consensus-driven culture....Goldman Sachs

[agk99]

Making the Grade at Goldman

這是一篇介紹高盛集團企業文化以及今年招募新人的原則，供各位參考

Aaron Marcus, the investment bank's chief of campus recruiting, says in its "consensus-driven culture, you must be persuasive to succeed"
MBAs hoping to land a coveted job at Goldman Sachs (GS ) should know about Aaron Marcus, who heads America's Campus Recruiting at Goldman Sachs in New York, and what he and his colleagues look for when they evaluate recruits. An 11-year Goldman Sachs veteran, Marcus has worked in three different divisions on three different continents. In 2000, he helped the operations department identify optimal employees, and that project evolved into his current position.

He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Francesca Di Meglio. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

Q: What kinds of jobs are available to MBAs?
A: Undergraduates are hired at the analyst level and MBAs at the associate level. I'm going to guess [that we conduct] somewhere in the vicinity of 1,500 to 2,000 first-round interviews at our target campuses. We will hire about 200 MBAs globally from the class of 2005.

Q: How do you decide where to recruit?
A: We target what we consider to be the best business schools, where we'll find the best students with the right skill set and fit. It's also a function of where we have a large number of passionate alumni who will support what's primarily an alumni-driven recruiting effort.

Q: What's your strategy once you arrive on campus?
A: Our strategy is to make students aware of what Goldman Sachs can offer the average MBA, which is the best post-business-school education one can get. We strive to communicate the power of our brand and culture. We have a differentiating culture that emphasizes meritocracy, integrity, commitment to excellence, and the best client services and teamwork.

We emphasize teamwork in the recruiting space. Teamwork, to us, doesn't simply mean offering to help other people in need or saying yes when asked to help. At Goldman, teamwork means taking a passionate interest in facilitating the success of other people with whom you work.

We also know that students value the ability to hear from the senior-most leadership of an organization that's trying to recruit them. This year, we were successful in having close to 90% of our management committee appear at various campuses around the world.

Q: Are the packages you're offering now more competitive than the recent past?
A: I trust that Goldman Sachs has a view on compensation that allows us to be as competitive as we need to be in the marketplace. We don't publicly comment on our compensation packages.

Q: What skills do MBAs need to compete in today's marketplace?
A: We emphasize analytical skills that give you the ability to solve problems, a strong work ethic, self-motivation, the willingness to seek and take on responsibility, a commitment to the team, and leadership. We're looking for people who have good communication skills -- both written and oral. When you work in an environment like Goldman Sachs, which has a consensus-driven culture, you must be persuasive to succeed.

Q: What advice would you offer an MBA who wants a job with your company?
A: Do everything you can to meet as many people who work at Goldman Sachs as possible. Finding a good fit is the key determinant on making a decision about where you should work. You must ask yourself, "With what group of people did I feel most comfortable?" At the end of the day, you will probably spend more time awake at work than you will anyplace else in your life.

Q: What's the most common mistake MBAs make during the recruiting process?
A: Students -- not just MBAs -- underestimate the extent to which preparation is vital to succeeding. There are multiple dimensions of preparation: There's understanding the firm to which you are applying -- the culture, skills that will be required of you, how your experiences prove that you will fit in.

Students need to take as much advantage as they can of the resources that exist to help them prepare. Two resources, in particular, are [other] students on your campus who have worked at the organization to which you're applying and alumni who hold positions there.

If you are a first-year student at one of our target campuses, it's very likely that about 10 to 20 of your classmates, who are now second-year students, worked at our organization over the summer. Those people can tell you what it takes to get a job at a place like Goldman Sachs and how to succeed once you're here. There's also the population of recent alumni who are close to you in age and experience, have joined an organization like Goldman Sachs, and are happy to help you.

Q: Are you hiring international students to work in the U.S.?
A: We're absolutely interested in hiring international students who currently lack U.S. work authorization. In fact, we hire without regard to work authorization for all of our positions globally. We hire the best talent. Once we hire that talent, we may need to work with immigration authorities and various jurisdictions to secure work authorization. We try hard to make that happen. It doesn't always happen, but it's not because of a lack of effort.

We're also interested in hiring international or U.S. students who want to seek opportunities abroad. Non-U.S. opportunities, particularly in Asia, are the greatest area of growth in MBA recruitment. European opportunities are also growing, but not quite as rapidly as in Asia.

We're looking for people who want to make a decent time commitment to a specific region to build a career. That's not to say we don't have mobility at Goldman Sachs. The fact that we do move people around quite a bit is one of the greatest attributes of our organization.

Q: Do MBAs need to do study abroad to compete in today's global marketplace?
A: I wouldn't say any students need to study abroad to make them more attractive to me. But it's certainly true that we want to hire people who appreciate the global nature of our business and the fact that the world is becoming a lot smaller. Most, if not all of our businesses, operate in a global space and not in a distinct region. What's most important is that MBAs get exposed to an academic curriculum that makes them cognizant of and better able to succeed in a global marketplace.

Q: Do you believe that the MBA degree is still worth it?
A: Yes and no. The associate level is the level that usually leads to future senior-leadership positions. There are three channels that we source associates from. We have the people already in the workforce, those who get promoted from the analyst post without an MBA, and then the MBAs. We're always going to need those three channels to staff our associate-level positions.

People with an MBA usually bring to the table a formal knowledge set, the skill set we covet, and a pretty impressive work history. It's definitely important for career switchers because it's a good way to legitimize yourself as you move from one industry to another.

The reason I would say no is because Goldman Sachs is not an organization that precludes the possibility of long-term success without an MBA. A sizable percentage of the senior leaders don't have an MBA or an advanced degree for that matter. At the end of the day, your success is predicated on the extent to which you're excellent in executing your job and contributing to the success of the organization. That's not degree-dependent.

[流浪水手]

好文章~~

[adif]

推~
謝謝了