Over the past five years, marketer/investor relations professionals who work at hedge funds have emerged from relative obscurity as representatives of a functional role to a point at which they are indispensable to firms looking to raise and maintain high net worth and institutional assets. More recently--within the past three years--the in-house recruiter/human resources function has emerged in the quest to build best-of-breed talent in what remains a scarce talent pool for senior-level positions.

The successful marketer/investor relations professional helps institutionalize and professionalize a hedge fund while minimizing the time that portfolio managers devote to managing current and prospective investors. The in-house recruiter/HR professional ensures that the fund continues to acquire, attract, and retain the best talent for the fund or is at least aware of the best talent pools available whether a fund is hiring or not at any given time.

Both positions when performed well effectively become the eyes and ears of the fund as it seeks capital and talent. Meanwhile, the proof of the significance of these roles is blatantly obvious when it comes to compensation.

Below are some of our key findings derived from reviewing at multi-billion dollar hedge funds in 2007 and 2008.

• Senior recruiters and human resources professionals within a hedge fund typically are paid compensation of between $400,000 and $650,000. The HR and recruiting superstars can fetch as much as $750,000.
• Senior marketers and investor relations/client service professionals can be expected to earn anywhere from $450,000 to $850,000 per year. A superstar marketer/fundraiser can potentially make approximately $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 in total compensation per year.
• What is unique about the hedge fund industry and consequently unlike any other industry is that within the marketing/IR and recruiting/HR functional roles, one is considered “senior” with four-plus years of directly relevant experience in addition to prior other work experience. In other industries the "senior" label typically takes 10-plus years of directly relevant experience to reach.

These two functional roles are similar in the hedge fund space because regardless of whether money is pouring into the fund or the fund is facing a challenging fund-raising environment, these professionals are busy. When a fund is in growth mode, the marketing and recruiting roles become paramount, and when asset gathering slows, the associated IR and HR roles become paramount. Of course this assumes that the fund is still performing well enough to keep the lights on.

It is clear that hedge funds have come to value their asset builders and talent builders. As funds strive to grow, institutionalize and outperform, we expect this trend to intensify.