- Matthew Alfieri broke into Goldman Sachs from a little-known state school. “I was very intimidated.”
- Now a partner at private equity firm Centana Growth Partners, Alfieri shared his advice for aspiring financiers without Ivy League pedigrees.
- His tips include finding like-minded students and starting new finance clubs or initiatives at your university.
When Matthew Alfieri walked into the 24th floor of Goldman Sachs’ headquarters for his first day as a summer analyst in 2007, his untailored suit hung from his 20-year-old frame, his hair was a little too slicked back with gel, and he wore what he thought completed the classic Wall Street uniform: a red tie.
Around him, he later learned, were students from schools like Wharton and Columbia. Alfieri, by contrast, was from the University at Albany, a state school located in New York’s sleepy capitol city.
“Knowing the types of people that Goldman Sachs and other investment banks hired, I was very intimidated,” Alfieri told Insider.
He knew he had a lot to prove, so that summer he often avoided eating lunch until 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. to get pitch books to perfection, and he always kept a notebook in his back pocket just in case a manager pulled him aside for an ask.
Alfieri ended up as one of six people in his group who got offers to return as full-time junior bankers after that summer — just as the dawn of the financial crisis began to break across the horizon. Getting the job wasn’t easy, Alfieri said, but the first step was getting his foot in the door. And as a non-Ivy Leaguer, especially back then, this may have been the biggest challenge of all, he said.
“I think it’s important to understand that as a non-target university, you are kind of guilty until proven innocent, versus the flip side coming from a target university, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” Alfieri said.
Ask anyone on Wall Street and they will tell you that Goldman Sachs is one of the top places to build a career as an investment banker. The prestige comes in part from Goldman’s set-in-stone position as a top shop for M&A.
But breaking in is not easy. It had a firm-wide acceptance rate of about 1.5% for its 2022 interns.
Landing a job can be even harder for people who don’t come from top schools where big banks like Goldman traditionally recruit, also known as target schools. The top alma maters of people who list themselves as current Goldman Sachs employees on LinkedIn are Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, according to LinkedIn data.
It’s unclear where Alfieri’s alma mater stands in the rankings, as LinkedIn lists only the top five schools. But there are about 728 people on LinkedIn who list themselves as current Goldman Sachs employees who also attended Columbia University, which has an undergrad enrollment of just under 10,000. That’s compared to 237 from SUNY Albany, which today has about 13,000 undergraduates.
To be sure, it’s easier for non-Ivy Leaguers today than in 2007 when Alfieri was coming up. In an effort to diversify recruiting sources and its workforce, Wall Street generally has been expanding the schools from which it recruits. Goldman said that in 2022, it hired interns across the firm from over 600 different universities globally. And in 2016 it replaced first-round in-person interviews for junior bankers with a virtual assessment called HireVue, which allows students from schools that didn’t score a visit from Goldman recruiters to compete on a more equal footing. It has also launched the Market Madness program that provides training and networking opportunities at HBCUs.
Still, Alfieri’s experience can still prove valuable to today’s Wall Street hopefuls. As Insider recently reported, recruiting for the 2024 class is now underway.
More than 15 years later — after nearly a decade at Goldman, where he rose the ranks from analyst to vice president, and five years at Centana Growth Partners, a $638M tech-focused investment firm — Alfieri shared his story and top five tips on how aspiring financiers who aren’t hitting the streets with a Princeton pedigree can break into prestigious finance institutions.
He advises students to look for programs to start or improve at their school, take advantage of the chip on their shoulder, and to find ways to surround themselves with equally ambitious people.
Surround yourself with like-minded people
Alfieri had always been aware of Wall Street — he grew up on Long Island where his father was — and still is — an IT worker for Citigroup. His interest in investing was sparked by a stock pitch competition his senior year of high school. By then, he had already settled on the idea of going to a state school.
When he got there in 2004, however, Alfieri quickly realized he was in the minority when it came to his dreams of shooting for the top of Wall Street, he said.
“I was in a unique cohort,” said Alfieri, who said he earned the nickname “Matty Movin'” in college.
He wanted to meet people he could share his ambitions with, so he joined a business fraternity his sophomore year. There he met Vincent Cisternino, who also had dreams of working on Wall Street.
“I’d say the most important thing that came from that is really surrounding myself with like-minded individuals who were ambitious,” Alfieri said.
Their shared attitudes brought them close, he added, and was a source of mutual motivation. Determined to get internships their junior summer, Alfieri said the pair would spend hours in the library doing mock interviews and finance brain teasers with one another.
“It’s great to have a diverse set of friends, but understand which part of your friend groups are going to be important to your professional success and which ones are more important to your personal success.”
Be entrepreneurial
Their first internships prior to Goldman had them working on financial controls at different firms. Alfieri said he learned analytical skills and how to work in spreadsheets and PowerPoint. But he wanted more.
