The Job Forum

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You're listening to locally produced programming created in KUNV Studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5. Welcome to the Job Forum.

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My name is Mana Azizoltani and I am a PhD student at the Harrah College of Hospitality here at UNLV. On this show, we discuss the journey through college and into the workforce with recent graduates of different disciplines.

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Welcome to the Job Force.

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All right, let's get this party started. So today I'm here with one of my oldest and longest friends, Ali Salman, who is a financial analyst for a small company that you may or may not have heard of called Goldman Sachs. And he came all the way from Utah to talk about his experience going through college and landing that big Goldman job.

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Hey, Mano, how's it going? It's always good to be in Vegas. Yeah, yeah, heck yeah. So do you wanna give a little introduction of yourself first? Sure thing, yeah. So like you mentioned, we have known each other for a long time. I work currently at Goldman Sachs. I'm coming up on one year. So I haven't been there too long. I graduated in 2022 with a degree in finance with an emphasis in pre-med because I wanted to be a doctor before.

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Yeah, so for those that don't know, if you have a Persian dad, you either have two choices or a few choices, right? What are they?

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Like, first lawyer.

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Doctor, lawyer, engineer.

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That's right. And so, you know, me, I didn't do any of those things, so I did math because it was acceptable, you know, in the household.

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That is acceptable.

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Yeah, it's acceptable.

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But just barely.

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Barely. As long as it's STEM.

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Yeah, exactly.

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So, do you want to tell me a little bit about sort of your going through college as a double major and sort of how you ended up choosing finance?

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Yeah, so I mean, going through it was difficult because of just the hours.

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Well, you were an IB student, right? So you could have graduated in two years if you didn't want a double major.

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Yeah, so like, yeah, let me go back to high school. I did IB and AP. AP is pretty common around the country, but IB is the International Baccalaureate Program, which is obviously an international diploma you can receive. It's a two-year program, and you do college-level classes, which in some cases are more difficult than AP classes, and you get a different diploma. So getting this diploma allowed me to get a lot of credits at my university. I went to the University of Utah, and on top of it with AP credits, I was going into school as a junior. So if I wanted to just do business, I probably could have graduated in two years.

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You're a big screw-up and want to become a doctor. Exactly.

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And medical schools want to see that you take the classes in college, even if you took them in high school at a college level. So I had to retake some of the classes just to fulfill that requirement. And so, yeah, I mean, with having all the credits I would have to take for pre-med and then having all the credits I would have to take for finance, luckily I skipped a bunch coming in, but it still took a full four years and a couple semesters of like 20 credit hours. So I finished college with like over 220 credits.

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Dude, that's almost double of how many I had to finish. I finished with 120 exactly on the dot.

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That's legendary. I wish. So, yeah, I didn't have a life in college. Well, I guess I kind of did, actually. You don't have a life period, bro. Come on. Yeah, come on. Yeah, especially now. No, and then, so I found a fondness for finance and the world of stocks and everything in high school.

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I want to hone in on your finance side of things because that's where you ended up, right? Right. So do you want to tell me about where your passion for finance came from and what convinced you to finally change from just, or I mean, go pursue that route? Because I remember, we would always talk about, oh, I was going to be a doctor and this and that.

