ResumeAdapter
Updated 2026-06-05

The values Goldman hires against
and the charter beneath them.

Why this matters

Goldman brands around four core values: partnership, client service, integrity, and excellence. Beneath them sits the 14 Business Principles, the 1979 charter those values distill from, and the ownable finance analog to Amazon's leadership principles. This page maps each to resume language, with a show-this bullet, the anti-pattern to delete, and a STAR example you can adapt.

Scan my Goldman resumeFree to scan4 values and 14 principlesSignal coverage
By the numbers
What Goldman publishes
4 + 14
Core values and Business Principles
Core values
4
Partnership, client, integrity, excellence
The charter
1979
Whitehead's 14 Business Principles
Source
goldmansachs.com
Primary, firm-published

The quick answer

What are Goldman Sachs' values?

Goldman Sachs brands around four core values: partnership, client service, integrity, and excellence. Its purpose-and-values page states the firm aspires to be the world's most exceptional financial institution, united by those shared values. Beneath the four sits the deeper charter: the 14 Business Principles, written by John Whitehead in 1979 and still published by the firm, opening on the line that our clients' interests always come first, and our own success follows from serving them well. The four values are the modern distillation of those 14 principles, so they are two views of one culture, not competing lists. On a resume, the values translate to four moves: lead with measurable client impact, frame wins as franchise and team outcomes, prove integrity through a costly action rather than a label, and hold the excellence bar with precise numbers. Scan your resume to see which of these signals a Goldman recruiter would actually find. Scan your Goldman resume.

Goldman Sachs states on its purpose-and-values page that the firm aspires to be the world's most exceptional financial institution, united by its shared values of partnership, client service, integrity and excellence. The firm also publishes its 14 Business Principles, written in 1979, whose first principle is that clients' interests always come first and whose closing principle is that integrity and honesty are at the heart of the business.

Goldman's four core values, partnership, client service, integrity, and excellence, are the language the firm brands around today. They are real and firm-published, but they are a distillation. The fuller charter is the 14 Business Principles, written by John Whitehead in 1979 and still published by Goldman, opening on the line that clients' interests always come first.

The principles are the ownable finance analog to Amazon's leadership principles: a numbered, enduring list a firm genuinely screens its culture against. The four values are how Goldman summarizes them now. Reading both gives you the surface vocabulary recruiters use and the depth behind it, without inventing anything the firm never wrote.

The resume reading is the same for every value and principle: a Goldman reviewer indexes on the value being visible in the bullet itself, not asserted as an adjective. A line that reads highly ethical team player with a passion for excellence fails, because it names the values instead of demonstrating them.

A line that reads self-reported a pricing error and added the control that stopped it recurring passes, because it shows integrity through a costly, owned action without ever using the word integrity. The entries below give you that pattern for the four values and the most resume-relevant principles, each with a show-this bullet, the anti-pattern, and a STAR example.

The four core values

Each value with what it signals,
a show-this bullet, and a STAR example.

Partnership, client service, integrity, and excellence, drawn from Goldman's purpose-and-values page (observed June 2026). These are the modern distillation of the 14 Business Principles listed further down.

01
Core value 01

Partnership

Goldman ran as a private partnership for 130 years, and the language survives in how it screens: the firm reads for people who treat the institution as something they co-own, who put the franchise above the individual deal, and who make those around them better. A reviewer reads for whether you carry the outcome of the team, not just your seat.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Frame wins as franchise outcomes you were accountable for, not personal trophies. Show that you protected the firm's interest and lifted the people around you, with the team result quantified.

Built the desk's first shared pricing library, adopted by 12 traders and cutting quote errors 30 percent across the team.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Lone-operator framing that claims sole credit and ignores the franchise. Single-handedly closed the deal reads against a partnership culture and signals someone who optimizes for themselves over the firm.

Personally responsible for the entire book; did not rely on anyone else on the team to deliver results.

STAR example bullet

When the desk kept mispricing illiquid names (Situation), I was asked to standardize the workflow (Task), so I built a shared pricing library and onboarded 12 traders (Action), cutting quote errors 30 percent and becoming the desk standard (Result).

02
Core value 02

Client Service

Principle one of the charter is that clients' interests always come first, and the modern value keeps client service at the center. Goldman reads for people who anchor every decision in the client outcome and who can show that serving the client well drove the firm's success. A reviewer reads for client impact you can measure, not activity you performed.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Lead with the client outcome and tie your work to it: mandates won, assets raised, a relationship deepened, a problem the client felt solved. Put the client's result first, then your mechanism.

