I recently graduated college and really wanted to work for a real estate investment firm. I'm originally from Iowa so I looked into Principal Financial's real estate team. I found a couple analyst on Linkedin and sent messages to set up a call to learn about principals re team. Call went great and I stayed in touch with the guy for 6 months until a job was posted. He recommended me and I had an interview the next week with four managing directors for the private debt teams. I was offered the next morning.