Third-year internships are essential things one experiences in college life as it is the first time one is exposed to the corporate world. This internship can shape the future career a lot as it can be a crucial factor for helping the student decide his future path while adding experience points in the CV at the same time. To get an insight into what an internship in Goldman Sachs related to risk stats is like, we talk to Rushang Gupta, who interned with Goldman Sachs in the summer of 2020 and received a Pre Placement Offer (PPO) from the same.
Application Procedure:
Goldman Sachs comes on day 1 of the internship season. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities, and investment management firm that provides a wide range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments, and individuals. About the procedure: The selection procedure consists of two main rounds: a test round, and then an interview. In the test round, there are mainly two sections- quant and coding. You need to get a high score in either one of the sections to get shortlisted. The interview consists of 3-4 rounds in which quant based and coding questions are asked. I used brainstellar.com for preparing for the quant-based questions and Interview Bit for preparing for the coding problems. The panel in my case was very friendly and helpful, and in most cases, they gave me hints to help me arrive at the answer to the problems wherever I got stuck. They did not expect prior knowledge of finance from us.
Reasons for choosing Goldman Sachs:
My previous internship was a research internship, so I thought a bit about exploring the field of finance as well. I was open to both finance and tech but got an offer from GS first.
First Day Experience:
Originally the internship had to start from 11th May 2020. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the starting got delayed to 18th May 2020. On the first day, we had a session with the manager. After that, there were sessions with fellow interns to allow us to get to know each other. The first impression was indeed very good. People over there were accommodating. They helped us understand the systems and the procedure of logging into the virtual machines.
The Internship:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire internship was done remotely from home. Also, the internship's length was reduced to 6 weeks from the original ten weeks due to the pandemic situation. The initial period of 2 weeks was the training period. There were multiple sessions where we were told about the various divisions and their works and the company's specific tools. It was only after two weeks that the main work started. The work timings were mostly flexible. On some days, there was a lot of work, while there was relatively lesser work on some days. The work assigned to me was a benchmarking exercise, in which we were required to calculate the capital number on a hypothetical portfolio. I had no prior knowledge of lots of things, and I had to learn them on the go. But, the people there were encouraging and motivating and available anytime. The work culture was amazing, and I got to learn a lot. I learned a lot about good coding practices, how to talk to people professionally, and a lot about finance and capital risk management.
I feel I missed on a few opportunities due to the internship being done online from home. Due to the things being virtual, there were instances where things slowed down due to the communication gap. Had it been offline, we could have directly approached the concerned individual but now, at times, we had to wait for them to respond to our queries/doubts.
But all in all, the online experience was in itself pretty smooth, much better than I had expected. Things went on very smoothly without any technical glitches.
Cherishable experiences:
We got to interact with GS employees from all over the world, like from the New York office, London office, etc, as certain projects were done along with them. The work wasn't restricted with just Indians. Most of the teams were pretty informal and had friendly gaming sessions (like pictionary on skribbl.io) every Friday night. The people were very helpful and motivating and did not let us feel uncomfortable at any point in time.
Takeaways:
It was my first exposure to the corporate world and was indeed a remarkable one. It was challenging yet fun at the same time. I got to learn a lot of things that were utterly new to me and have fun at the same time, and that is why I accepted the PPO they gave me.