Recruiting Journeys: Miguel Zaldivar-Giuffredi ’25, Goldman Sachs
Miguel Zaldivar-Giuffredi ’25 leaned on the Yale SOM Finance Club to navigate a demanding investment banking recruiting process and determine which roles best suited him.
In this series, recent Yale SOM graduates break down the recruiting process that led them to their current roles.
How does recruiting work in your industry?
Even before I stepped foot on Yale’s campus, I joined admitted students on a call with the leaders of the Finance Club. They explained that the purpose of this club is to guide students through the process and help you prepare for technical interviews and recruiting expectations.
The timeline itself is pretty structured. At the beginning of the semester, you send emails to the banks asking that they chat with you, and you also choose an industry that you’re particularly interested in—for me, natural resources, energy, and infrastructure. Then you’ll conduct mock interviews with other students before you reach out to actual bankers. You’ll have anywhere from 20 to 120 coffee chats with bankers across Wall Street during the fall. Those chats are all evaluative, even the ones that might seem informal. You can expect some basic questions, like “Walk me through your résumé” or “Why do you want to work at this bank?” They might also ask some technical or industry-based questions. Every candidate gets a chance to have at least two conversations with a bank, so if you are selected for a third, that’s a sign that the bank is interested in you. With Goldman Sachs, I had nine conversations with different people in the group I was interested in, so by the end of the process I had a pretty good sense of the work and the culture.
In late October and early November, banks begin to invite candidates for formal interviews. Most interviews involve technical, behavioral, and industry-based questions. The technical questions touch on topics like accounting, valuation, and M&A, and the Finance Club will have helped you prepare for those. Behavioral questions address your ambitions, experience, and how you would handle different challenges: for example, they might ask you how you would deal with a team where the other members don’t get along. For industry-based questions, the interviewers will ask what you see happening in your chosen industry and what excites you in the field. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate enthusiasm and aptitude for what you want to do with your career. Shortly after Thanksgiving, I had a first-round interview with the vice president in my current group; that same week, I was invited to a “superday” that involved three interviews with people in different functions across the firm. I got the call extending my internship offer on the evening of the superday.
In my cohort of interns from different business schools, seven out of eight received return offers at the end of the summer. There’s a lot of clear feedback and mentorship during the internship that allows you to become more confident in the work over the summer.
Which SOM classes best prepared you for the work you’re doing now?
You interview for investment banking during the first semester of business school, so I drew on some of the core courses I’d just started. Basics of Accounting was really helpful. In Competitor, I learned strategies that allowed me to explain business decisions in a way bankers might not expect, but ultimately appreciated.
After the recruiting process, I took Renewable Energy Project Finance with Dan Gross, which taught me how to build financial models before my internship. Strategic Leadership Across Sectors with Jeff Sonnenfeld brings in high-profile CEOs to converse with students and teaches leadership skills that can only be gained through exposure. When Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon came, students—including me—were even able to sit down and have pizza with him before class. It allowed me to humanize someone who might otherwise seem unapproachable.
Which SOM resources helped you the most during the recruiting process?
The Finance Club, and the strength of the second-years, were the most helpful resources. The club meets every Tuesday and holds technical sessions every Sunday; that biweekly cadence allows you to ask questions and meet with mentors as much as necessary. When I was recruiting, the second-year leaders had already finished their internships and in most cases secured full-time offers. They were able to talk about what led them to success, what differentiated their banks from others, and what industries I might be interested in.
The Career Development Office (CDO) offered mock interviews which were super helpful, especially for practicing behavioral questions. I remember that a CDO coach told me that my answers were all over the place, which was a big news flash to me and prompted me to distill my answers and keep them more concise.
Once I arrived at Goldman Sachs for my internship, SOM alums at the bank reached out and even set up a happy hour to get us all in the same room and get conversations flowing. I felt able to rely on them and come to them with questions, because we already had that relationship through the school.
Learn more about the Yale SOM Finance Club and visit our finance information hub.
What advice would you give to current students recruiting in finance?
Prepare: If you can anticipate what a bank is going to ask you, you can anticipate what a good answer looks like; whereas if you come off as rigid or insincere, everything will be much harder.
Prioritize: As an MBA student, you’re going to be challenged to make time for recruiting, classes, and social events. Those elements each inform one another, and the healthiest experience is one that blends them in a natural way. For example, your classes will help you think like a business leader, and your social interactions will help you contextualize your recruiting approach, beyond what’s possible if you just sit in your room practicing technical questions all day.
So be genuinely curious: If you think holistically about your classwork, your commitments, and your participation, envisioning yourself in the role of a banker while you’re a student, you’ll hopefully see a fit—and determine if it’s the right career for you.
