In Video Series, Wall St. Leaders Reflect on Their Careers

Hamilton James, president of the private equity giant Blackstone Group.

Hamilton E. James, the president and chief operating officer of the Blackstone Group, is one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street, overseeing an alternative investment empire from offices on Park Avenue on Manhattan. But it was not always so.

In his junior year at Harvard, Mr. James, who is known as Tony, determined that he was “unemployable, since I applied to 300 jobs and didn’t get any of them,” he says in an interview with OneWire, a financial services recruitment firm.

The interview, which was published on Monday evening, is the latest installment in OneWire’s video series, “Open Door,” which showcases top financial professionals offering career advice. In addition to Mr. James, the series has featured interviews with James J. Dunne III of Sandler O’Neill & Partners; Jeffrey T. Leeds of Leeds Equity Patners; and Bill Comfort, a former chairman of Citigroup Venture Capital.

The video series lends some sheen to OneWire, founded in 2008 by Skiddy von Stade, an executive search specialist who started his career in the insurance industry. OneWire allows financial professionals (or aspiring professionals) to build a career profile, upload a résumé and apply to jobs in the site’s catalog of listings.

Mr. von Stade plans to release a new video every other week, with Glenn Hutchins of the private equity firm Silver Lake and Deborah C. Wright, chief executive of Carver Bancorp, among the upcoming interviewees.

“The purpose of this video series is to help young people better understand how these highly successful people went from grade school to where they are today,” Mr. von Stade said in an interview. “But it’s helpful for anyone of any level.”

The videos also show the human side of some well-known Wall Street figures.

Mr. James, who spoke to Mr. von Stade the d! ay after Hurricane Sandy hit New York last fall, describes his upbringing in rural Massachusetts. “It was a very simple existence of a country kid spending most of his time in the woods or building tree houses,” Mr. James says in the video.

After failing to find a job, Mr. James went to Harvard Business School, and then in 1975 to the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, which at the time was a “creative, growing place.” Once there, he rose to become co-head of mergers and acquisitions, and then built the firm’s merchant banking business. He stuck with the firm for two years after its merger with Credit Suisse First Boston in 2000.

Those experiences provided valuable lessons to Mr. James.

“It’s a hell of a lot more fun to be at a young company where you’re building something than a big company where you’re trying to defend and hold your own against the inroads that the young companies make,” he says in the video.

After the merger with Credit Suisse, he sas, staff departures made the experience “like holding onto an ice cube that kept melting in your hands.”