How to impress Goldman Sachs

One of my former Accelerator students told me about one of her college professors who brought in someone from Goldman Sachs to speak to her class. The topic of the presentation was the 360 degree performance evaluation at Goldman Sachs. Apparently, he was telling the class about how great it is and how open people are to feedback from their colleagues and how it has really improved productivity and allowed the firm to retain only the best people.

My student thought it sounded phony, so she asked him whether people's bonuses were tied to their performance evaluations. He said yes. She then asked why employees wouldn't just collude and give each other really high marks so that everyone could get a great bonus.

Some of her classmates reacted negatively, and later told her that they couldn't believe she would asked a question like that, and that it was "completely inappropriate."

But after the class ended. the speaker took her aside and told her that he has given that presentation numerous times, and she was the only student the was smart enough to look past the surface and ask such a hard question. Despite his initial enthusiasm, he conceded that she was probably right.