Top 5 Resume Tips to Land a Goldman Sachs Internship

Internship Application Process

The Goldman Sachs internship program is highly competitive, and in 2022, Business Insider reported that Goldman Sachs received a record-high 236,000 applicants from around the world.

Due to the high volume, it’s expected that companies such as Goldman cut the majority of applicants during the resume screening. That being said, it’s crucial that you pull out all the stops to have a stellar resume for your Goldman Sachs internship. If you’re fortunate enough to pass the resume screening, you should begin practicing interview questions. But today, we’ll talk about five tips to land a Goldman Sachs Internship.

Five Tips to Land a Goldman Sachs Internship

1. Highlight Accomplishments
2. Quantify Everything
3. Add LinkedIn
4. Add Genuine Interests
5. Showcase Leadership

By following these five tips to sharpen your resume, you’ll stand out when vying for a Goldman Sachs internship.

Highlight Accomplishments Over Tasks

When writing about previous and current job descriptions relating to internships, clubs, or other involvements, highlight your accomplishments instead of your tasks. Highlighting your accomplishments will grab the recruiter's attention and may push your application over the finish line to advance to the next step.

Here’s an example of how to highlight accomplishments instead of tasks. In 2021, I interned for the United States Senate as a legislative intern. I answered phones, conducted legislative research, and took notes on hearings, among other tasks. At the end of my internship, I was prepared to put my Senate internship on my resume. I couldn’t put “Conducted Research for the Senator’s legislative staff.” Instead, I decided to follow the advice of an upperclassman at my university and wrote “Developed a performance annual legislative report detailing the Senator’s primary focus to aid the legislative team.” Notice how my second description of my task answered these four questions:

1. What did I accomplish?
2. Who did this accomplishment help?
3. How much did this accomplish?
4. Why was this accomplishment important?

When crafting the best resume for your application, answer these questions once you identify an accomplishment you can list. Adding numerous accomplishments to your resume will immensely improve the chances of your recruiter choosing your resume instead of someone without any accomplishments.

Quantify Everything

One common yet highly underrated tip for crafting a stellar resume is quantifying everything. On almost every line of your resume that describes any previous jobs, internships, or clubs- try to quantify as much as humanly possible. Take a look at these two accomplishments:

Notice how the second bullet sounds so much more impressive. Start from the top, and try to go line by line, searching for ways to quantify in any way possible.

We can also look at the same example we saw in the last tip, except every line has something that can be measured.

If you’re having trouble quantifying tasks, projects, or accomplishments you have already highlighted on your resume, here are some questions you can ask yourself to quantify a task/accomplishment:

1. How much money?
2. How much time?
3. How many people?
4. Did anything increase/decrease?

Here are some additional examples of quantified accomplishments:

• Cut the cost of operations by 10% to enable company X to be in a more financially stable position
• Led a 5-person team researching, analyzing, and presenting data on the discreet predictors that influence player performance
• Recommended, directed, and hosted a school-wide talent show with 2,000+ students attending for the first time in 10+ years

Once you successfully quantify an accomplishment or task on your resume, you’ll allow the recruiter to measure your success and better understand your accomplishments.

Add LinkedIn

This might seem simple, and it is, but having a custom LinkedIn link on your resume will allow your recruiter to get to know you and what you have achieved in greater detail. If you need help creating a custom URL, consider reading this article.

Add Genuine Interests

It might seem unnecessary, but adding genuine interests at the bottom of your resume can help your application stand out. One of your interests may be attractive to a Goldman Sachs intern recruiter, which leads you to the next step of the Goldman Sachs Internship application process. If you make it past the resume screen, you’ll likely want to check out this helpful article: Goldman Sachs Video Interview Process.

One of the most remarkable pieces of advice I have been given from upperclassmen who have worked at Goldman Sachs is to be yourself. It’s not a secret that if you get an internship at Goldman Sachs, you will be working incredibly long hours, which is why internship recruiters want someone with a great personality. 

Putting on your resume that you love football, working out, and road trips will help convey to the recruiter that you have a personality. The other parts of your resume, such as work experience, GPA, and rigorous coursework, will showcase why you’re a great fit for the Goldman internship, but Goldman employees want to spend around sixteen hours a day with someone who is fun to be around. Having interests will show Goldman recruiters you are fun to work with, which is, in part, something they are looking for when hiring interns.

Showcase Leadership

Be sure to showcase any leadership roles on your resume as this will immensely help your chances of moving on to the next step of the internship application process. Here are some examples of leadership:

• Being a teaching assistant for a class
• Having a leadership position in a club
• Becoming the captain of a sports club
• Having a leadership role at an organization

Additional Resources

In addition to improving your resume to pass the resume screen, you'll likely need to level up your technical finance knowledge to pass the finance interviews for competitive finance internships or full-time jobs. If this sounds like you, check out our Complete Finance & Valuation Course.

Other Articles You May Find Helpful

• My Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Resume
• How to Write the Perfect Resume
• Goldman Sachs Video Interview Tips
• How to Write an Incredible Cover Letter