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And you know, it's funny. And now it's, yeah, now you're the doctor and I'm not. But yeah, so going back to where like the passion for it started, I always liked to do like a lot of things just growing up. And I always liked to do things differently. And then in high school, I had a friend who also shared a love for business and entrepreneurial, that's a tough word sometimes, ventures and the stock market. So we would play the stock market game, which I feel like a lot of high schoolers do. And then we would also do paper trading, which is trading in the real market with fake money. So it's a good way to practice, and it teaches you how to analyze stocks. Obviously, trading and investing are different things, but I don't want to get into that right now. But, yeah, so that's where that love for finance kind of stemmed from, and then I got a scholarship at the University of Utah through the business school, and so I thought, okay, well I can kind of combine my passion for business and finance and medicine. So, that's how I kind of got into that, and how I started my financial career in college. And I went through my whole college career kind of not changing. I knew what I wanted to do. It was pre-med and finance. So that never changed. I actually completed all of that in the end. But halfway through I started talking to him and I was like, I don't know. I'm trying to think about what would my life look like 20 years from now and also what does the market look like for both someone who goes the financial route and business route versus someone who goes the medicine route and what my ultimate values and goals were in life? And I think to accomplish those, I was able to do that in business as well. And it just happened to be that I was part of a lot of student organizations that helped me land that job. And that's probably something that we can talk about a little bit later. But I knew some people at Goldman Sachs and they convinced me that I should apply. I applied, I got the job and here we are.

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The rest is history. So let's go back and let's talk about sort of maybe some of the things that you did in college that helped you learn or grow or become prepared for the job market and just kind of learn in general.

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Oh yeah, no, for sure. I think one of the biggest things is just talking to everybody, learning from everybody. Everyone has something of value you can learn from.

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Well, I was kidding.

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Be it a mistake or something or a success, right?

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You're absolutely right.

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And you really have to pick and choose the things you want to learn from, from everybody. You know, like I mentioned, it can be a negative or a positive thing right and then always go To any like speaking engagements join tons of clubs even if you can't go to like every meeting because like they might have a speaker Come in from the community or from a company that you admire and and really learning those lessons early on being involved I think you know always make sure that your your studies are your number one priority getting good grades, and then on top of it, if you really know what you wanna do, like really focus in on it, hone in on it, because nowadays, let's say you are, you wanna go into the world of business, a lot of that has kind of accelerated. It used to be where you would do, you know, your internship, your junior year, and then you go and apply for a full-time after senior year. But now, everything's getting pushed back. They even have like sophomore programs and freshman programs that you can do at these big banks or consulting firms. So it's really, like you really wanna understand what route you wanna take, which is kind of tough to tell an 18, 19 year old, but if you're confident and you know what you wanna do, that's a big strength. And so what I did is I just joined some organizations that did networking and professional development. Yeah, so ALPFA, the Association of Latino Professionals. That one I kind of joined a little bit later once I focused more on business. I was their director of finance and then the president there and I still serve on the board of the professional chapter of that. So there's professional and student chapters and that's a great way to really connect with people in the community. There's sponsors from big Fortune 500 companies, which is one of the reasons why I got the job at Goldman, actually. And those networks, you don't know when they will become valuable until they do. So I had met people at Goldman Sachs through Alpha when I was just like a member, not even on the board or anything. And when it came time to, okay, I want to apply there, because I had a buddy who did an internship in the Salt Lake office, those connections really helped to teach me how to apply, like what things to do, what things to focus on during interviews. And then also having your foot in the door as well is huge. They can vouch for you if, obviously you are a good candidate. So that was huge for me. I really didn't know much about how to get into one of the biggest banks in the world. One of the most- I know that, but I feel like you decided to go into finance really late.

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Yeah, it was really late.

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It was very much like a last minute decision because I was very much committed to going with medicine and taking the MCAT after I graduate and everything. But then I applied, what was it, and everything but then i applied like what was it uh... the beginning of my senior year was like august september i had the interviews go into october and then i had the job offer and so i was like okay well i mean it's not the end of the world if i if i try this out and it's been a really cool experience i think i've learned a lot uh... good and bad like i mentioned before you just have to take all these lessons and and really digest them and reflect on it. But yeah, it can be a really quick process. Between when you put in your interview and you have an offer, hopefully you get an offer, it can be two weeks, three weeks. So there's a lot of preparation and stuff you have to do beforehand, before you even submit your application.

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What's that like? Do you want to go into sort of the interview process?

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Sure, yeah. So I mean, you really, if you're applying to a bank, you want to know all the financials, like the three financial statements. You want to be able to talk about things that are happening in the news.

