Goldman Sachs receives hundreds of thousands of applications each year from undergraduates and graduate students looking to join the ranks of one of the most prestigious financial institutions in the world.

The selection process is notoriously rigorous, but if you're one of the applicants who lands an interview for a summer analyst position, Head of Human Capital Management Dane Holmes says you can expect the whole process to take about a month, and include two essential steps.

The first is completing a recorded video interview. Applicants answer a prepared series of interview questions at their own pace from a computer, tablet or even a smartphone.

"You can take it whenever you want," says Holmes. He says providing the opportunity for candidates to interview at a time of their choosing, from wherever they are in the world, has allowed Goldman Sachs to consider a much broader pool of candidates.

According to Holmes, most students applying for summer analyst positions opt to do the interview in the evenings on Thursdays or Sundays, which is very different from the times Goldman used to conduct the interviews before switching to the current format.

"It gives you a practice question to warm you up, since we know that people are often nervous in their first interview," says Holmes. The practice question can be answered an unlimited number of times until the candidate feels comfortable enough to start.

Questions explore the candidate's resume and experience, the skills they think they can bring to Goldman Sachs, and their knowledge of the company's teams and divisions. Once the video interview is completed, recruiters review all the applications and decide who moves on to the second round of the process, known as "Superday."

On Superday, prospective candidates go through a series of on-site interviews with the managers interested in them. Typically, candidates will sit for two to five interviews with a cross-section of teams.

Interviewers will ask about the candidate's experience, history and what they can bring to the company, but applicants can also expect open-ended questions designed to gauge their thought processes and behavioral skills, both in and out of the workplace.

"It's more of a situational assessment – there actually is no right answer," says Holmes. It's "analyzing how they work themselves through the process, and then assessing that."

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