I just received an invitation for an interview at Goldman Sachs’ Utah office. The position will be in Operations. Just to give you some background on me: -Graduate Accounting student -Big 4 audit internship at the moment -Non target school (Very non target) -Level II candidate From what I’ve read on other interwebz message boards, you really have to sell the fact that you really want Operations, and are not just trying to go FO. Problem is, I’m worried on what to say if they ask why I’m taking the CFA exams. Also, the description of what Operations does is clear as mud. I’ve heard things like “Back office admin b***es”, to “Something close to consulting…” If anyone can point me in the right direction on what exactly Operations at GS does, I’d greatly appreciate it. inb4 FO>BO, MBA > CFA, Top school > State school, and Chinese Food > Japanese Food
I have run into similar issues. in the end if they get the idea in their heads that you dont want to do ops then the CFA might be a negative (will reinforce their idea). the best advice I can give is to say that you are simply interested in the material and want to have good background. maybe you can say you wanted to get an MBA and that you thought it would be helpful there, but that is opening another can of worms. answer quickly and decisively if it comes up and move the conversation forward without lingering on the question.
I was thinking of something very similar to what you mentioned. To be quite honest, I really did take the exams because the material interested me. Even now, my main goals are not equity research like many people on this forum, but business valuation. I’ll probably just explain it as something I did for intellectual curiosity (albeit an expensive curiosity), and that it’s helped me learn more about capital markets, etc.
el duque it is easier to move to a FO role from accounting background than from the BO you have a graduate degree in accounting, thats pimp sh it,. dont throw it away
Lol, I’ve never heard of an accounting degree as “pimp” anything. “Stable” is usually the word I think about. But audit is less of a BO role than regular accounting I suppose. Still don’t have a clue what Operations does…anyone willing to give me the quick and dirty?
el duque Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I just received an invitation for an interview at > Goldman Sachs’ Utah office. The position will be > in Operations. Just to give you some background on > me: > > -Graduate Accounting student > > -Big 4 audit internship at the moment > > -Non target school (Very non target) > > -Level II candidate > > From what I’ve read on other interwebz message > boards, you really have to sell the fact that you > really want Operations, and are not just trying to > go FO. Problem is, I’m worried on what to say if > they ask why I’m taking the CFA exams. > > Also, the description of what Operations does is > clear as mud. I’ve heard things like “Back office > admin b***es”, to “Something close to > consulting…” If anyone can point me in the right > direction on what exactly Operations at GS does, > I’d greatly appreciate it. > > inb4 FO>BO, MBA > CFA, Top school > State school, > and Chinese Food > Japanese Food back office is like controllers, they at least get to talk to the trading desk many times during the day, watch the markets, see what happens in what positions. This has a slight potential upward move-ability. Don’t do this more than 3 yrs operations is like back office of the back office. Ops people talk to controllers and confirm crap like cash payments were made to the right counterparty and physical entry into some database. Honestly, don’t do this more than 1 year, and if you can, don’t do it at all.
Ouch…what about the compensation? Would anyone here take BO cave for 125k after 5ish years…? (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/453097-operations-internship-goldman-sachs-6.html) What about the Operation groups that support Asset Mgt or Derivatives? Ni interesting work there?
el duque Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I just received an invitation for an interview at > Goldman Sachs’ Utah office. The position will be > in Operations. Just to give you some background on > me: > > -Graduate Accounting student > > -Big 4 audit internship at the moment > > -Non target school (Very non target) > > -Level II candidate > > From what I’ve read on other interwebz message > boards, you really have to sell the fact that you > really want Operations, and are not just trying to > go FO. Problem is, I’m worried on what to say if > they ask why I’m taking the CFA exams. > > Also, the description of what Operations does is > clear as mud. I’ve heard things like “Back office > admin b***es”, to “Something close to > consulting…” If anyone can point me in the right > direction on what exactly Operations at GS does, > I’d greatly appreciate it. > > inb4 FO>BO, MBA > CFA, Top school > State school, > and Chinese Food > Japanese Food What’s your career goal?
Business Val —> Corp Development at a company that’s heavily involved in acquisitions (e.g. GE or AT&T)
wtf, you can go right into that at a big 4 business val than go industry why were you even thinking of going to a backoffice role? brah, are you retar ded?