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Wait, you want to know their financial statements or do you want to know what they are?

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No, no. Like you can walk through like cash flows or balance sheets. I understand. So, like they'll ask you a question, like if something changes on the cash flow, how does that change the balance sheet, etc. And then you, they might ask you to walk through like a case kind of thing. That's not very common in finance. It's more of like a consulting thing, but they might ask you like, hey, if this happens, what do you think would happen? Or you want to be proficient in Excel. They'll teach you that, but it is good to know that. But as far as interviews, make sure...

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So wait, I want to ask you one second. So these, when they assess these, you know, they ask you these things about, you know, the cash flow and Excel and the case study. What exactly are they assessing in the candidate?

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So what I gather that they're assessing here is one, that you're able to prepare and you understand like the basics of finance because of course you'll be working at a bank. Your function might be different depending on what team or division you're in, but you need to have some kind of baseline. And a lot of people are not business majors who apply. There's a very diverse group of majors that apply. So they just wanna see that you can at least get that down and you've learned it and you've come prepared. So preparation is huge. They just wanna see that. They don't wanna see you memorize something and just say it. So they'll ask you questions to kind of throw you off. And you just need to be prepared for that. So it's not something you can prepare for overnight. You want to take some time. Yeah, you want to practice with a friend or practice in the mirror. Especially if you're in college, that's huge because you have a lot of friends who are probably also applying to jobs. And so you can all practice together. But yeah, so you'll do a higher view interview, which is a virtual interview.

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But that's if they didn't screen out your resume.

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Right. At the beginning. Yeah, if you even want to go back to that, resume's gotta be great.

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It's gotta look perfect.

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It's gotta be pristine. Oh yeah, no grammatical errors. The format needs to be good. And you also want to, this is important too, you want to show impact in your resume. And what I mean by that.

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What does that mean?

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Yeah, so you want to say, okay, well here's, here was an issue, like let's say in a club that you were in part of the leadership of. Here was something that they were trying to improve. Here's how you worked with the team to improve it. But you also want to like kind of shout yourself out. So you want to say, like, here's what I did. And then maybe give a stat, like we increased membership by like 30%. So make sure you include stats like that and then what was the result. And so explaining these things in your resume shows that you're able to drive change.

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Should your resume be longer than a page then?

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Nope. So it should be one page, have your education, experience, leadership, and some skills, interests, stuff like that. So if you are good at Excel, put it in the skills section. And you, like, if you have any like flashy names on there, like internships you've done, definitely include that. But they will grill you on your resume. So everything on your resume, you need to be able to speak at length of, right? So, yeah, yeah, like you can't just put something and BS your way through it. Because it's, I mean, in the end, like these should be the highlights of what you do. And when people ask, like, should I have a two-page resume? Well, no, because like you, this should be the highlight reel. So you're not gonna put everything. And what you put on there should be the best that you can speak of, right? So, yeah.

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Okay, so, set your resume in, you didn't get screened out, woohoo. Okay, so now we go into the interview, the virtual interview, right?

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Right. So it'll be, you'll be on the computer, and they'll send you an email, like, hey, do this, it's a high review. And there'll be a recorded video of someone speaking and they'll ask you a question and then you record your answer.

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Wait, wait, it's not even live?

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No, no, no. Oh, wow. Well, this one is.

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Okay, okay.

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So you'll record your answer. I think you have like one or two tries. But yeah, record your answer. And it's just you and the webcam. That's it. Like I said, not live. And so you go through this. Someone will assess those. People actually do watch the high reviews. People think it's just an algorithm, but it's not.

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The algorithm is for the resume, right?

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True, yes. The resume has an algorithm, I believe. I can't confirm anything, but then there's a higher view. And then if you get a good score on the higher view, then you can— What do they look for in the higher view? I think they just want to see that you're prepared. You can speak in a professional manner. Gotcha. Yeah, it's not too serious. The questions are mostly behavioral. Right. So, nothing too technical. Then, if you do well, you'll go on to the Super Day. So, Super Day is like multiple interviews with real people, back to back.

