Most people are familiar with the Catch-22 of a first-time job search: Hiring managers typically want to fill positions with experienced people, but the entry-level job seeker can’t get experience until they are hired for that first job. So what is a person with no employment history to do?

The predicament is not unlike what many first-time investment managers run into — institutional investors are reluctant to write a check to a team that has little or no track record of performance to judge, and a team cannot achieve a track record until getting a few institutional commitments.

One of the challenges these investment managers may face from more sophisticated investors is a robust, objective assessment that compares and contrasts them with other professional managers. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, for example, recently adopted a systematic approach to objectively compare all of its prospective manage