Keeping options open. I think trying to get to know what the work entails would be interesting as an intern. Just asking for some advice on how to spin CFA AND wtf Operations does. Besides, having GS on the resume wouldn’t hurt. Then again, I half-expected someone on this forum to say “fetch IB analysts their coffee”. As if they’re not fetching everyone else’s coffee.
the IB analysts are the ones fetching coffee
el duque Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Ouch…what about the compensation? Would anyone > here take BO cave for 125k after 5ish years…? > > (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-c > areers-employment/453097-operations-internship-gol > dman-sachs-6.html) > > > What about the Operation groups that support Asset > Mgt or Derivatives? Ni interesting work there? You won’t reach 125k around 5 years in operations. Especially if you’re in utah and outside nyc. In nyc, 3-4 years puts you just into associate level and that’s probably looking at 80-85 base, bonus maybe 20k in a decent year.
Too bad, I really wanted to buy that 125k new car in 5 years. 125k is definitely too optimistic for Utah. Maybe 95k at the most? Or have my expectations been totally shot by Big 4 compensation?
el duque Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Business Val —> Corp Development at a company > that’s heavily involved in acquisitions (e.g. GE > or AT&T) If that, above, is what you want to do, getting a job at back office doesn’t make sense at all. This is what you will need to do: 1) work hard and get a full-time offer from big 4 and try to see if you can transition into valuation, transaction service or corporate finance. 2) if you can’t get into these roles, just work as an auditor for a year while finishing the CFA program. If they don’t let you transfer, you should be able to get an offer from other big 4 firms. 3) work 2-3 years or so, and see if you can get into an internal role at a middle market pe firm or into a top mba program. 4) work hard and see if you can transition into corp. development at a company you want to work for. My impression, please correct me if I’m wrong, was that it’s really difficult to get into a corp. development role at a large corporation without prior ibd or pe experiences. I’m sure there are many alternatives to getting into these roles, but that’s how I would do if I were in your situation.
el duque Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Too bad, I really wanted to buy that 125k new car > in 5 years. > > 125k is definitely too optimistic for Utah. Maybe > 95k at the most? Or have my expectations been > totally shot by Big 4 compensation? Didn’t read this post while I was writing my previous post. Are you 18?
Thanks for the advice. It looks like the BO internship would be nice, but probably not my speed…I still have no clue what they do though…
Operations is a broad term. My firm is very small and so we all wear lots of hats, and I occasionally (more occasionally, recently) have to get involved in ops stuff. The CFA comes in handy primarily for the portfolio accounting piece. I’m sure regular accountants also know this, but I wouldn’t have learned it anywhere else (time vs money weighted returns, performance attribution, etc.). I find myself doing three things 1) prototyping stuff for the other ops people to use more regularly, 2) thinking ahead in data management to figure out what kind of stuff we need to be tracking now so that it is there when we need it, and 3) teaching other ops staff how and why we need to do things a particular way. I actually don’t mind it so much, since a fair amount of it plays to the puzzle-solver in me, but it’s clear that my efforts are best spent elsewhere whenever possible. Also, Goldman is a big firm that presumably has a lot of this stuff worked out already, so I suspect ops is more about 1) data entry kinds of things, 2) running ad-hoc analyses from middle and front office types, and possibly 3) adding functionality to the automated back office systems. As for whether you should do it, I guess it depends. If you are going to Utah for a job, it may be difficult to get out and go front office anywhere else, because you will have geography working against you. On the other hand, an advantage might be that Mormons tend to be very physically attractive; it’s the bit about since one is made in God’s image, part of being holy is to make sure that that image looks good. True, you can’t drink, but since you don’t need beer goggles, does it even matter?
dhyun3 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > el duque Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Too bad, I really wanted to buy that 125k new > car > > in 5 years. > > > > 125k is definitely too optimistic for Utah. > Maybe > > 95k at the most? Or have my expectations been > > totally shot by Big 4 compensation? > > > Didn’t read this post while I was writing my > previous post. > Are you 18? Just turned. Damn you’re good.
i think op is just stuck to the goldman name