of family office you're going into," says Bill Woodson, a Columbia lecturer in wealth management and co-head of the Cynosure Group, which advises family offices. 

At one extreme, there are institutional family offices. These function more as hedge funds than “traditional” family offices. They employ portfolio managers and analysts. Soros Fund Management (George Soros) and BlueCrest Capital Management (Mike Platt) are both examples of these more "institutional" family offices. "They're typically run by former investment professionals, and they hire very competitively," Woodson says.

Traditional family offices are not like that. They’re much more interesting. Working in one is unlike anything in an investment bank or any other job in financial services. “If you go to a single-family office, you have one client," says says Mark Somers, founder of Somers Partnership, an executive search firm for family offices. This can be a risk, though: if you don't get on with that client, your single-family office job won't last. 

Woodson, who has also written a book on family offices says it's difficult to generalise about the sector. "There will certainly be principals [families] who care greatly about avoiding losses on the portfolio, but there will be others whose priorities are family harmony, simplicity, sponsoring sports, and philanthropy. It's crucial that you understand what the stated and unstated aims of the family are."

Table stakes for a family office is somewhere around $100m in assets under management. At that size, the family office is more of a private investment office. “You can have your investment run by the investment director and you might have a bookkeeper, you might have a financial director. You can have a really clean structure," Somers says.

The “tipping point” at which a full level of sophistication in a family office is required is somewhere in the $750m range. “That's the most extreme, sophisticated, multi-generational, multi-jurisdictional, complex sort of family office that's self-sustaining,” Somers explains.

What jobs are on offer in family offices?

Family offices hire different types of people depending upon their sophistication.

Recruits can include CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CLOs, chiefs of staff, finance directors, bookkeepers, financial liaison officers, or executive assistants. All those people together, however, would constitute a “full service, multi-generational family office,” Somers says.

Somers identifies three different types of people that family offices hire: Rainmakers, Lawnmowers, and Well Poisoners. Rainmakers (around 10% of employees) are the leaders who lead the family’s crusades; lawnmowers (80% of employees) are dutiful stewards. “Very worthy, very sensible, very good at business as usual. They're not so good at the special projects that come in,” Somers says. That’s what Rainmakers are for.

Well Poisoners are the last 10% of employees, and they are a family office’s worst fear. “They are extremely dangerous,” Somers says. As the industry is unregulated, and the family often extremely private, there is little legal recourse against bad actors. “If you get a dodgy financial director, who you find with his hand in the till, often the family doesn’t call the police. They just sack the person on the spot.” That can lead to that person being able to repeat their antics elsewhere.

Regardless of size, most family offices start with an “absolutely superb” executive assistant. Woodson says they need people to manage "the complexity that comes from substantial wealth."

Even senior executives may find themselves working on tasks that are outside their backgrounds, says Woodson. "Even if you're not running concierge services yourself, you may need to find the right people to oversee the delivery and to address issues when they come up.

"You might be responsible for making sure that marketing, sales, finance, legal and compliance are all performed correctly, along with things like residence management, concierge services and private aviation," Woodson adds.

What does it take to get a family office job?

Successful candidates are often chosen for personality as well as achievements. Building a relationship with the principal [the point person in the family] is arguably the most important job you've got," Woodson says. "At the end of the day, it's their money." 

Principals require careful handling. "The principal is typically a very successful person with a lot of confidence," says Woodson. "But they don't necessarily know what to do. Your job is to lead the principal by teach and acclimating them and helping them to understand the right approach. You can't operate through executive fiat." 

Who do family offices hire?

Other than for specialised roles (such as ones that require qualified accountants or lawyers), family offices tend to recruit from "prestigious" functions such as banking or consulting. Hiring isn't always easy, though.

“How do you get someone who is a superstar at McKinsey or Goldman to leave that environment and work for a single-family office?” Somers asks. It’s a hard sell: “Family offices are largely unbranded: you hardly know about them. It’s not on the career path, normally. We’re putting a new idea to a very successful executive.”

Some family offices attract talent with the promise of doing good in the world. Family offices “can make impact investments,” Somers explains. This means that a family office is one of the very few serious organizations in the world willing to go to zero money – that is, to see absolutely no return on their investment. “If they want to make an impact, or they want to research and develop a new idea in a new category, they can afford for the investment to go to zero. That's really important, because that's how you make dramatic changes.” It also dramatically impacts what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Many use headhunters to fill their vacancies. 

What are family office careers like?

“Careers within family offices have different shapes,” Somers explains. In “normal corporate careers, you go up a pyramid. You start at the bottom, and you get better and better. You get this greasy pole, and it’s a tournament.”

But a family office does not have such a steep hierarchy. “In a family office, you get recruited because you are a very good FD, very good CIO, or a very good expert generalist. And you have a T-shaped career.” What that means is that you stay in your role, and get better at it, rather than changing roles. “You become the best person on the planet in that role,” Somers says.

Jobs in family offices can be very high pressure, or very chill. "There will certainly be principals who care greatly about avoiding losses on the portfolio, but there will be others whose priorities are family harmony, simplicity, sponsoring sports, and philanthropy. It's crucial that you understand what the stated and unstated aims of the family are," says Woodson.

How well do family offices pay?

Family office pay is broadly on par with equivalent roles in the financial services industry - Somers calls it a hygiene factor. “The compensation is there to attract, incentivize, and retrain… It’s not the be all and end all, but it’s the foundation, and how it’s all held together,” he says. Compensation is a crucial part of the stability at a family office: families do not want or appreciate churn among their staff.

The European family office report 2024, written by HSBC, showed that, at the top end, salaries in family offices were on par with equivalent seniorities (MD) in investment banks. Bonuses, however, were much lower - HSBC found that family office chief executives earned bonuses of between 50% and 88% of base depending on the scale of their employer's wealth. Bank MDs vary in their bonus percentage, but our compensation report from last year showed an average of 135% of salary among investment banking MDs.

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