Owned the post-mandate workstream for a $400M financing, delivering the client's board materials two days early and earning a follow-on mandate.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Internal-process bullets with no client on the other side. Managed the deal pipeline describes activity, not the client outcome a client-first reviewer reads for.

Handled various administrative and operational tasks to support the broader deal process across the group.

STAR example bullet

When a client's financing was at risk of slipping past their board date (Situation), I owned the diligence and materials workstream (Task), coordinating legal and the client's finance team to compress the timeline (Action), delivering two days early and earning a follow-on mandate (Result).

03
Core value 03

Integrity

Principle fourteen states that integrity and honesty are at the heart of the business, and principle twelve treats breaching a client confidence as unthinkable. In a regulated firm where reputation is the asset hardest to restore, Goldman reads for people who do the right thing when it is costly and who handle sensitive information without exception. A reviewer reads for judgment under pressure, not slogans.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Show a moment you protected the firm or the client by being rigorous or honest when it would have been easier not to: a control you tightened, an error you surfaced, a confidence you kept. Demonstrate the judgment; do not assert the virtue.

Flagged a reconciliation break before settlement that others had signed off, preventing a $2M misstatement and prompting a new four-eyes control.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Naming integrity as an adjective. A line that calls you honest, ethical, and trustworthy states the trait Goldman reads for instead of demonstrating it, and reviewers discount it.

Highly ethical professional with strong integrity and an unwavering commitment to always doing the right thing.

STAR example bullet

When a trade reconciliation looked balanced but felt off the day before settlement (Situation), I was responsible for sign-off (Task), so I re-ran the break analysis and escalated a discrepancy others had cleared (Action), preventing a $2M misstatement and prompting a new four-eyes control (Result).

04
Core value 04

Excellence

The modern value of excellence distills principle four, pride in the professional quality of the work, and principle five, creativity and imagination in everything the firm does. Goldman reads for a high bar held consistently: precise, error-free output and inventive solutions, not adequate work delivered on time. A reviewer reads for craft and rigor visible in the result.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Prove the bar with precise, specific numbers and a named improvement, not round approximations. Show the quality or the creative solution itself, with the exactness as the signal.

Rebuilt the LBO model to run sensitivities in seconds instead of minutes, an approach the team adopted across four live mandates.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Vague, rounded impact with no mechanism. Improved efficiency and delivered high-quality work tells an excellence-driven reviewer nothing and reads as someone who did not measure.

Consistently delivered high-quality work and improved efficiency across a wide range of projects and deliverables.

STAR example bullet

When deal teams waited minutes for the LBO model to recompute scenarios (Situation), I was asked to make it usable in live meetings (Task), so I rearchitected the calc engine and dependency tree (Action), cutting sensitivity runs to seconds and seeing it adopted across four live mandates (Result).

Core values from Goldman's purpose-and-values page, goldmansachs.com/our-firm/purpose-and-values, observed June 2026.

The charter beneath the values

The 14 Business Principles.
Whitehead's 1979 charter, in full.

The foundational charter the four values distill from, written by John Whitehead in 1979 and still published by Goldman. The opening sentence of each principle is shown verbatim. This is the ownable finance analog to Amazon's leadership principles.

01

Our clients' interests always come first. Our experience shows that if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow.

02

Our assets are our people, capital and reputation. If any of these is ever diminished, the last is the most difficult to restore.

03

Our goal is to provide superior returns to our shareholders.

04

We take great pride in the professional quality of our work.

05

We stress creativity and imagination in everything we do.

06

We make an unusual effort to identify and recruit the very best person for every job.

07

We offer our people the opportunity to move ahead more rapidly than is possible at most other places. Advancement depends on merit.

In the 2001 update, Goldman expanded this principle to add a commitment to diversity and inclusion across the firm. We describe that expansion rather than quote it: the exact current wording has the most revision history of any principle and could not be confirmed, so it is summarized here to avoid stating a sentence the firm may not use verbatim today.

08

We stress teamwork in everything we do.

09

The dedication of our people to the firm and the intense effort they give their jobs are greater than one finds in most other organizations.

10

We consider our size an asset that we try hard to preserve.

11

We constantly strive to anticipate the rapidly changing needs of our clients.

12

We regularly receive confidential information as part of our normal client relationships. To breach a confidence would be unthinkable.

