Goldman Sachs has launched a new ad campaign to recruit fresh talent — and bankers on Wall Street are scratching their heads.
The new ads, circulated mainly on Instagram to court younger job applicants, show photos of fresh-faced professionals with catchphrases that fail to mention Goldman’s core business. Instead, they tout the bank’s supposed ecological, technological — and even oncological — prowess.
“Helping conquer cancer with AI is possible,” reads one ad that shows a 20-something woman in a sunny yellow dress, folding her arms and smiling in front of a glass-and-steel skyscraper.
Another ad shows a young woman, also in front of some corporate-looking architecture, along with the words: “Financing the all-electric future is possible.”
A third ad, which features a stylishly nerdy young man in glasses and a buttoned-up polo shirt, reads, “Engineering quantum algorithms is possible.”
Wall Street types — both inside Goldman and out — were puzzled.
“What does Goldman have to do with curing cancer?” a former Goldman employee said. An analyst at a rival Wall Street firm also was at a loss: “I guess they’re trying to show they’re not all about the money?”
Not only is Goldman targeting aspiring bankers, it’s also trying to appeal to younger software engineers which large financial firms desperately need — and find increasingly difficult to attract and keep, experts say.
“This is playing to the generational need that younger people have to be working for a cause,” John Breault, CEO of recruiting firm Breault & Smith, told The Post. “And Goldman knows people will work harder if they have this kind of motivation.”
“Many in the younger generation are more interested in diversity and the climate than finance” Breault adds.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
A source with knowledge of the campaign said, “A lot of young people may be surprised to learn they have the opportunity to work on issues like these at a bank like Goldman – real transactions from investments in healthcare-tech companies fighting cancer to raising financing for companies advancing electric vehicles.”
According to data analytics firm Punks & Pinstripes, more than 20% of the 500 employee exits from Goldman Sachs this summer were by technologists, who now make up less than 17% of the bank’s workforce. While most Goldman workers leave for rivals like JPMorgan and Citi, most engineers went to tech giants like Amazon and Google, the firm found.
Still, portraying Goldman as an environmentally friendly, do-gooder’s safe space might be a stretch. While the ads may pique interest, they could set up recruits for disappointment over the long term, recruiters add.
One Goldman alum took a harsher line, saying the ads were purposely misleading. “It is a patently false misrepresentation that Goldman would suggest it is actually curing cancer or currently using quantum computers.”
“No one in finance is using quantum computers, period,” the Goldman alum added. “Not sure why they’re making outrageously false claims to recruit people.”
On the latter point, language on Goldman’s website indicates that quantum computing is something that the firm finds interesting, even if it hasn’t yet put it to use.
“Our engineers are hard at work developing tools that will help rapidly assess the markets and, at times, alter the way we price some financial instruments,” the post on Goldman’s site reads. “Only time can tell what the future will hold in this space, but current research suggests that the application of quantum computing in financial markets could dramatically change the speed and accuracy of our business.”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
