Day in the Life of a Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Intern NYC - YouTube

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