13

Our business is highly competitive, and we aggressively seek to expand our client relationships, but we must always be fair competitors.

14

Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business.

Business Principles written by John Whitehead, 1979; shareholder language added 1998, principle 7 expanded 2001. Published by Goldman Sachs, goldmansachs.com.

The principles a resume can prove

Five principles with what they signal,
a show-this bullet, and a STAR example.

Not every principle maps to a resume bullet. These five, client first, teamwork, integrity, professional quality, and recruiting the best, are the ones a Goldman reviewer can actually read in your work. Each opens with Goldman's verbatim language.

01
Business Principle 01

Clients' interests always come first

The opening principle, verbatim: our clients' interests always come first, and if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow. Goldman reads for candidates who internalize that order of operations, where firm success is the consequence of client service, not the goal that displaces it.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Make the client the subject of the sentence and your success the consequence. Show a decision where you chose the client's long-term interest and it paid off for the firm.

Recommended the cheaper structure that cut our fee but fit the client's covenant limits, which won the next two mandates from the relationship.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Putting the firm's revenue ahead of any client outcome. Maximized fee revenue with no client benefit named reads against principle one and signals misaligned priorities.

Focused primarily on maximizing internal revenue targets regardless of the downstream client outcome.

STAR example bullet

When a client needed financing but could not breach a covenant (Situation), I led the structuring (Task) and recommended a lower-fee structure that fit their constraints (Action), which protected the relationship and won the next two mandates (Result).

08
Business Principle 08

We stress teamwork in everything we do

Principle eight, verbatim, names teamwork as pervasive, and principle nine praises the intense effort people give. Goldman runs deal teams and trading desks where the unit, not the individual, owns the outcome. A reviewer reads for whether you make the team win and credit it.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Name the cross-functional partners and the shared result. Show what you contributed inside a team and credit the group for the outcome, with the collective result quantified.

Coordinated legal, syndicate, and the client across a 48-hour window to launch a $1B bond on schedule with the full deal team.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Hero framing that erases the team. Single-handedly built and closed everything claims sole credit and reads against a teamwork-first culture.

Did everything on the transaction myself with no meaningful input or support from anyone else.

STAR example bullet

When a $1B bond launch hinged on a 48-hour close (Situation), I was the analyst coordinating the workstreams (Task), syncing legal, syndicate, and the client in parallel (Action), and the full deal team launched on schedule (Result).

14
Business Principle 14

Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business

Principle fourteen, verbatim, places integrity and honesty at the heart of the business. Paired with principle two, that reputation is the asset hardest to restore, Goldman reads for people who protect the firm's reputation through honest, rigorous conduct, especially when no one is checking.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Show rigor or honesty that protected the firm or client when it was costly: a control you added, an error you owned, a confidence you kept. Let the action carry the value.

Self-reported a pricing error I had introduced, corrected it before client impact, and wrote the check that stopped it recurring.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Asserting honesty as a label. Trustworthy team player with high ethical standards names the trait rather than proving it, and a Goldman reviewer reads past it.

Known for being honest, dependable, and ethical in every professional situation.

STAR example bullet

When I found a pricing error I had introduced (Situation), I was accountable for the model (Task), so I self-reported and corrected it before any client impact (Action), then added a validation check that prevented recurrence (Result).

04
Business Principle 04

We take great pride in the professional quality of our work

Principle four, verbatim, is pride in the professional quality of the work, and principle eleven adds constantly anticipating clients' rapidly changing needs. Goldman reads for a consistently high bar: precise, polished, error-free output that anticipates the next question rather than answering only the one asked.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Show the quality bar with an exact figure and a named improvement, and show you anticipated a need. Precision and foresight are the signal.

Caught and corrected three model inconsistencies before MD review and pre-built the downside case the client asked for the next day.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Rounded, mechanism-free quality claims. High-quality deliverables, always on time states a bar without proving it and reads as someone who did not measure.

Produced high-quality deliverables and maintained strong attention to detail throughout.

STAR example bullet

When MD review was hours away and the model had subtle inconsistencies (Situation), I owned the deck and numbers (Task), so I reconciled three discrepancies and pre-built the downside case I expected the client to ask for (Action), which the client requested the next morning and we already had ready (Result).

06
Business Principle 06

We recruit the very best person for every job

Principle six, verbatim, is an unusual effort to identify and recruit the very best person for every job. Goldman reads for people who raise the bar around them: who interview rigorously, mentor juniors, and improve the team's talent, not just their own output. A reviewer reads for evidence you make the unit stronger.

