What does it take to make it through the door at Goldman Sachs and stand out from the 250,000 people vying to get in?
Well, the right university certainly helps, but you must also have a relative wealth of experience and, importantly, be interesting. These are a selection of the people who joined Goldman Sachs in London earlier this month. This is what you’re up against.
Paul Malus, investment banking department, financial institutions group (FIG)
Paul did not intern at Goldman Sachs, but he does have experience as a summer analyst at both BNP Paribas in its general industrials M&A team and at Credit Suisse in its FIG group. He has both a bachelors degree n Economics from the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Finance & Private Equity from the London School of Economics (LSE). He speaks English, German and Spanish.
David Crowther, equity research
David is a straight A student at school who went on to study Economics at the University of Bath. He interned in Goldman Sachs’ equity research division last year and seemingly converted that internship into a full-time role. However, he also spent three months at a real estate internet start-up called Navut, working alongside its CEO. He’s part of the university tennis club – and of the ‘advanced tennis squad’ – and plays floorball.
Sam Endacott, investment banking analyst
Sam is a good example of finding your feet in finance before deciding which area to focus on. In 2014 he spent the summer at Goldman Sachs’ wealth management division, but returned the following year in M&A – both FIG and healthcare – and received a full-time offer. He also spent two months at boutique bank Greenhill as an M&A generalist in September last year. He has a degree in international relations and history from LSE. There he also got involved in research projects and the ‘Widening Participation’ programme, which works with young people from under-represented London backgrounds to increase awareness of higher education opportunities.
Alex Wilson, investment banking analyst
Alex has a degree in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London. He started out with a spring internship at Royal Bank of Scotland in 2014, but in the same year spent two months as a business strategy intern at utilities firm McNcholas. The following year he was a summer analyst at Goldman Sachs within its IBD team, and received an offer to join in 2016.
Grant Havekost, investment banking analyst
Grant has a GPA of 3.72 in his Economics and Finance degree from the University of Richmond, but also completed his Masters in Finance from the University of Edinburgh this year. He has interned within Goldman’s Spring programme and again during the summer last year. He also worked at Merchants Hospitality in New York as a commercial real estate intern. Grant also possesses the Bloomberg Essentials Training Program (BESS) qualification and is in a rock band.
Kautubh Pardeshi, analyst, macro strats
Kautubh interned in UBS’s sales and trading division last summer, but managed to secure a role Goldman’s strats team nonetheless. This may be down to the fact that he has a 1st MSc in Physics from Imperial College London and has experience as a data science intern at Kognitio. He also spent an insight week at UBS in 2014. In terms of extracurricular activities, Kautubh has the all-important charity work, spending two months as an expedition volunteer with Raleigh International in Costa Rica.
Ellie Belton, investment banking analyst
Ellie has a Bachelors degree from the University of Oxford in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She interned at Goldman last year and converted it into a full-time offer.
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