Landing a Goldman Sachs internship has never been harder—here are interview questions candidates were asked
Gen Z grads are having a hard time landing an internship anywhere right now. But for those looking to get a foot in the door at Goldman Sachs, the benchmark is higher than ever. The hiring rate at the investment banking giant just dipped below 1% for the first time.
According to figures posted by Goldman Sachs, the company received a record 315,126 applications for its 2024 internship program. Only some 2,600 interns were hired. That’s a hire rate of 0.9%.
To put that into context, it’s easier to land a coveted spot at Harvard University, where the acceptance rate is 3.6%.
As Goldman Sachs noted on Instagram, its 2024 cohort is “its most competitive class in history”—and it’s probably going to keep getting tougher for future Gen Z grads.
Last year, Goldman’s hiring rate was 0.2 percentage points above this year’s, according to analysis by Business Insider. Meanwhile, 10 years ago, Goldman’s intern acceptance rate was 5%, thanks to an application rate that was about one-sixth of what it was this year.
So for those looking for better luck next year, Fortune has trawled Glassdoor and Wall Street Oasis to gain some insight into the process of landing a job at Goldman, including the kind of questions that could come up in the interview.
But first: How do you get into Goldman Sachs?
Unfortunately, there’s no secret in to Goldman Sachs. The majority of people who have interviewed with the Wall Street giant reported on Glassdoor that they simply applied to work there online.
Just 7% of previous interviewees said they were employee referrals and only 1% were poached in person.
Either way, Gen Zers dreaming of interning there next summer shouldn’t wait for recruiters to show up on campus: The application process for Goldman’s internships starts more than a year in advance, with applications already open for its 2025 program.
According to its website, Goldman Sachs has a two-step interview process for internships starting with a 30-minute video interview with HireVue.
Those who are successful in the first round of interviews are then invited to attend a “superday”—essentially, a final round of interviews with two to five different people that they’d potentially be working with.
Meanwhile, aspiring engineers are also asked to take an online skills assessment.
Goldman Sachs interview questions
While landing a job at one of the world’s most prestigious financial institutions is notoriously tricky, the interview questions aren’t as tough as one might expect.
Nearly 10,000 former applicants have given the interview questions a 3.5 difficulty rating (out of 5) on Glassdoor, and 61% have reported their experience as positive.
Likewise, nearly 70% of the 1,725 interviewees who shared their experience with Wall Street Oasis rated the interview questions between average to very easy.
In reality, many of the questions candidates have reported being asked by Goldman Sachs hiring managers are much like any other job interview, including:
- Why do you want to join us?
- Walk me through your résumé.
- Tell me about a time when you remained motivated despite facing several setbacks.
- Talk about a failure you had in the workplace and what you did about it.
- What is one topic you recently learned?
- What is a recent story you’ve read in a financial publication?
- Tell me about your most interesting subject.
- Tell me about a time you changed your decision based on newly introduced information.
One person noted that they were asked, “How does Goldman Sachs make money?” a lot.
These are some of the more challenging questions candidates have reported being asked:
- Which is more important cost or revenue synergies?
- Does a car wash or a gym have a higher CapEx?
- If you accidentally sent an institution-only file to a client, how would you handle the situation?
- If you have a basket of assets and are trying to create a portfolio, does individual security selection matter more if the assets have low or high correlation?
- What metrics would you look at to analyze the performance of a portfolio?
- What are drawbacks of the reward-to-variability (Sharpe) ratio?
- Are stock returns normally distributed?
- Describe the estimation equations for the Hidden Markov Model.
- What would you do if a client wanted you to do something that is illegal/against firm policy?
Meanwhile, some questions that candidates said they were asked were more on the imaginative side than others:
- How many tennis balls can fit in a [Boeing] 747?
- What is the angle between the hands of a clock at 1:15pm?
- What are the odds of drawing two aces in a row from a normal deck of cards?
- If you were a worker here, how would you design an email software so that we can improve the efficiency around here?
- In a best of three tennis match between two people, is it more likely the match win end in two or three games?
Goldman Sachs didn’t respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Have you interviewed for a job at Goldman Sachs? Fortune wants to hear from you. Email: Orianna.Royle@fortune.com