What it signals in hiring
Show this on the resume

Show how you raised the team's bar: a junior you developed, a hiring loop you improved, a standard you set that others adopted. Quantify the lift to the team, not just to you.

Trained four incoming analysts on the modeling standard I documented, cutting their ramp time from eight weeks to four.

Avoid this anti-pattern

Pure individual-output bullets that never touch the team's capability. They miss the bar-raising signal principle six rewards.

Focused exclusively on my own deliverables and individual deal contributions throughout the year.

STAR example bullet

When four new analysts joined with no shared modeling standard (Situation), I was the senior analyst on the team (Task), so I documented the standard and ran training sessions (Action), cutting their ramp time from eight weeks to four (Result).

Verbatim opening sentences from Goldman's 14 Business Principles, goldmansachs.com, written by John Whitehead, 1979.

Interview fit, community-reported

The fit dimensions candidates report,
mapped back to the principles.

The dimensions below are community-reported from interview-prep sites and candidate accounts, for example WikiJob and IGotAnOffer. They are not an official Goldman scorecard, and Goldman does not publish a fit rubric. Treat them as a useful pattern of what candidates encounter, not as a list the firm endorses.

What makes them worth knowing is that each maps cleanly back to the published principles, so you can prepare against the charter rather than against rumor. The mapping is ours, drawn to ground each reported theme in something Goldman actually wrote.

01 / Community-reported

Why Goldman / why this division

Principles 1 and 11: a client-first motivation and genuine interest in the division's clients, not a generic prestige answer.

02 / Community-reported

Commercial and market awareness

Principles 11 and 13: anticipating client needs and competing in a fast-moving market with a current view.

03 / Community-reported

Teamwork and collaboration

Principles 8 and 9: pervasive teamwork and the intense, dedicated effort the firm expects.

04 / Community-reported

Leadership and drive

Principles 6 and 7: raising the bar around you and advancing on merit through initiative.

05 / Community-reported

Integrity and ethics

Principles 12 and 14: keeping confidences and putting integrity and honesty at the heart of the work.

06 / Community-reported

Communication

Principle 4: the professional quality of the work, conveyed clearly and precisely under pressure.

Fit dimensions are community-reported from interview-prep sites and candidate accounts, not an official Goldman scorecard. Mapping to principles is ResumeAdapter Editorial.

The phrase that is not a principle

“Our people are our greatest asset.”
A common misattribution.

The slogan our people are our greatest asset is frequently attributed to Goldman's principles. It is not one of the 14. Quoting it as a Goldman principle in an interview or cover letter signals that you read a summary, not the source.

The people concept is genuinely in the charter, just not in that phrasing. Principle two names people, capital and reputation as the firm's assets. Principle six is the unusual effort to recruit the very best person for every job. Principle seven is about advancement on merit. If you want to speak to how Goldman values its people, cite those, accurately.

The resume implication is simple: never paraphrase a principle into a slogan and present it as Goldman's. Use the firm's actual language, or better, demonstrate the principle through a quantified outcome and skip the quotation entirely.

The people concept lives in principles 2, 6, and 7. The exact phrase our people are our greatest asset is not one of the 14 Business Principles.

How to show Goldman's values

Five moves from
generic resume to Goldman-true.

01
Step 01

Lead with client impact you can measure

Principle one is clients' interests always come first. Make the client the subject and your success the consequence: a mandate won, assets raised, a problem the client felt solved, with a number attached.

02
Step 02

Frame wins as franchise and team outcomes

Partnership and teamwork are pervasive at Goldman. Credit the deal team and name the cross-functional partners. Owned the team result beats single-handedly, and shows you put the franchise first.

03
Step 03

Prove integrity through a costly action, not a label

Integrity and honesty are at the heart of the business. Show a control you tightened, an error you surfaced, or a confidence you kept when it was costly. Demonstrate the judgment; never assert the virtue as an adjective.

04
Step 04

Hold the excellence bar with precise numbers

Excellence distills pride in professional quality and creativity. Replace rounded claims with exact figures and a named improvement: cut sensitivity runs from minutes to seconds, not improved efficiency.

05
Step 05

Scan and iterate against a Goldman posting

Upload to ResumeAdapter against a specific Goldman division's posting to see where your bullets name values as adjectives instead of demonstrating them, and iterate until client impact, teamwork, integrity, and excellence are visible in the work.

