From the October 30, 2018 Wall Street Journal: Goldman,
JPMorgan Hit Pause on the Intern Recruiting ‘Madness’
A push in recent years to move up application deadlines isn’t
bringing in the kinds of candidates the banks need.
By Liz Hoffman
"Two Wall Street
investment banks are easing up in the race to hire their most junior employees. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS and JPMorgan Chase JPM &
Co. won’t interview or extend summer internship offers to college sophomores
this year and will go back to recruiting students in the fall of their junior
year, executives said.
It is a nod to a softer Wall Street, eager to cast off its sweatbox image to compete
with perk-happy Silicon Valley. It is also an acknowledgment that a push in
recent years to move up application deadlines isn’t bringing in the kinds of
candidates banks need as they try to diversify their overwhelmingly white and
male ranks.
“We were
contributing to an environment that pressured students to choose rather than to
explore,” said Dane Holmes, Goldman’s top human-resources executive. “I want
people who want to be at Goldman Sachs, not people who felt they had to say yes
to an offer.”
David Solomon, Goldman’s new chief executive, spent his
college summers as a camp counselor and, in a recent fireside chat with
Goldman’s summer interns, said he “stumbled into” a career in finance.
“The world was not as competitive then,” he said.
For students, Wall
Street internships are the on-ramp to a potentially lucrative career in
finance. For banks, they are the wide end of a funnel that will produce future
leaders.
In an earlier AIM
blog on September 18, 2018 “Announcing SUITED which
is designed to help deserving finance candidates find companies looking for
their skill set,” I
indicated issues with the earlier and earlier recruiting process. The blog
discussed other methods being explored, such as Suited, which uses
artificial intelligence to identify finance candidates most likely to succeed
with more than just a resume.
