Goldman Sachs gets roughly 250,000 applications a year for fewer than 4,000 analyst positions, according to figures the firm has shared publicly. Those numbers are cited so often they’ve become almost meaningless. What matters for your prep is understanding how the firm actually decides who moves forward and why. It’s less about being the smartest person in the room and more about demonstrating you’ve done your homework on Goldman specifically.
The process, laid out plainly
The Goldman Sachs interview process has a few distinct stages depending on your role and how you entered. For campus recruiting, the path is: HireVue video interview, first-round phone or video interview (often two back-to-back), and then a Superday: a full day of interviews, typically six to eight rounds, mixing technical, behavioral, and division-specific content.
For experienced hires, the path is more variable. You might skip HireVue entirely, go straight to a recruiter call, have two or three rounds of one-on-ones with team members, and then a final round with a managing director or partner. Timelines vary widely. Some experienced hire loops run four weeks, some run four months, depending on whether there’s an active headcount slot.
The Superday is where most candidates focus their prep, and correctly so. Getting through a Superday at Goldman without a strong understanding of markets, current events, and your own deal or research experience is genuinely difficult.
What Superday rounds actually look like
The specific questions depend on which division you’re interviewing for. Investment banking, sales and trading, investment management, and the technology division all run different formats. Some things are consistent across all of them.
Every Superday includes at least one behavioral round that is essentially a values screen. Goldman’s core values are heavily emphasized in how they talk about culture, and interviewers are explicitly trained to assess candidates against those values. “Tell me about a time you acted with integrity when it cost you something” is a real question that gets asked. Having a prepared, specific answer matters more than it sounds like it should.
For investment banking and sales and trading roles, expect at least one technical round covering accounting basics, valuation methods (DCF, comparables, precedent transactions), and market-awareness questions. Interviewers will ask what you’ve been following in markets and then probe your answer. If you say “I’ve been watching the Fed rate path,” they’ll ask you to explain your view on where rates are heading and why. If you don’t have a view, that’s a problem.
For technology roles at Goldman, the loop includes coding rounds (typically LeetCode medium difficulty), a systems design discussion, and a behavioral layer. The technology division at Goldman is larger than most candidates realize. Goldman published data showing it employs more software engineers than many dedicated tech companies. The technical bar is real, not token.
The “fit” question is actually a knowledge test
Goldman interviewers ask “why Goldman?” in nearly every round. This question is doing more work than it appears to. They’re testing whether you can distinguish Goldman’s actual positioning from your generic idea of Goldman.
Generic answers that don’t work: “Goldman has the best deal flow,” “Goldman is the most prestigious firm,” “I want to work with the smartest people.” Every candidate says versions of these.
Answers that work: something specific about a Goldman business line you’ve researched, a deal Goldman worked on recently that you find interesting and can explain, or an honest connection between your background and a specific team’s focus. One analyst I know mentioned during her Superday that she’d tracked Goldman’s commodities book through the energy transition and had a view on how the ESG pressure was affecting deal structures. That specificity landed.
Behavioral questions worth preparing for
Goldman’s behavioral framework tilts heavily toward examples of working in teams under pressure, handling competing priorities, and responding to feedback. The questions aren’t unusual. Most candidates have heard them before. The gap is in how specifically they answer.
A few that appear consistently:
- “Tell me about a time you disagreed with a team decision and what you did about it.”
- “Describe a situation where you had to deliver difficult feedback to someone.”
- “Walk me through a time you made a mistake and how you handled it.”
The mistake question in particular catches candidates who haven’t prepared a real example. Goldman interviewers can tell when someone is confessing a fake mistake (describing something minor as if it were catastrophic, wrapping it too neatly). A real mistake, told honestly, with a clear description of what you’d do differently, lands better than a polished non-answer.
Researching Goldman before the interview
The LinkedIn Economic Graph research on financial services talent flows is worth reading before a Goldman interview. Not because you’ll quote it, but because understanding where Goldman sits in the talent market helps you frame why you’re there. Goldman has been shifting toward technology and data roles significantly over the past five years, which changes the profile of who fits well.
Beyond LinkedIn, read Goldman’s annual report. Not the whole thing. The letter to shareholders and the section on strategic priorities. Know which businesses are growing, which are being restructured, and what the firm is saying publicly about where it’s investing. Interviewers at the managing director and partner level will notice if you’ve actually done this.
Also read the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook entry on financial analysts. Not for prep content, but for context. The median wage of $99,890 that BLS cites for financial analysts nationally is dramatically below what Goldman first-year analysts make in total comp, which underscores how Goldman fits in the broader labor market and helps you frame your own compensation expectations going in.
On the Superday itself
Six to eight rounds in one day is genuinely tiring. The later rounds matter as much as the first ones, and most candidates lose energy around round five. Being aware of that in advance helps.
Goldman interviewers compare notes. What you tell one interviewer can be brought up by a later one, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not. Staying consistent across rounds isn’t just about honesty, it’s about not accidentally contradicting yourself when you’re tired and rushing.
If you’re preparing for back-to-back behavioral rounds specifically, Craqly’s AI interview copilot can run consecutive mock sessions with different question angles, simulating the way a Superday changes tone from one interviewer to the next. That kind of endurance practice is underused by most candidates.
The people who get Goldman offers aren’t always the most technically perfect. They tend to be the ones who prepared specifically, not generically, and who could hold a real conversation about the work Goldman actually does.