- Wall Street’s marathon interview process for summer interns is underway.
- Goldman Sachs partner director Eric Jordan offers his top tips.
- His advice includes finding your “hook,” and being prepared to think on your feet.
The interview marathon known as “superdays” is officially underway for aspiring investment bankers, Business Insider has learned.
Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Jefferies, have begun conducting final-round interviews for college students vying for 2026 summer internships, according to people with direct knowledge of the interviews who asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationships at the banks.
Superdays are an industry term for interview events that take place at the end of the internship recruiting process. It comes after the students have already submitted a formal application, networked with bankers, and completed some sort of intro assessment or interview (like a HireVue video). Superdays can be intense, requiring students to go through three or more as many as half a dozen back-to-back interviews back with bankers of the firm they’re applying to. In years past, firms have even flown students out to their headquarters to participate. (This year, many interviews, including those at Goldman Sachs, are taking place virtually via Zoom.)
In an effort to understand how Wall Street hopefuls can put their best foot forward during these high-pressure, rapid-fire events, BI spoke to a partner at Goldman Sachs who has been heavily involved in the firm’s campus recruiting strategy for years. Eric Jordan, global co-head of investment grade capital markets and derivatives at Goldman, has conducted many superday interviews and still plays a role in picking which internship applicants get to spend the summer with his team.
“The reason I think that it’s exciting for students is, at Goldman, we’re looking to grow athletes,” Jordan said of the firm’s apprenticeship approach in an interview with BI.
Goldman, for its part, gets tens of thousands of applicants each year. For their 2024 programs, they got more than 315,000 applications to internships across the bank globally — and less than 1% were chosen. To become one of those people, Jordan’s advice includes finding your “hook,” and being prepared to think on your feet. He also offers insight into the qualities his team looks for in a potential intern candidate, including a level of professionalism and the ability to make an impression.
“You want the person that interviews you to walk away saying, I’d like this person on my team. I’d like to sit next to this person,” he said.
Prepare for all kinds of questions
It’s common in the investment-banking internship recruiting process for applicants to use study guides containing potential interview questions to help them prepare or to turn to social media forums like Wall Street Oasis to find information based on other people’s experiences. While Jordan says such preparation is necessary and shows dedication, he cautions that there is no one list of questions you can memorize to hack the system because it’s always changing.
Plus, he said, his team is more focused on how students solve problems and demonstrate teamwork.
“I like the majority of the interview to be more of, let’s just understand how this person thinks,” he said, adding that many of Goldman’s businesses need people who can be “spontaneously innovative and creative.”
Some of the teams Jordan manages — like the derivatives business in investment banking — are very technical so interviews might include more math or finance-specific questions. But in general, Jordan says his approach is to avoid asking questions that test whether students already know how to do the job.
“A lot of the prep is around what does Goldman Sachs do, why is it interesting to you, and what have you been doing, whether it’s school or outside of school, that demonstrates that you have a legitimate interest,” he said. “Outside of that, I discourage the folks on my teams from really focusing on the ‘take me through’ finance questions.”
Have a ‘hook’
Investment banking attracts top students from the best schools with lots of resources. Everyone has high GPAs and is involved in their school finance club, and everyone has access to loads of information, thanks to the internet.
“We’re dealing with people who have excellent grades, they’re getting great degrees,” said Jordan. “And even if you’re not, for instance, a finance major or an engineer, students today are savvy.”
Jordan suggests applicants take the time to think about what differentiates them and try to convey that in the interview.
“Being able to really show what you’re about and what you’re good at and leave a lasting impression is what will differentiate you,” he added.
Jordan refers to this as the “hook that will allow the people that meet you to remember you, be impressed by you.” Your “hook,” he said, should translate into qualities a Goldman banker would want in a colleague.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a finance thing,” said Jordan. “If you are an incredible ballet dancer or you make the best dehydrated fruit; people that are super intellectually curious, they’re detail-oriented, and they perfect processes — this is ultimately what our clients want.”
This is part of why student athletes tend to do well in banking recruiting, said Jordan.
“It’s not just because they’re so good at sports and they were better than the other people that did it. A lot of it is the dedication that needs to happen,” Jordan said. “It shows a drive, and that generally translates really well.”
If you’re not a student-athlete or someone with an otherwise particularly impressive passion, think about what makes you, well, you. Go from there.
“By the time you get to the superday, you are who you are. And so make sure to think about what makes you special. Your friends and family — what would they say about you?” Jordan said.
Are you, for example, a really great friend? Tell a couple of stories about what makes you a particularly great friend, and show how those qualities would also serve you and your team in an investment banking job.
“Making sure you’ve distilled the best parts of you, with humility and in a way that’s personable,” he said.
Manage your anxiety
It’s not an exaggeration to say that a student’s performance in these interviews can literally determine the course of their career. That’s because these summer internships are the most direct way to land a full-time job offer at these uber-competitive investment banks.
If the stress wasn’t high enough, Jordan said students attending Goldman’s superdays are usually interviewed by two bankers at once. The interviewers are usually senior associates, VPs, and MD-level bankers — folks who have been at the firm for several years — and the Goldman applicants have to go through three rounds of those two-person interviews.
Jordan said a key measure of success is how you handle all that pressure. Your ability to control stress can be an indication of how you’ll handle the often demanding, high-speed nature of a junior banker’s job.
“We totally understand why it’s anxiety-producing. It’s one of those important moments in life when you do these interviews,” he said. “But you want to show that you can have a good conversation and be yourself.”
That said, trying to make a good impression can also lead some students to go too far in the other direction, explained Jordan. You have to strike the right balance between being relaxed and unserious.
“I would be cautious about being too casual. It’s important to be yourself, but remember that you are interviewing at a professional organization.”
Be consistent
Jordan said it’s important to be consistent in all your interviews because afterward, the bankers who asked the questions will get together to compare notes.
“We try to make sure that they’re comparing them in a relatively consistent way,” he said. “The types of questions we ask about the candidates are meant to be similar so that what we’re looking for and the way they’re being evaluated is as fair as possible.”
Jordan says he still helps his teams make final offer decisions on would-be interns, sitting in to “make sure that we’ve got the right balance” of people and skills.
“The conversation is really around the group reaching consensus,” he said. “Was there consistency in the answers? Did they convey the same kind of message? Did people walk away taking the same thing from the conversation? It goes a little bit like that.”
