How to get a job at Goldman Sachs - study overseas?

Who does Goldman Sachs like to hire for its London office? Does it take its pick from the UK (and Scotland's) most illustrious universities? Or does it prefer to cast its hiring net further afield? If staff recently registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) are anything to go by, the answer seems to be the latter - Goldman seemingly eschews Oxford and Cambridge (and Edinburgh) and looks at what's on offer overseas.

The bank just registered 12 people with the UK Financial Conduct Authority. Of those 12, only one was entirely UK educated. A handful came to the UK for a Masters qualification. however.

Goldman's new acquisitions include Raquel Ohana. a self-proclaimed French fashionista who set up 'GetmyCloset', a site designed to help other fashionistas by, sell and swap new clothes. Ohana studied at UCL in London before getting a Masters in at Ecole Polytechnique in France. She's just joined Goldman as a commodities research analyst.

Goldman also registered Gokhan Kara, an IBD analyst who's been with the firm since 2009 and was educated at HEC in France and Bosphorous University in Turkey. Then there's Victor Kochemirovskiy, a former analyst from Credit Suisse who's just joined in equity and fund derivative structuring and was educated in Moscow before doing a Masters at the LSE. Or Azamat Kokov, another Russian who was just registered as an associate in London after joining Goldman in 2011. Or Nicholas Theuerkauf, a newly registered M&A analyst who came from Wharton in the U.S.

The bank didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on its London staff. There may be an innocuous explanation for the firm's cosmopolitan FCA Registrations - it may simply be transferring its international junior staff into London (and out of its Russian office in particular).

Goldman's new FCA Registrations do, however, underscore the high level of international competition for jobs at the bank in London. It's also registered a variety of more senior people in the past month - most of whom also avoided a UK education. They include Abishek Malan, an Indian and Swiss-educated, pensions and insurance strategist who last worked for Deutsche and who joined Goldman in September. There's also Nicola Mauri, a complex transactions and exotic solutions structurer who was previously a director at UBS and was educated at Bocconi in Italy. Or Giuseppe Milicia, a predominantly Dutch and Italian-educated director in FX algorithmic structuring who left Barclays' shrinking investment bank in July.

Goldman's recent FCA Registrations do include one entirely UK educated hire. That's Jason Paver, a former Cambridge University student who joined the firm in September from Deutsche Bank as an executive director on the metals origination desk.

Paver's online history includes a petulant letter he penned to the Financial Times whilst at Cambridge in which he argued that governments which restrict banking bonuses risk driving talented students overseas or into other industries Since then, the EU has capped bonuses at 200% of salaries, but Paver doesn't seem to have been discouraged. Nor do the other crop of international students who clearly think Goldman Sachs' London office is still a big draw.

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