what's up everyone it's Kenji here and in this video i want to break down a day in the life
of a goldman sachs intern so just to give some context i previously worked a goldman sachs in
their investment banking division in new york city so that's what the day in the life is going to be
about as for the internship itself it was about 10 weeks long and i've also made some videos on
my goldman sachs resume as well as some cover letter tips if you want to take a look at those
and leave them up here now before we get into a day in the life i do want to mention that
a goldman sachs within their investment banking division there's actually a split between advisory
and financing so an advisory these are things like m a activism defense restructuring whilst
what's called financing has to do with structure finance leverage finance equity offerings other
things like that so basically financing is more tied to the financial markets meaning that they
do have to come a bit earlier and finish maybe a bit earlier than those in advisory so for the
work hours they're actually fairly similar between the two about 16 hour days more or less for junior
people but that said if i had to pick one probably advisory works a slight bit more right all right
so let's get into the day in the life on average i'd say it was around 15 to 16 hours that i worked
every day that said because i was on the financing side i did come in slightly earlier at around
7 15 7 30 all the way to around 11 30 and obviously take a couple breaks here and
there to grab coffee or have lunch or dinner if i wasn't too busy say all right so let's get into
the details of what actually happens during a 16 hour day so i typically would aim to get up around
6 30 and by 7 15 i did aim to be at the office i only had a short commute because i was living
in a student dorm so that was fairly convenient and i'll try to get a grab a snack along the way
then at 7 15 to around 8 30 this was time for me to catch up on my emails and then start to do some
research as i had a presentation every morning at 8 30 which we actually alternated between interns
it was essentially a market update right so it was basically in front of the whole team and we had to
debrief them on a couple things that had happened the night prior or what to expect during the day
so it would take me about an hour to actually find the relevant news and typically
i would do it on bloomberg if you haven't heard it's called the bloomberg terminal
and that's basically the financial news platform that everyone uses it's really pricey it does cost
around 24 000 a year it's a subscription-based model but basically they have all of the necessary
financial information there and if they're willing to pay that much then it's obviously very valuable
and there i would look at things like how the interest rates have moved because that's going to
affect the different types of things like equities bonds derivatives not just in the us but also
in other markets where we might be working then something else might be political things right so
for instance if there's an election happening at a certain point i do want to try to mention that
and see how that might affect the markets it's really a proper debrief that might last
anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes it's essentially from 8 30 to 8 45 and there's a q a after it
so between 8 45 and 9 i would try to grab a coffee and basically just get myself ready for
the day so between 9 and 11 i would usually be on my desk and actually get started with
the work that i might have and just to give you a bit of background basically within the investment
banking division there's different hierarchies obviously the summer analyst is at the very
bottom me in this case then after you get the analyst then you get what's called an associate
then a vice president and lastly a managing director and then there's partners and others but
that usually we didn't really see them so md was usually the person the highest person that we saw
as you can imagine there's a lot less empties than there are analysts right that makes sense
so basically most of the interactions i had were with analysts and associates so for instance i
would have a powerpoint ready for the analyst and he would give me a couple corrections which
i would then take on during that time and try to make the changes and they might be things like
hey instead of putting a pie chart here let's try a column chart because that's probably going to be
more a better representation of the data or hey make sure you check this number again it doesn't
quite look right to me and other things like that mainly kind of combining excel
and powerpoint and let's say that on a good day i'll just be able to actually do the work but
sometimes because basically everyone on top of me is my boss if you're a summer analyst
there's all sorts of things that come up and people might ask some for some urgent help last
minute before their meeting at 12 or something and so it's not always that smooth see and between 11
and 12 i'll usually get on some internal calls with some of the senior bunkers where basically
they'd be talking about what's called a live deal so a deal that's ongoing at the moment
where they might be getting some help from the research team and kind of seeing the economic
forecasts and what that's looking like or talking with people from other offices right like say the
san francisco office to see if they have any any previous work with this client and how
they can pass that on to us and it can be of help to us it's really kind of communicating
and seeing what's up but on the whole as for the what the intern does the intern doesn't really do
anything you just listen you don't necessarily participate at most maybe the analyst calls me
up and says hey check the share price of this and tell them or something like that but it's
really minimal participation what you're actually expected to do as an intern is just to take notes
so you just take notes of the meeting and ideally you want to have them ready that
when the meeting is over you send them up as say some kind of a debrief for the meeting so once the
meeting's over between 12 and 1 here's basically where i'm supposed to summarize the email and send
it out so that maybe takes me half an hour to do and then usually after a meeting they might say
all right let's meet again at this time or let's try to get in touch with this other department
so basically i'd be in charge of that more of like admin stuff if you will and if i have some spare
time i'll obviously be working on some of my other projects right so between 1 and 1 30 i just put
lunch for now um to be honest that varies a lot lunch time varies a lot depending on your workload
whether you have meetings and other things like that at my worst sometimes i couldn't really eat
so i would eat around three or four but usually i would try to get some food in between 1 and 1 30.
