Goldman Sachs assessment 2026: SHL tests, HireVue & Superday

Updated April 2026 · 15 min read · Investment Banking · 45,000+ employees worldwide

Goldman Sachs is one of the most prestigious and competitive employers in financial services. The firm receives over 250,000 applications annually for its analyst and summer analyst programmes, making the selection process extraordinarily rigorous. Understanding each stage — and the specific cutoffs and formats — is essential for progressing.

Goldman Sachs recruitment stages

Stage 1: Online application. CV, education details, and a "Motivations for Applying" letter. Goldman specifically asks for motivations, not a cover letter — focus on why Goldman Sachs specifically, not generic banking interest. Reference specific divisions, recent deals, or Goldman programmes that attract you.

Stage 2: SHL cognitive tests. Full SHL battery — Numerical Reasoning, Verbal Reasoning, and Inductive Reasoning — administered via SHL TalentCentral. The test is proctored and typically must be completed within a 48-hour window. The norm group is calibrated to finance graduates — a very competitive reference population. Based on candidate reports, the estimated cutoff is around the 80th-85th percentile. This is higher than most Big Four firms because the applicant pool is already highly numerate. The numerical reasoning section is critical for Goldman — expect heavy data interpretation from financial tables, percentage calculations, and currency conversions.

Stage 3: HireVue video interview. Pre-recorded video interview: typically 4-6 questions with 30 seconds to prepare and 2-3 minutes to respond per question. Reviewed asynchronously by Goldman recruiters. Questions combine motivational ("Why Goldman Sachs?"), competency-based ("Describe a time you led a team"), and situational scenarios. Some divisions include basic finance or market knowledge questions — have data-supported views on 2-3 current macro themes (interest rates, FX, equity markets).

Stage 4: Phone screen (some divisions). Not all Goldman processes include this — some go directly from HireVue to Superday. Where it exists, it's typically a 30-minute call with an analyst or associate to assess technical knowledge and cultural fit.

Stage 5: Superday. Goldman's final round is a single day of 5-8 back-to-back interviews with bankers, analysts, and senior leaders from across the division. For Global Markets, expect brain teasers, probability puzzles, market-making scenarios (bid/ask quotes), and options basics. For Investment Banking, expect technical questions (DCF, LBO, merger models) alongside behavioural questions. The Superday is where most selections are made.

Because Superday interviewers are drawn from across the division rather than following one shared script, the specific mix of technical depth and behavioural focus varies noticeably from interviewer to interviewer even within the same day — a junior analyst interviewer often leans harder into recent, hands-on technical work, while a more senior interviewer sometimes spends more time on judgement, communication, and how you'd actually handle a real client or deal scenario. Candidates who prepare a single, narrow script for "the Goldman interview" tend to feel thrown off when a later interviewer in the same day takes a noticeably different angle than an earlier one did. Treating each Superday interview as a genuinely separate conversation — rather than an identical repeat of the one before it — and staying mentally fresh across a demanding full day of back-to-back sessions is itself part of what's being assessed, since the role itself will regularly demand sustained focus across long, high-pressure days.

Goldman Sachs SHL tests in detail

Numerical reasoning: Goldman's proprietary numerical test consists of 20 questions in approximately 20 minutes. The test focuses on financial data — profit margins, revenue growth, currency conversions, and chart interpretation. No calculator is provided in some versions (paper and pen only), making mental arithmetic speed critical. Topics: percentages, fractions, ratios, data tables, and graph reading.

Verbal reasoning: 10 questions in approximately 20 minutes. True/False/Cannot Say format based on business and financial passages. The passages are dense and time pressure is significant.

Inductive/logical reasoning: Pattern recognition with shapes and sequences. Standard SHL format.

Division-specific preparation

What the HackerRank coding assessment actually covers

For Engineering and Technology candidates, the HackerRank stage typically replaces the SHL cognitive battery rather than supplementing it, and it's worth understanding its specific format rather than assuming it resembles a generic coding-test platform. The assessment is usually two problems within a combined 1 hour 20 minute window, drawn from standard data-structures-and-algorithms territory — arrays, strings, hash maps, trees, graphs, sorting, and dynamic programming are all fair game, similar in spirit to what you'd see on other major tech-adjacent employers' coding screens. Partial credit is typically awarded based on how many hidden test cases your submission passes, so a partially-correct, well-structured solution submitted with time remaining beats an unfinished attempt at full correctness. Candidates should also expect their code's time and space complexity to matter, not just correctness — an inefficient brute-force solution that technically produces the right answer but times out on larger inputs won't score as well as a properly optimised approach, even when both would produce identical output on small test cases.