GS Market Risk or McKinsey

Goldman Sachs Risk Management for Market Risk or McKinsey Graduate Analyst? I dont care about exit opps, I can figure it out myself. Which one is more baller in your opinion? Doesnt mean i will take the baller-ER one? Just a question. Put A for GS and B for McKinsey.

Market Risk Analyst at Goldman Sachs or Consulting at Mckinsey & Co.

McKinsey & Co is the obvious choice for career minded person. You’ll be competitive for an entry into various high paying jobs in finance and the best business schools in the country. Both groups are great but the it depends on what you value.

Key Takeaways

  • Goldman Sachs Risk management is great place to build a stable high paying career
  • McKinsey will provide more career optionality than risk management.

from certified user @kanon"

McKinsey. You say you may not care about exit ops, fact of the matter is very few people stay with one firm for the rest of their lives. So considering exit ops is a rather prudent thing to do.

Recommended Reading

 

I'm going to be the usual contrarian and suggest risk management. It's a pretty nice lifestyle and often a mathematical/fundamental challenge. You won't get FILTHY rich, but you will be well into the upper-middle-class/rich, have time for a family, and will not be expected to travel somewhere new every week. Given the current socioeconomic trends in the wake of the crash and with tax hikes coming anyways, it might not be a bad place to be. McKinsey is a great firm; so is Goldman Sachs. Both will have a lot of smart people that you can learn a lot from.

 
Best Response

McKinsey. You say you may not care about exit ops, fact of the matter is very few people stay with one firm for the rest of their lives. So considering exit ops is a rather prudent thing to do.

With McKinsey, you get very broad experience. Even if you don't end up liking consulting as a whole, you'll get exposure to a lot of different industries and the job can be interesting in that aspect. You'll see a lot from this role. And worse comes to worse, if you really don't like it, McKinsey then offers a lot of other options (business school, PE, industry, possibly something finance...)

With market risk... not even talking GS here, but market risk in general - it's quite specific. What if you don't like that field? Then you're sunk - because it leads to a limited number of other types of jobs.

 
With market risk... not even talking GS here, but market risk in general - it's quite specific. What if you don't like that field? Then you're sunk - because it leads to a limited number of other types of jobs.
Not necessarily. The skills transfer to a lot of other areas in finance. It's not quite as transferable as consulting, but if you hate GS, you've got a lot of other options.

It's generally relatively easy to go from technical to qualitative (worst comes to worst, get an MBA- won't be too difficult to get into a top five school with a niche capital markets background), but the other way around is harder. Still, a risk manager has a pretty nice lifestyle, and it's a profession that's been a part of banking in some way shape or form for centuries. If you like being the guy that helps the firm survive the recession/crash, risk management is a good place to be and Goldman is an excellent place to find a lot of smart people to learn from.

You've got two great options; I'm just being my usual contrarian self to make sure you've considered both.

 

^Illini - I agree with what you're saying in terms of lifestyle and etc. But I think the idea of risk management is very very specific. And as a result, you'll build a very specific skillset. It may not necessarily be desirable for someone coming straight out of college who still has to work a few years before understanding what they like/dislike. I would know, I started out at a very unusual group at a bank and it's a tough to move away from it after realizing what I really want.

Going from qualitative to tech/quant is hard, yes. But that depends on what you want to do. If this guy chooses consulting and say... wants to become a prop trader, it'll be a tough thing to pull off. But if say later down the line he chooses something else like banking, pe, corp dev/industry, strategy, operations - something along those lines, then he's got a lot more to choose from. You can't go into the breadth of fields via risk mngt. He would have to go through a MBA to become a career changer.

But yes, either way you have nice options. Do think about what you may want long-term, and I think that will be the way to make a decision.

 
philliesphan:
Think about it this way. GS IBD = McKinsey Consulting (some would argue Mckinsey is harder to get, more prestigious, and looks better for Business school). If it was GS IBD vs GS market risk which would you choose? the answer is obvious
Exactly. However, my obvious choice is different than yours'.

Both groups are arguably best-in-industry. I would argue that GS risk management is one of the highest-paying reasonably stable jobs you can land anywhere and still have some hope of being a good parent/spouse one day. You can make a career of McKinsey- my friend's Mom worked there- but your kids will hate you.

McKinsey might look better overall, but ultimately, it's two different makets for the adcoms. The adcoms always try to target 10% from S&T but never yield more than a fraction of that. In other words, if you're coming from the markets side and want to do an MBA, it will be easy to get in.

One of my coworkers in analytics at a "respectable" BB was a programmer who owned a small system after six years in industry. He played up the fact that he was on the trading side big time and got admitted at Wharton, Harvard, and Chicago. Risk management at GS is two or three tiers above that, you will be competing against people like my coworker, and they will have plenty of unfilled spots for markets guys to put you in, anyways. Fair or not, people from random, unpopular sectors make much stronger candidates for school in the same way that the kid from Alabama with a 1340 SAT score gets into Harvard while the 1600 from Greenwich gets rejected. With Capital Markets, you're coming from the equivalent of Alabama; with GS, you've got the equivalent of a 1570 SAT. McKinsey might give you a 1600 SAT, but then you've got to compete against the other kids from Greenwich- especially including other kids at McKinsey who have similar backgrounds.

For better or for worse, I can guarantee you one thing- if you apply to B-school from risk management, you'll be pretty unique. :D

 

Itaque est beatae accusantium ut qui reiciendis porro. Natus qui minus id suscipit architecto esse.

Career Advancement Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Jefferies & Company 02 99.4%
  • Goldman Sachs 19 98.8%
  • Harris Williams & Co. (++) 98.3%
  • Lazard Freres 02 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 03 97.1%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Harris Williams & Co. 18 99.4%
  • JPMorgan Chase 10 98.8%
  • Lazard Freres 05 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 07 97.7%
  • William Blair 03 97.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Lazard Freres 01 99.4%
  • Jefferies & Company 02 98.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 17 98.3%
  • Moelis & Company 07 97.7%
  • JPMorgan Chase 05 97.1%

Total Avg Compensation

March 2024 Investment Banking

  • Director/MD (5) $648
  • Vice President (19) $385
  • Associates (86) $261
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (13) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (33) $170
  • 2nd Year Analyst (66) $168
  • 1st Year Analyst (202) $159
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (144) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
3
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
4
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
99.0
5
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
6
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
7
kanon's picture
kanon
98.9
8
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
9
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
10
Jamoldo's picture
Jamoldo
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”