Quirky students hired by Goldman Sachs: TV dating and squash championships
Investment banks hire interesting people. As Goldman partner Eric Jordan told Business Insider the other week, it’s important to have a “hook” in your story that draws people in.
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Goldman Sachs should have the pick of interesting student hires. Its acceptance rate of 0.8% for applicants is even lower than that of our 2024 Ideal Employer – JPMorgan, at 0.9%. As Goldman makes offers to its current crop of graduates and summer interns, we've identified some of the incoming Goldman juniors whose hooks are the most unusual.
One of the most interesting (not that it’s a competition between them) is Rudi Ellis-Jones. An archaeology student at the University of Cambridge, Ellis-Jones was a contestant on Channel 4 show “First Dates”, where he lamented the “sex-oriented” Cambridge (gay) dating scene. “No decent wholesome subsensual relationship material.” Ellis-Jones is also the Labour party’s student LGBTQ+ officer. Based in London, Ellis-Jones was an intern at Goldman in 2024 and will be an analyst in 2025.
Ameya Kakade is a more quaint, creative example. Aside from the usual excellent academics, Kakade is an author, and wrote the 64-page “The Odyssey to India – Indian Festivals” as a teenager in India. It’s about the most popular cultural festivals in India – but what it makes it stand out is the fact that it was written in German. Its “real” name is “Die Odyssee Nach Indien - Indische Feste”. It doesn’t have any reviews and we can’t seem to be able to order a copy here in London, but still. Kakade, based in London, will be an intern in summer 2025.
Nina Mital is another one of these notable analysts. A squash champion, who at one point was ranked fourth in the entire United States for her age bracket. Mital also won a silver medal at the Pan-American junior games in the sport, and finished in the top 16 for Team USA at the British Junior Open in 2018. Based in New York, Mital was an intern in summer 2024 and will be an analyst in 2025.
Alongside their hooks and hobbies, Goldman's unusual incoming juniors also have extraordinary academic achievements. Our analysis shows that it was practically impossible to get accepted into Goldman without stellar academics. - In the UK, think multiple A*s at A-Level, for example.
Nonetheless some of Goldman's new hires have even better academics than others. Elisa Hilmarsdottir is a Goldman summer intern in 2024 turned analyst in 2025. Hilmarsdottir studied economics at the University of Iceland and worked as an economist in the country's central bank and chamber of commerce before starting a masters in finance and economics at the University of Cambridge.
Another academic over-achiever (literally) is Giovanni Berlinghieri, a quant strat intern at Goldman in London this year. Berlinghieri studies mathematics and computer science at Bocconi University in Milan. Aside from a bronze medal in a national mathematics Olympiad as a student, and a silver medal in a regional competition for debating, Berlinghieri received a GPA of 30.21 in the first year of his degree.
Granted, you don’t have to do all of that to get a Goldman Sachs internship, but it certainly does help to have something distinguishing you. Or, if you’re building your CV like a tinder profile, put your special interest in bold in the “bio” box.
Investment banking interns don't always leave the industry as interesting as they entered it - the working hours don't leave much time for other things, particularly in investment banking roles.
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