and i'll just go down to the cafeteria they had which was a couple floors down and just get food
to go so i'd actually just eat it in front of my desk i know it sounds a bit depressing but
that's pretty much what everyone did at least everyone on my level so i thought it was just
a normal thing to do so as you can see there's no fancy champagne parties or anything like that no
waffle wall street kind of stuff or maybe i just wasn't invited but you know so between 130
and 330 is when i actually get the edits done so suppose the analyst previously told me to change
that that slide to something a bit different maybe change those graphs and double check the numbers
so that's what i would do and basically this time i would pass it on to the analyst the
analyst would say it's okay then it would go up the latter to the associate maybe the associate
has some comments maybe he says it's okay or she and then move it up even higher to the vp and see
what they have to say if it's all good that's that but usually there's some comments so it goes back
falls back down to me and i have to make some other minor changes before i can send them back up
there's a lot of going back and forth between the different people in the hierarchy and between 3 30
and 4 30 there might be a client meeting and this is fairly ordinary as in it happens maybe they
have a call every two weeks or something like that and usually on goldman's side it would be
the associate the analyst and myself and we'd be talking to the clients seeing how it's going
um how the proposals coming up coming along and other things like that so really just kind of a
checkup in a way and as for what i was doing there well you guessed it i was just taking notes taking
notes debriefing and maybe looking up a number if it's really necessary but it wasn't usually the
case so just as the meeting ended i'll typically have a 15-minute coffee chat set up so basically
my bossa goldman told me that i had to have coffee with everyone in my team so that obviously took a
while so every day i would ideally try to have coffee with someone just to get to know them
and essentially build a bit of a culture and yeah just get to know everyone in the team it was a bit
awkward to ask at first but i realized that it's something that everyone does in investment banks
so um why would i do differently right so between 4 30 and 7 30 typically the big meetings were done
for the day so basically i could focus on some of the things that did require a bit more say
thinking so for instance it would be things like creating an excel model template or for instance
updating a model say the previous month did the market research and they needed it updated for
this month to send to a client so i would do that other things like that that did actually
require a bit of thinking and they did use a bit of my background in finance and accounting right
and then towards 7 pm you start to get your hopes up you feel like you're doing well with
your project and you might be able to leave the office around 10. that usually wasn't the case too
so between 7 30 and 8 i would typically have dinner the cafeteria would actually
be closed for dinner so i actually had to go to the shopping mall right in front and
that's usually where i would grab grab some food in the food court and i'll bring it back to the
office eat in front of my desk again but this time around the markets are already closed and
some of the more senior people like say the managing directors are usually gone so it's
a bit more of a relaxed environment to eat than you can actually chat with your colleagues say
just after dinner between say 8 and 11 30 that's when you're finishing up all your tasks that have
actually been postponed throughout the day because people had asked you for favor say some might be
things like actually replying to the emails um updating the powerpoint or the excel model
other things like that and that's also typically when an analyst who's really the analyst and the
associates are mainly the people that are left after say 10 pm they're the ones that might ask
you for a favor they just say hey are you busy by the way and well you have to be polite you're the
intern so you just say yeah what's up and they'll usually just give you some more work sometimes you
can reject them but on the whole they don't really recommend it as well it doesn't look good on you
right so that's also when the dream of leaving the office by 10 pm quickly fades so at around 11 30
i'll do a final round of just checking if anyone needs help with anything if i'm already finished
with my work uh there's typically a couple analysts left from my group so i would ask them
and for the most part they would just say go home man it's already late or something like that
which was appreciated but other times they would say yeah actually i need this it's pressing for
tomorrow can you stay around so i would obviously um at my worst i think i had to come in one day at
around 6 30 in the morning and i didn't finish till around 2 30. so that was really my most
worked day but for the most part it wasn't that bad sometimes i even got to leave earlier like say
around 10 right so in a normal scenario at 11 30 i would be walking back home
goldman did offer a free taxi service but because i live so close by and i actually wanted to get
some fresh air for once i would usually just walk back home then i'd sleep and the next day i do
the same thing over again for weekends usually on saturdays i wasn't allowed to go into the office
that's a goldman intern policy apparently and then for sundays i would usually be back at the office
usually doing anything from 6 hours to 14 hours something along those lines so that's a day in
the life as an intern in new york city take it as a bit of a rough guide because it obviously varies
depending on how much work the the team has but it also depends on location right so for instance
new york or london there's some of the bigger financial cities so they always have some work
to do well if you go to some other smaller cities there's obviously not going to be quite as much
work right also the workload does depend a lot on your division so the investment banking division
is notorious for having some of the worst working hours while say others like asset management are
usually somewhat more chill if you will so yeah that's the end of the video i hope you
found it useful if you did feel free to like and subscribe and i'll hopefully catch in the next one