“We realized, okay, this is not the path. How are we ever gonna land in investment banking next summer? So we put our heads together at the end of that internship,” said Alfieri.
They started researching top universities with strong business programs and noticed many had student managed funds, Alfieri said. So they spent the end of the summer drafting a pitch deck to start one at UAlbany together with a third Wall Street hopeful and UAlbany classmate, Mike Reynolds.
Soon, they were meeting with a dean in the school of business to pitch the idea of a student-led fund called the University at Albany School of Business Investment Group, or UASBIG for short.
The school seeded the idea with a $100,000 endowment, Alfieri said. All three founders of UASBIG ultimately made it to Goldman, he said.
“It was really UASBIG that probably set my career up for what it is today. And I’ll never forget that kind of professional achievement,” Alfieri told Insider.
They recruited more students to take part in it, Alfieri said, and treated the recruitment process like an investment banking interview to get other highly motivated, hardworking students to be a part of it. Soon, they were investing the money in public stocks and getting college credit for doing it.
Cisternino and Reynolds both confirmed Alfieri’s story and their work on UASBIG.
“Find a way to differentiate yourself from the pack,” Alfieri advised. “Look for things that a university does not currently have that are value-add and relevant to the financial services world. That could be consulting practice, that can be a stock market group, that can be various things that allow you to demonstrate a business building, business analytics kind of mindset.”
Networking is “the name of the game”
“I would say the name of the game to break into Wall Street from a non-target university is networking,” he said. “You need to become relevant to your alumni group and you need to find ways to do that.”
For Alfieri, it was the combination of co-founding the investment group and being part of the business fraternity that gave him exposure to alumni who worked on Wall Street, he said.
Michael Borys was one such alum. The longtime Goldman VP and SUNY Albany alumni soon became aware of the student fund initiative and helped Alfieri and Cisternino get interviews with Goldman’s investment bank for junior-year internships. Reynolds, the third UASBIG co-founder, also wound up at Goldman, but as a first-year analyst the following year, putting the three UASBIG founders together after graduation.
Alfieri says young people need to be bold in seeking out mentors.
“One of the things I’ve learned with mentorship is if you don’t ask, you won’t get,” he said. “And frankly, most people are really happy to help and want to invest themselves in other people. So don’t be afraid to ask.”
Alfieri also wants to remind young people that networking shouldn’t stop when you get a job. He recalls a time in his career when he was placed in a unit where he didn’t feel had a future. He did a lot of cold calling in that time, and always made a point to ask each person he talked with if they had somebody else in their network he could speak with about their career trajectory.
“I’d say almost always, every time I asked that question, I was given two more warm leads and warm introductions, which goes a long way in terms of even extending your network.”
Stay optimistic — especially now
Having a positive attitude and being a team player will always be to your advantage, said Alfieri.
“When you get there and when you land that job on your internship, it’s a 10 week interview and it’s yours to lose,” said Alfieri. “So it’s really important that you put in the effort and you do it with a smile.”
This is especially true when things don’t seem to be working out, Alfieri said. He recalled being moved out of the public sector and infrastructure banking group at Goldman and into a different group that didn’t suit his career goals due to the financial crisis. But he tried not to let the downturn deter him from pushing toward his long term goal of landing on the buy side.
“I was probably in the minority that kept a positive mindset and thought about how I am going to improve my position and ensure that I can get to where I ultimately want to be, which is investing.”
Having started his career during the financial crisis, his advice to today’s Wall Street upstarts is to stay positive and persevere.
“Keep your head down and work hard. Don’t get distracted by the noise,” he said. “There’s a lot of value to be had from working in the industry during tough times.”
Don’t get rid of the chip on your shoulder
Coming from a little-known state school, Alfieri said he came into his Goldman internship with an attitude that he had a lot to prove. He and Cisternino were the only students from their school in the summer analyst class, which boasted nearly 200 people, Alfieri said.
He worked extra hard as a result and it paid off, he said. Of course, once he was in the weeds of the work, last names and schools didn’t matter. It was work ethic that made him, and his friend, stick out.
“I think what surprised me most at both the peer level and the more senior level is like, no one cared. No one cared that you weren’t from wealth. No one cared that you didn’t go to an Ivy League school. Once you were in the door, everyone gave you the benefit of the doubt that you deserved to be there.”
“We were committed, we were very focused on what we were doing. And I think that really resonated with the team that we worked with. I mean, at the end of the day, you need to meet a certain bar of aptitude level to perform well in the task, but once you get past that, it’s, is this somebody that I can work well with? Are they a team player? Are they really dedicated? Are they going to bring positive energy to a grind of a career? And I think those are some of the softer skills that set us apart.”
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