Goldman Sachs isn’t only competing with other investment banking firms, hedge funds and private equity to attract talent these days. Now it finds itself more often than not bumping recruiting heads with Google which, given the culture, lifestyle, flexible hours and other benefits that the west coast company promises. And Google is often coming out the winner:
Before earning her master’s degree in computer science at Georgia Institute of Technology in May, Zhang had two job offers from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., two from Microsoft Corp. and one from Google Inc. Then a headhunter phoned to pitch a job at Renaissance Technologies Corp., the $20 billion hedge fund firm led by math guru James Simons.
“Goldman says I can make lots of money,” says Zhang, 24, a native of Harbin, China, who wears bright purple glasses and spent last summer writing video game software for Electronic Arts Inc.
Zhang asked for advice from a Chinese friend who once worked at Goldman and is now at a San Francisco-based hedge fund. The woman agreed that writing software for Goldman’s option traders in New York would be thrilling, Zhang says. Then she confided she can’t sleep at night because of work stress. “Life is different if you focus too much on money,” Zhang says. Besides, after growing up in China’s frozen northern provinces, she says she loves the California sun. She starts at Google in July.
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Tags: Goldman Sachs, Google, Hedge funds, investment banking, Private equity, Recruiting
