Instead, it comes down to a “winning formula” that includes simply being nice to people.
“Treat everybody the way you want to be treated as you move up in your careers—it’s almost like a superpower,” Gray said in an address to his firm’s newest class of analysts.
“People want you to win if you treat them in a good way. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to be hyper ambitious, and it doesn’t mean you’re not going to demand a lot from others because you demand a lot from yourself, but you can do it in a nice way.”
Elite credentials may have earned new hires an offer, but ‘caring more’ will take them further
For the analysts sitting in the audience, earning that advice meant first clearing one of the most competitive hiring processes in corporate America. The firm’s 2026 summer analyst acceptance rate was less than 0.1%, a Blackstone spokesperson told Fortune. And while they declined to disclose the exact number of applicants or hires for this cycle, roughly 57,000 applicants were sent in for just 138 entry-level analyst positions last year—an acceptance rate of about 0.2%, according to Business Insider. In 2021, the acceptance rate was 0.4%.
