Principal, Talent Operating Partner

Over the last 20 years, Ares’ success has been driven by our people and our culture. Today, our team is guided by our core values – Collaborative, Responsible, Entrepreneurial, Self-Aware, Trustworthy – and our purpose to be a catalyst for shared prosperity and a better future. Through our recruitment, career development and employee-focused programming, we are committed to fostering a welcoming and inclusive work environment where high-performance talent of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can build careers within this exciting and growing industry.

Job Description

Position Summary

Ares Private Equity flagship corporate opportunities funds pursue investments in growth-oriented middle market companies in North America and Europe. Our senior investment professionals average over 21 years of experience investing in, advising, underwriting, and restructuring leveraged companies. We seek to invest in high-quality middle market companies in our core industries - Healthcare, Services, Industrials and Consumer - where we can utilize our extensive growth-oriented investing experience, proprietary Value Creation System and our ability to flex into distressed to seek to generate consistent returns across market environments.

Ares is seeking an experienced Talent Operating Partner to join the Value Creation Team (“VCT”) within the Private Equity Group (“PEG”) in our Los Angeles, CA office. The VCT’s core mission is to create value across Ares’ Private Equity portfolio companies and optimize the performance of Ares’ Private Equity funds. The VCT is responsible for supporting the identification and prioritization of key value drivers in partnership with deal teams and management, aligning talent to the key value drivers, monitoring performance of portfolio companies, supporting capital deployment efforts, and driving fund-level analytics. The VCT consists of highly experienced professionals, including former executives at successful private equity-backed companies, advisors at top consulting firms, and former investment professionals. The Vice President, Portfolio Performance role will be focused on portfolio monitoring, fund-level analytics and executing the performance management function internally. This is an exciting opportunity to join a lean team with high visibility into senior private equity leadership.

Primary Functions

The Principal exists to create value in Ares funds and portfolio companies through talent advisory, talent acquisition, and other talent-related initiatives.  The role is executed through influence and partnership with constituents (deal teams, boards, PC management teams) and trusted third parties, without direct line control, and seeks to tie all activities back to value creation.

• During diligence and capital deployment: Works in partnership with deal teams to evaluate targets, identify key value-driving roles in the org structure, and, in certain occasions, help recruit and evaluate for those roles.  This function may include advisory, board, and management team roles that support the investment theses. 
• During ownership: Engages with portfolio company management teams to support strategy and accelerates the pace of execution and results of talent programs.  The VP/Principal engages primarily with portfolio companies primarily through search execution – either personally, via search partners, or a combination thereof. 
• On an ongoing basis:  Partners with deal teams to cultivate sector-oriented networks of potential industry advisors, board members, and executive-level operators.  Also, builds/improves core practices for the transformation and/or expansion of talent systems and processes for PCs, including: assessment, recruiting, org design/succession, compensation, organization health, culture, and ongoing talent and relationship management.  Working with the Talent Partner, manages and optimizes spend with third parties.

Essential Responsibilities (First Year Success Is)

• Established, trusted member of the firm with portfolio group, deal teams, and leadership. 
• Participate in at least two capital deployment processes as requested by the deal teams, likely in sourcing and development of advisor relationships.
• In partnership with Talent Partner:
  • Support over 100 executive hires in the portfolio through a variety of means: search, search support, introduction, referencing, etc.
  • Evaluate partner relationships (search firms, assessors, introductions, etc.) and related annual spend.  Set partner strategy, goals, spend targets, and management cadence.
  • Implement central system for tracking firm relationships. 

Qualifications

The VCT is looking for self-motivated, highly driven indiv