Goldman Sachs Securities Sophomore Program - first rounds
(Senior Monkey, 85
Points)
on 1/3/13 at 10:05pm
Has anyone else gotten a first round? I was wondering what to expect in the initial interview. Also, if anyone has done the securities sophomore program before, what was your experience like?
I Interviewed and made it to
I Interviewed and made it to the Superday my Sophomore year (last year). I didn't get the offer, but I can tell you a bit about the interview process. I attend a target and applied during OCR so my first round interview was at my school. The interview was pretty easy and a lot more laid back than I thought coming in, especially considering that it's Goldman. The interview was predominately dominated by fit questions and it seemed that the interviewer was just trying to see if he liked me or not. He did ask some general market questions (tell me about what's going on in the markets, which markets do you follow) and a stock pitch, but nothing difficult at all.
The super day took place at Goldman's headquarters in NY with around 40 students. They told us after the interviews that they were going to take ~10, so I assume that this year will be similar, or possibly a bit less due to secular trends in S&T. I had three interviews, two with 2 interviewers and one with 1. These were also very similar to the 1st round interview. Again, surprisingly easy. From talking to other students at the super day, it seems that they had a similar experience.
Honestly, at least for sophomores, Goldman is very easy on you, HOWEVER, this is what makes it so difficult. The way they conduct the interviews, it's almost impossible for someone to have a bad interview, unless they say something absolutely retarded. Therefore, you have to be able to really shine from the pack, so it's really not as straight forward as being able to answer a bunch of questions correctly. Put it this way, instead of starting at 100 and making sure you don't fall, you're starting at 0 and have to climb your way up to 100.
Thanks for the reply. I
Thanks for the reply. I applied online and my first round phone interview is scheduled for 20 minutes; does that sound similar to your OCR first round in terms of length? Also, did you find that your interviewer threw in unexpected questions just to see how you would react? I've heard that that's common with them.
Yea, I believe that my first
Yea, I believe that my first round interview was about 30 min. Make sure you also know your resume very well and can explain thoroughly every bullet point and maybe even have a story for each thing listed to highlight the skills that you've learned from it. From ppl that I know that have interned and are currently working there, GS is also pretty big on leadership, so try to really demonstrate your leadership experiences and abilities. And yea, you may get some unexpected questions, but you'll see that at every interview. They just want to see how you think, so you just have to make sure that you dont freak out and confidently answer, even if you have no idea what the right answer is. I've interviewed early at a couple of places this year and compared to the places that i've interviewed with this year and from my experiences last year, comparatively, all of the unexpected questions that I got from GS were pretty easy, especially since I've gotten some downright absurd and completely irrelevant questions from other firms.