What Goldman Sachs Seeks In MBA Hires

What excites you personally about working for Goldman Sachs? 

What excites me about working here is the people that I work with. And it was actually the principal driving reason to get me to come here. I had worked with Goldman Sachs externally before I joined the firm. Coming in here, one of the things that really attracted me was that I’d get to work with very bright people who were driven, motivated, and very passionate about what they do.

Part of what makes that special is the fact that so many people here have a passion for what they do for work, for the collective benefit of Goldman Sachs and for our clients as opposed to being focused on the individual benefits. Being in an environment like that, for me, has been the opportunity to continue to become better at my profession, to continue to learn and to improve. When your teammates are performing at a high level, it inspires you to do the same thing.

That is what initially attracted me to come here. 14 years later, I honestly don’t think that I’ve ever been disappointed from that initial driving force. The only thing that has probably changed after 14 years is when I first started here, I was learning every single day from those senior to me. As I’ve grown my career within the firm, now I learn a lot more from those junior to me.

Still, it’s the opportunity to work with really bright, driven people who share a common goal.

Any thing else that you’d like to add for our readers?

Something that I think is important to highlight: We have a number of strategies to help identify top MBA talent, but we also have a number of strategies to identify MBA talent from under-represented candidate populations. This strategy includes a number of different events and conferences that we host either at our office or in partnership with external organizations or scholarships we offer to top students from underrepresented backgrounds.

One event that would be an example of that would be our MBA Camp. This is for underrepresented students. It’s a one day program that we hold in the spring (pre-MBA) and it really helps us explain the opportunities that exist at the firm. The students meet with senior leaders, [who] discuss their career paths at the firm. And students also have an opportunity to network with Goldman Sachs professionals.

Another program that we have is the MBA Women’s Summit. This is for first-year female MBA students and they are invited here for a two day conference at our headquarters at 200 West Street. The event begins with dinner for students and Goldman Sachs professionals. The next day, we have senior leaders speak on a variety of firm initiatives. We try to educate people on the firm that way. From there, the attendees break out into sessions that are focused on things like interview preparation for businesses that they’ve identified interest in. We try to give them the right direction on things to focus on.

We hold a Veterans Career Summit that’s similar to the other two programs I just spoke to. They’re open to first year MBAs who are returning veterans and have military experience. Finally, we have our Pride Summit, which is also similar to those other programs in terms of the networking and the informational aspect of the program. It focuses on first-year MBA students who identify themselves as LGBT.

Last point I’d note that we do offer an MBA Fellowship, which is a scholarship that’s offered to underrepresented students and female students who’ve accepted a summer associate offer with the firm. We’ve really tried to move the needle on attracting underrepresented groups to our industry.

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