Employer Brand Profile: Goldman Sachs

Every year FreshMinds Talent runs a peer-nominated survey to identify the top 200 undergraduate students in the UK, based on their business and commercial potential. As part of the process of being selected for the Ones to Watch scheme, the high-flying students tell us the employers they aspire to work for. And every year (we’ve been running the scheme since 2001) the same name comes out on top of the pile. Goldman  Sachs.

Ever wondered who is spearheading London’s planning for the 2012 Olympic Games? Former Goldman Sachs‘ trader Paul Deighton, who amassed a fortune estimated around £100million during his two decades with the investment bank. Who looks after the US government’s cash? Hank Paulson, who George Bush lured away from his £20million a year job as chief executive of Goldman Sachs in 2006. And the President’s chief of staff, appointed the same year? Joshua Bolten, formerly Goldman Sachs director of legal affairs in London and chief lobbyist to the EU.

So how does Goldman Sachs maintain its reputation as the luxury employer brand of choice for the great and the good in university, politics and the wider business community? To be quite honest, the bank has monopolised the market on two specific employee benefits that are often looked at with mistrust by the HR world at large.

The first is elitism. People want to work for Goldman Sachs precisely because it is very hard indeed to get to work for Goldman Sachs. The bank is the third most popular employer in the world for MBA graduates, the first for graduates of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton and Yale. On a busy day, the HR department in the London office might interview 300 people. All of those will have impeccable academics and implausibly good CVs, and only a select few will be chosen. Surely nobody who got that far could possibly turn Goldman Sachs down?

The second benefit is money, and lots of it. There are some HR professionals and recruitment consultants who view money almost as a dirty word, but our Work 2.0 research revealed that Generation Y (the rising stars aged 20 to 30) would chose an employer who was offering them more money over one that offers:

• a stronger focus on corporate social responsibility
• a reputation for ethical business practices
• a strong involvement in the community
• a positive impact on the environment
• a social workplace where they socialise with colleagues outside of work hours
• a focus on team work
• makes them feel like a stakeholder in the company’s work
• a brand they can identify with.

While news of the credit crunch was slowly undermining the City’s traditional pay structure, Goldman Sachs was announcing that its bonuses would amount to more than those of all their competitors put together. On average, the amount in question was £300,000 per employee, obviously after their day-to-day salaries.

It might seem old school, even archaic to talk about money and prestige in this modern world of funky consumer brands like Innocent, Gü and Virgin. And people like those brands, they really do. It’s just that Goldman Sachs is an institution, a golden key on your CV that can open doors you never thought possible before. Oh, and it pays ok too.

Read more here

• How Goldman Sachs took over the world
• Goldman Sachs enjoys bonus bonanza
• What to expect from your interview at Goldman Sachs

Stumble It!