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Oh, jeez, how many interviews are there?

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So, I think I did three interviews. And this is for each division that you would apply to. So, if you apply to multiple divisions,

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you're doing like, you know, three times X.

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Well, you might not get super days with all of them. Oh, right, of course, yeah. So you take separate application processes for each.

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So let's say I wanted to apply for investment banking and I wanted to apply for your division.

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Okay.

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Would they know that I sent my resume in twice or no?

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Well, so the way it works is you send your resume in once and then you like check boxes of which divisions you want to apply to. Oh, okay. And you can choose three at Goldman. I don't know how it works at other banks now, but yeah, you choose three. And then there's like different locations and such. So, like you could apply to like investment banking, asset management, and risk, you know. So those could be like three of your choices. So, yeah, let's say we'll just take one. Like you got the Silver Day for one. And you do these half an hour interviews, back to back, three of them. And there's usually two people, and this is where they'll really assess you. So, because in the end of the day, you are gonna be working with these people for 11 hours, 10 hours a day, sitting next to them at the desk. So they wanna understand, you're someone that they would actually wanna hang out with, right? I think that's a super important thing.

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So are then the people that are interviewing you, are they like younger or are they like these higher up people?

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Um, they're usually associates and vice presidents. Okay, so... So those are people who have been there for like three, seven years at least.

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Understood, okay.

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So, they have credibility of course to be interviewing people and such. So, yeah, they're more on the technical and behavioral side, so it's a mix of both. That's where you will get asked the questions about the balance sheet and the financials. And then they usually like to ask a question of like, hey, what's an interesting story in the business world that you could talk about?

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So. Something to throw you off to rack your brain, to say you have to rack your brain real quick.

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Well, that question specifically is mostly to see if you keep up with the news. You can take a real world example and kind of explain it from the lens of someone in business. So, like when I was interviewing, it was the Evergrande crisis in China with real estate. Also, you want to be very strategic with your article you choose. You don't want to just choose anything. So, it depends on your division. If you choose risk, you want to choose that. You don't want to talk about investment banks.

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Well, I mean.

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I mean, you could, I guess.

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Yeah.

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I understand what you're saying. If you're an asset, if you're applying for asset management, you probably want to choose something in the asset management space. Maybe there's a scandal at Credit Suisse or something, right? Right. And something that went wrong. So, yeah, those are kind of the tips I can give for the interview process. And really just be chill. You know, in the end, like.

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Yeah, you have to do a lot of interviews

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and they're gonna grill you, but just be chill.

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The chill part comes from practice.

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Yeah, yeah, of course.

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Which everyone will tell you, but it's true. But they just want to see, in the end, they are just like normal people.

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Right.

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Where you think, oh, like a vice president at Goldman Sachs, but like really, yeah, they're just average people that want to, want to get the best person for the job. And obviously, if you got this far, you got to the Super Day, then you're more than qualified. It's really about just verifying that what you said in your resume was true and that you're a cool guy or girl and you want to work there. They will also ask, why do you want to work at Goldman Sachs? You have to have a good answer, not something generic. Don't say, oh, it's for the prestige or something, which that might be a part of it. You can't say that. And also, that shouldn't be a reason.

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Right, you can't say, oh, why do you want to go to Harvard in your application and say,

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oh, because it's Harvard.

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Yeah, no. You should have a good reason and look into that.

0:19:29
So you got the job, right? You're an analyst. What's your day-to-day like? Yeah. I know that your girlfriend is also an analyst at Goldman Sachs, so you can even talk about what she does too. Just to give a better, you know.

