back to vault.com

Vault Blog

Sign Up for Vault e-news

Vault's weekly Career Update for tips and tools to help you find and manage your ideal career.

Take Goldman Sachs' IB IQ Test to See If You're Fit to Work For the Firm

by Derek Loosvelt
Published: Friday, June 24, 2011

Are you man (or woman) enough for a life in M&A? Do you have the stomach to trade fixed-income securities? Is it in your DNA to underwrite initial public offerings and help Fortune 500 companies issue bonds? Or is a back-office job in a department such as HR or compliance more suited to your tastes?

fabrice tourre testifying in front of congressThanks to a new feature of Goldman Sachs' careers website, which asks the (literally) million-dollar question -- Where might you fit in with our firm? -- now you can find out.

That is, via its website, Goldman invites you to take a quiz to find out which of its business units, if any, would consider you for a job.

The great thing about the test is that anyone can take it (even people -- crazy as it might sound -- who have no interest in actually working for the tarnished but still crown jewel of Wall Street). In fact, I've taken the quiz twice, and, strangely enough, both times I was told that Goldman's legal department, which no doubt has been a busy one as of late, came up as the best fit for my skills, interest, and temperament.

If you too choose to subject yourself to Goldman's discerning eye, you'll be asked about your academic interests, affinity for risk, preference between a collaborative environment and entrepreneurial one, ability to thrive under pressure, ideal work schedule, desire to manage large groups of people, ability to respond to situations with your gut, ability to work in chaotic situations, your ideal job tasks, and how you would describe yourself (fast learner, early riser, confident, good communicator, etc.).

The test also includes these two essay questions: (1) In 500 words or less, please present an argument for why Facebook deserves a valuation of at least $175 billion; and (2) Tell us something that's not on your resume, not on your Facebook page (or tagged on someone else's), and that no one -- not even your mother, father, or significant other(s) -- knows about you.

(Related: 15 Interview Tips From Goldman Sachs)

http://blogs.vault.com/blog/in-the-black-vaults-finance-careers-blog/take-goldman-sachs-ib-iq-test-to-see-if-youre-fit-to-work-for-the-firm/

Vault welcomes your views. Please stay on topic and be respectful of other readers. Review our User Guidelines.

blog comments powered by Disqus
X

Comments Policy

Vault.com encourages you to express your opinions and engage in discussions with one another by leaving comments on our site. While we promote an open forum, please follow these guidelines to ensure an enjoyable and welcoming environment for all our readers. Vault.com does not review or moderate all comments but we reserve the right to remove or edit content once posted.

Respect one another. Debates are great, but attacks are not. Please refrain from posting offensive, obscene, threatening or abusive comments. If you personally attack other readers or writers, your comment(s) and responses to those comments may be removed from the discussion. Attacks create a hostile environment that discourages discussion. You are fully responsible for libelous or defamatory comments.

Hate-speech will not be tolerated. Comments containing racism, homophobia, sexism, or any other form of hate-speech have no place on our site.

Keep your language in check. Vulgar posts may offend other readers. Our filters are fairly tolerant, allowing for quite a bit of colorful/questionable language, but too many obscenities may prevent a comment from posting. In addition, in some cases, if a post is still too vulgar, a moderator may later remove or edit it.

Please note that comments may be edited by the moderator for any reason, including but not limited to language.

Stay on topic. Comments should be related to the topic discussed in the associated article or blog post. In order to keep the conversation relevant, off-topic comments may be edited or removed.

Don't impersonate someone else. You may not use a false e-mail address, impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise mislead as to the origin of your comments. If we believe you've impersonated someone else, we reserve the right to remove the comment.

Spam and commercial content will be removed. We do not welcome comments containing copy used for commercial purposes or for soliciting funds. If we see them, we reserve the right to remove them.

Readers may "report" concerns about other reader comments. Please use the "Report Abuse" link to flag inappropriate content. If a reader reports a concern, moderators will try to review that concern as soon as possible. This may take a few days although we hope to review comments more quickly. We do not remove every comment that has been reported and we cannot respond individually to every report.

Stop and think before you comment. We won't remove comments because a reader or writer regrets a post. Please remember that these comments are searchable and a comment history has a long life on the web.

Don't include personal information in your comments. We strongly discourage readers from posting personal information about themselves (ex. address, telephone number, workplace) and reserve the right to remove any comments we find with personal information about other people or that violates a third party's right to privacy.

Complaints about removed comments. We reserve the right to remove comments left to protest a removed comment. Please contact us if you have any complaints about deleted comments.

Repeated abuse of our guidelines may lead to commenting privileges being suspended. If you think you've been banned by mistake, let us know.

For further questions and comments regarding commenting on Vault.com, please contact us.

connect with us