Sarah Harper, head of recruitment for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Goldman Sachs

1) With investment banks' collective graduate intakes down 40% last year according to High Fliers Research, it hasn't been an easy time for graduates who want to get into investment banking. Do you think things are now looking up? How do this year's intern pool and graduate intake compare with previous years?

The hiring picture for students looking for jobs in investment banking this year is absolutely better than it was last year. At Goldman Sachs, our summer internship and full time class sizes are close to where they were prior to the downturn.

We can't speak for other banks, but this is likely to be the case across the industry: at a recent High Fliers conference we attended, research was presented showing that many more students than last year were applying to investment banks.

2) It's evidently early days, but what's the graduate hiring outlook for 2011?

Every year we try to align the size of our summer internship class to the size we expect the subsequent year's full time class to be. We hope to offer full time 2011 positions to the majority of our 2010 summer class, which is significantly bigger than last years class.

3) Have you noticed any drop off in the number of students who want to be investment bankers as a result of the industry's poor publicity following the financial crisis?

We are very pleased that, no, we haven't particularly noticed this.

Looking back to the first term of this year, we had a very good number of students attending our campus events. The turnout was excellent and students are still very interested in working for us. This has been reflected in the applications we received.

4) Which business areas are you hiring people into this year? Which businesses have the biggest intakes?

All our divisions take both interns and full time analysts. Our biggest intakes are into investment banking, securities, operations and technology.

We always encourage students to think about the broad range of opportunities on offer - as well as the bigger and better known divisions, we also hire into areas such as legal, internal audit, and human capital management.

5) What's your advice to students who didn't get a summer internship for 2010 and still want to work in banking?

Any experience this summer will be important. You need to show that you are proactive and keen to learn and develop. Therefore, some sort of work experience - even if it's not directly relevant, will be useful.

The key period will be next year's milkround, when you will need to ensure you are attending any presentations that are made by investment banks, and are aware of when you can apply for positions for 2011.