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So, yeah, I'm in the Salt Lake City office, which for some time was the largest office outside of like their New York, New Jersey area. I think Dallas is growing more now. But, yeah, so my day to day is, I go in around seven, 7.30. We try to match it up with New York hours, because half my team is in New York. And then we go in, it's a lot of, it's really cool actually. So the offices are very open, everyone's working side by side. It feels kind of like college in a way because there's a lot of young people. Everyone's driven which is very cool. Everyone has an interesting story. It's a very diverse office, people have come from all over the country or all over the world in often cases, they do work with international students, which is great. So they'll hire just the best person for the job. So it's cool to have that environment. Everyone's working hard. What exactly do you do, like technically speaking? Technically speaking, so for me, I guess, the environment.

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So what does that translate to then in like practice? Do you click around in Excel?

0:20:58
Yeah, so it's a lot of Excel, a lot of emailing with portfolio managers around the world actually. We have teams in Tokyo and London and Germany that we work with. But yeah, so we're looking at the different strategies in fixed income and equities, at least for me personally, in emerging markets and high yields. So, you know, it's cool because you get to see like how money moves, how it works, what the largest companies and the richest people around the world are doing with their money, but also the day-to-day of really working in Excel and kind of becoming more proficient in that space. In my job specifically, I'm not doing a lot of modeling, which people would often think that you would do in finance. But for my girlfriend, she does work more with modeling. And another thing about our jobs is, it's very much go, go, go. So you'll be on calls all day with people in different states, different countries. The days go by fast though. Yeah, the days do go by fast most of the time. And yeah, you're always keeping busy. People are great because they'll want to push you to get better. I think there's a stigma that people are not nice at Goldman or just in general in banking, but everyone actually is really nice and they really want to help you get better. They do a lot of mentorship for the new analysts, and they really just want to see you stay and become good at your job, and they don't mind if you move teams, because as long as you're growing and always learning.

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Totally.

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So, what are the things that you learned in college or learned along the way that really help you nowadays, that you're actually in the job? Like, if you were a student starting out, or if I was a student starting out, what would you tell me?

0:22:56
Well, what I would say is definitely like, I mean, in your case, you don't have to work on this much, but people skills. I think working, a lot of the time, you are working with people. Like, learning how to use Excel or work through your mailbox, because a lot of our work is like messaging people and such. Right. So those things you can learn very quickly, within a month or a week, you know.

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But it's hard to get out of your shell.

0:23:21
Right. People skills take practice. And it's really just putting yourself out there. College is a great place because many times you're in a place where a lot of people are new, they're not from there, and so everyone's kind of in the same mentality of they don't know anyone and you need to make friends. So that's a good way to break out of your shell. You need to be able to speak with people, learn from people, build your network. That's huge. Like I mentioned before, that will pay dividends in the end. Pick your classes very strategically because at least in my school, there was a lot more flexibility and maybe this came with how I had a lot of credits. I had more time to choose which ones I wanted specifically. But if you know what you want to go into, choose classes that will obviously benefit that. I guess you and I are very similar. We're just kind of very driven and want results. Right, goal-oriented. Yeah, whereas I think other people would argue take fun classes. Right, drifting through college kind of thing.

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Yeah, but really you want to build those skills

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as soon as you can. And really just practice and put yourself in situations you're not comfortable with. Of course.

0:24:35
Because they will push you.

0:24:36
Once you're in the workforce, you have real responsibilities. You have to run as fast as possible every day. Every day, and the work you do does matter. You know, it's not just for a grade, it's someone's $100 million portfolio. So it's just, it's... It's no joke anymore. Your work has to be done well. I think always do things with excellence. Cross your T's, dot your I's always, and strive for the best. That'll pay dividends because it's a habit. It really is just a habit that you build.

0:25:11
Totally.

0:25:12
Start it off soon.

0:25:13
So, I just want to ask this question. How do you deal with the finance bros?

0:25:20
Oh man.

0:25:20
Well, aside from being one.

