ALLEN AU-YEUNG ALLEN.AUYEUNG@SCMP.COM
PUBLISHED : Monday, 12 October, 2015, 7:00am
UPDATED : Monday, 12 October, 2015, 3:50pm
Cheung Kong Center in Central, where many Goldman Sachs employees work. Photo: Nora Tam
Goldman Sachs is re-launching its return programme in Hong Kong, hoping to open doors for experienced professionals who want to restart their careers after taking extensive time away from work.
The programme allows successful applicants who are out of the workforce for two or more years to work in a specific division of the investment bank for 10 weeks, while receiving training and coaching along the way.
Stephen Golden, head of diversity in Asia Pacific at Goldman Sachs, said: “Men and women leave companies at different rates. At some point, they thought: 'wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the industry that I used to work for?'"
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Golden said the programme helps valuable professionals who might be overlooked for lack of current employment. “There’s this recognition that there are these great talents out there and it’s very hard for them to come back to the industry,” he said.
The investment bank said research in the US showed women tend to take career breaks to take care of their families while men often do so to attain further education or start their own businesses.
Milly Ng Yim-yim, 41, joined Goldman Sachs’ return programme when it was launched in 2009, after taking a year off to travel in Tibet.
Ng, who previously spent over a decade working as an information technology consultant for another company, said she felt “nervous” when she first returned to work.
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“Sometimes, my colleagues had urgent questions when they called me and I couldn’t answer them right away,” Ng recalled.
“For questions I couldn’t answer, I’d tell them I’d get back to them as soon as I found the answers,” she said. “The most helpful thing is to identify areas you’re not familiar with and devise a plan to learn them.”
Ng advised those considering a career re-entry to identify their core competencies and know what values they can bring to a company.
Aiming to recruit 10 to 15 returnees this year, Goldman Sachs said it will give permanent offers to returnees depending on openings at the end of the programme. According to Golden, about a third of returnees stayed with the bank after the end of the 2009 programme.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/1866463/its-search-talent-goldman-sachs-trains-seasoned-hongkongers
