Spring Intern, technology division Review

I enjoyed the insight a lot, I definitely want to come back to Goldman Sachs so hopefully I did well on my interview and get a summer placement :) the main thing I wish I'd had is more exposure to certain divisions as I wasn't particularly interested in some of the ones I shadowed but other people on the program got to shadow divisions that I'd love to have shadowed instead

I definitely felt valued at the firm. Everyone was really friendly, every single person I emailed with questions replied within minutes and told me to set up a time to meet. I even got to meet a VP and talk to him for about an hour. The people at HCM and occupational health were also both really nice and went out of their way to make sure I was doing ok.

I think there was a good amount of support and guidance, I never felt like the guidance or support was lacking and I'm sure if I had I could have gotten more, but you definitely needed to be able to work independently with minimum specifications. The occupational health people also went out of their way to make sure I had enough support and they reassured me that I wasn't wasting their time or anything. In addition to the team leader and advisers we were all assigned a buddy to check in on us and answer questions which was really helpful.

I think the python and hackerrank sessions will be very helpful for getting summer placements independent of whether that is here or elsewhere. In terms of the business specific information there were a few things that I'd like to know more about which will potentially affect which modules I pick for next year and I was also pleasantly surprised working on the team project, I thought I hated teamwork and was bad at it but I really enjoyed the group project and our group worked really well together.

The insight was very well structured, the first two days were really training heavy and exhausting but after that it was a good balance of sessions and time to either work on the group project or meet people across the firm. The main thing I wish had been different was that it would have been more convenient to have all of the team members interview at roughly the same time instead of spread across the day as the interviews took place the day before the final presentations and that got in the way of practicing as a whole group.

Really good, interns in both my specific division and other divisions were really friendly and nice, everyone at the firm was friendly and welcoming and more than happy to talk about what they do and their background. The workload was definitely way heavier than I expected but we still had time to do a few things as a group, never had a late night at the office and finished work with enough time to devote all of thursday to practice and interviews

There were a lot of training sessions throughout the spring week that were specifically scheduled for interns in our divisions or all interns, there are also a ton of learning resources on goldman sachs university and everyone was more than happy to help us out and guide us towards the right direction so I really can't think of much more they could have done in that area,

I think the insight and being able to talk to people who've gone through the spring internship, the summer internship or a year long placement and then joined the firm as full time employees were really helpful in terms of understanding what it would be like to have a full time role within the technology division. However, I was mostly interested in Strats and I feel like I am still not fully sure what the day to day there would look like as the focus was primarily on technology teams.

A lot. If you spend any amount of time looking through the goldman sachs website or talking to anyone at goldman sachs you'll keep hearing about how great the culture and the people are. To be honest I found this to be annoying throughout the training days but I came to understand over time and feel like they are right, the culture here is great. Everyone is really approachable, open to receive and give feedback, provide advice and guidance and connect you to anyone who might be able to help in some way or another. There is a lot of focus on diversity and making sure employees feel like they can take their full selves to work as well as treating everyone the same regardless of whether they're a partner or an intern.

Again, unfortunately I didn't get much of a chance to find out about what it is like to work at strats and while I really liked the company, I think if I was working on the technology division I would really start to miss the mathematics aspects and quickly become unhappy. Hopefully I'll get the chance to come back and do an internship for strats next year but if not, I might still give technology a go as they mentioned mobility was definitely a possibility.

I was paid more than I've ever been paid for any job ever and in addition to the salary payments I got a hotel in London covered for 10 days as well as my travel expenses reimbursed the first day. While food wasn't covered and food in London is quite expensive it was still a really good amount of money subtracting the cost of eating out.

There were networking sessions scheduled for some people but I personally didn't get any invitations to those beyond the welcome/farewell events and a breakfast. However, there was definitely a lot of opportunities to network, there were plenty of gaps in our schedule and everyone was pretty open to meeting up. I contacted two people I was interested in meeting and not only was I able to meet them the next day for about an hour but one of them also introduced me to a VP who I met the same day for about an hour. I've been at other companies before and big or small I'd never seen people so open to meet up and doing it for so much time and at so short notice and I've never felt like people are actually happy to talk to me instead of feeling like I'm a nuisance that they wish they didn't have to deal with.

Lots of talks about affinity networks, volunteering, sports classes (which interns actually were able to sign up for). In terms of the affinity networks they had one for women, LGBTQ, black people and I remember seeing a carer interest group on the website as well. The sports classes were scheduled several times a day every day and everything other than trainers was provided

I definitely would (in fact, I've recommended it to several people already). It's a great opportunity to find out what it's like to work at a big company, if working at an investment bank would be a good fit for you, get contacts and some technical and soft skills, it looks good on your CV and what I thought working here would be like actually turned out to be almost entirely wrong so I'm glad I came