0:25:22
Of course, I'm the biggest finance bro. No, so it's pretty funny. We were making that joke during our first couple weeks. But there's not a lot of finance bros. Really? Yeah, no, it's pretty, like I said, people are pretty nice, it's pretty chill. But I think just be nice to people. If you've interacted with the finance bro, just speak in a very eloquent manner.

0:25:49
Just change your voice so that way you can fit in.

0:25:53
Yeah, you know like you want to go golfing? I'll learn how to golf, I guess.

0:25:57
Oh yeah, I guess. That's where all the deals are made.

0:26:00
So is the finance industry as cutthroat as people say? Or as my conception is at least?

0:26:07
I think when you're in the process of applying and going through the recruiting.

0:26:15
Right, the question of weeding out people is pretty...

0:26:17
It's pretty tough. So, a good figure to add to this is that in my year, 330,000 people applied to Goldman Sachs and 3,300 were hired.

0:26:29
Dude, that's nuts.

0:26:30
Yeah, so if you do the quick maths, it's a 1%

0:26:34
Quick maths.

0:26:34
Acceptance rate, so yeah.

0:26:37
So I also wanna say, how important is it to go to the best school to become a big shot? You know what I mean?

0:26:42
People say, oh well. So, yeah, no, I totally get that. And I think that comes down to the network. You'll see, I went to the University of Utah, it's not an Ivy League or anything, but it's a good school. And the good thing is that Salt Lake City has a big Goldman office, so Goldman will come recruit at the EU. However, at a big name school, like let's say Harvard or Wharton, all the companies will come, the best companies, be it McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, they will do a lot of recruiting events there, they have so many resources, they have a lot of alumni, so those are all legs up. So at least in the world of business.

0:27:34
The networking part is crucial.

0:27:35
The networking part is huge because the lessons you learn in the classroom are often the same. The difference is that network, and you can leverage that network pretty well at those bigger schools. So it does help. It's not impossible, and I think it's changing a lot. I agree. Even in the last 10 years, it's changed a lot. So the school you go to matters less, but you do have to kind of prove yourself a little bit more. I know people who have had a rough time just because they went to the University of Utah and in their interviews they'll say, hey, why'd you go to the University of Utah instead of Harvard? And now you're applying to be an investment banker at this bank. So some people will be rude about it, but you just have to.

0:28:12
They're probably a Harvard alum themselves,

0:28:14
they're grilling you on that.

0:28:15
Right, but I mean, it's good for them that they went there. I have no problem with that, I would have loved to go there too. Me too, dude, I mean. But I think you just need to have the experiences in college, like do the internships, do the volunteering, do all those things to prove on your resume, like look, I belong here just as much as everyone else. I've done the things to prove it, I'm well prepared. And the unfortunate thing is you kind of do have to over-prepare more than those people, right? But it's just, I mean, that's the nature of just.

0:28:45
That's the nature of it, you know?

0:28:46
I mean, you gotta prepare for an interview either way,

0:28:48
so it is what it is. But in the interest of time, I do wanna ask you one last, if you could give advice to, if you could give a summary of all the advice that we've given to students out there, what would it be?

0:29:02
So I would break it down into three things. So I would say network, build that network, join organizations, do all that. Two, always keep up those good grades. Keep a 3.7 GPA or higher. So never let that slip. And then three, I would say try everything. Take interesting classes that you think will benefit you in your future career, but maybe it's something that you don't know how to do, push yourself. Yeah, just try those things that you feel like you're weak at and try to improve.

0:29:38
Well Ali, thank you so much for coming out all the way from Utah. Oh yeah. I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope everyone can pull something out of this.

0:29:46
Yeah, I hope everyone got some value out of it. Thanks for having me.

0:29:49
Alright, thank you, bye bye. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to The Job Forum. If you want any more details or have any questions, visit my website at manaziz.com M-A-N-A-A-Z-I-Z dot com M-A-N-A-A-Z-I-Z dot com

0:30:04
Welcome to the Job Forum!

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