Goldman Sachs Implements Its Own 'Rooney Rule' in Diversity Push
March 18 2019 - 4:24PM
Dow Jones News
By Liz Hoffman
Managers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will be required to
interview two diverse candidates for any open job, a push the firm
hopes will change its heavily white, male workforce.
The requirement is Wall Street's version of the "Rooney Rule,"
which requires National Football League teams to interview a
minority candidate for head coaching jobs, and is part of new
diversity targets Goldman rolled out Monday that include hiring
more black and Hispanic employees.
The bank previously set a goal of 50% women in its 2021 class of
incoming analysts, and said Monday it was nearly there.
The new targets, though, don't include a time frame, suggesting
that racial imbalance is a tougher problem to solve.
The elite colleges that feed Wall Street's recruiting machine
are now equally divided between men and women. But black and
Hispanic students are still underrepresented, particularly in the
finance and technology tracks from which big banks hire.
Goldman doesn't have a network of retail branches where
employees tend to be more diverse and reflect their surrounding
communities. And like all banks, it is adding engineers by the
wagonload, an industry where women and some minority groups are
less easily found.
A 2017 report by Bloomberg News found black representation was
falling at Goldman, Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.,
based on data submitted to the U.S. government.
Fewer than 20% of Goldman's 400-plus partners are women, and
just a handful are black. Seven of the 30 executives on the firm's
management committee are women, four of whom were added last
year.
Citigroup Inc. aiming to have its pool of mid-to-senior-level
employees be 40% women and 8% black by the end of 2021. The
challenge is tougher in banks' highest ranks, where outside hiring
is discretionary, positions tend not to be widely advertised and
the competition for promotion is more cutthroat.
Goldman said Monday its recent push to bring in executives from
outside the firm has hurt its diversity at senior levels. The bank
has hired more than a dozen bankers as partners over the past two
years, most of them white men.
Write to Liz Hoffman at liz.hoffman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 18, 2019 16:09 ET (20:09 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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