Goldman Sachs Implements Its Own 'Rooney Rule' in Diversity Push

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 18, 2019 16:09 ET (20:09 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.