For most candidates the move is simple: build four bullets, one per value. One that shows measurable client impact for client service, one that credits the deal team for a franchise outcome for partnership, one that proves integrity through a costly action, and one that holds the excellence bar with an exact number. Four bullets, four values, none of them naming the value as an adjective.

Anchor each to a principle so the depth shows: client service to principle one, partnership and teamwork to principle eight, integrity to principles twelve and fourteen, excellence to principles four and five. The reviewer reading your resume is, consciously or not, reading against that charter.

You do not need to name a single value on the page. You need bullets where client impact, teamwork, integrity, and excellence are visible in the outcomes themselves. See the Goldman levels spoke for how the bar shifts from analyst to managing director, and the Goldman interview process spoke for how these values surface across the superday loop.

FAQ

Goldman Sachs values, FAQ

The questions candidates surface about what Goldman actually screens for, after they have read the pillar. Answers are byte-identical to the FAQPage JSON-LD, because AI engines that extract HTML and AI engines that extract JSON-LD should not see different text.

What are Goldman Sachs' core values?

Goldman Sachs brands around four core values: partnership, client service, integrity, and excellence. Its purpose-and-values page states the firm aspires to be the world's most exceptional financial institution, united by those shared values. They are the modern distillation of Goldman's older and longer charter, the 14 Business Principles, so the four values and the 14 principles are two views of the same culture rather than two competing lists.

What are the 14 Business Principles?

The 14 Business Principles are Goldman Sachs' foundational charter, written by John Whitehead in 1979 and still published by the firm. Principle one is our clients' interests always come first, our experience shows that if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow. The list continues through people, capital and reputation as the firm's assets, pride in professional quality, creativity, recruiting the best, teamwork, anticipating client needs, keeping confidences, fair competition, and ends on integrity and honesty at the heart of the business. The four modern core values distill these.

Who wrote Goldman's Business Principles?

John Whitehead, then a senior leader at Goldman Sachs, wrote the Business Principles in 1979, and the firm still publishes them. The charter has been expanded over time: shareholder-returns language was added in 1998, and principle seven was expanded in 2001 to add a diversity and inclusion commitment. The core framing, that clients' interests always come first and that reputation is the asset hardest to restore, has remained constant since 1979.

What values questions does Goldman ask in interviews?

Candidates commonly report interviews probing why Goldman and why this division, commercial and market awareness, teamwork, leadership and drive, integrity, and communication. These fit dimensions are community-reported from prep sites and candidate accounts, not an official Goldman scorecard, but they map cleanly back to the principles: why-Goldman to principle one, commercial awareness to principles eleven and thirteen, teamwork to principle eight, and integrity to principles twelve and fourteen.

How do I show Goldman's values on my resume?

Demonstrate the values through quantified outcomes rather than naming them. Show client impact you can measure for client service, a team result you contributed to for partnership and teamwork, a moment of costly honesty or rigor for integrity, and a precise quality or creativity improvement for excellence. Use STAR-style bullets so each value is visible in the work itself, and scan your resume to see which signals a Goldman recruiter would actually find.

Is "our people are our greatest asset" one of Goldman's principles?

No. That exact phrase is a common misattribution and is not one of the 14 Business Principles. The people concept does live in the charter: principle two names people, capital and reputation as the firm's assets, principle six is the unusual effort to recruit the very best person for every job, and principle seven is about advancement on merit. But the specific slogan our people are our greatest asset is not a Goldman principle, so do not quote it as one.

Continue

The rest of the Goldman
resume cluster.

01 / Pillar

How to get a job at Goldman Sachs

The pillar covering Goldman's application process, the four core values in summary, the analyst-to-MD ladder, and the superday interview loop.

Read
02 / Spoke

Goldman Sachs levels

The analyst, associate, VP, and managing director ladder, and how the bar shifts from execution to franchise ownership by band.

Read
03 / Spoke

The Goldman interview process

The HireVue, first rounds, and superday, and how the firm's values surface across the loop.

Read
04 / Resume example

Investment banking resume

A worked investment-banking resume with the quantified client and deal-team impact a Goldman reviewer reads for.

Read
Related

ATS Statistics

The dataset behind the editorial findings on this page, including the median pre-edit resume score.

Read
Related

All company guides

The full index of company resume hubs, each with its hiring bar mapped to resume language.

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