Goldman Sachs recruitment for Off campus summer internship 2021
Round 1(Aptitude Test)
Participants: About 1 lakh as per pre-placement talk conducted by them
This round was conducted on 20th Feb 2021 at Hackerrank platform, and it was of 1 hour 30 minutes. There was video proctoring in this round. The test had a total of 6 sections consisting of 66 questions and All sections are mandatory :
- Numerical Computations – 8 questions
- Numerical Reasoning -12 questions
- Comprehension – 10 questions
- Abstract Reasoning – 12 questions
- Diagrammatic Reasoning – 12 questions
- Logical Reasoning – 12 questions
Each MCQ has 5 marks for correct answer and -2 for incorrect answer. Questions were of easy – moderate difficulty except the numerical computation part which was very tough. I was able to attempt around 33 questions. After some days received a mail from them that about 10 questions were removed from test as pictures were not visible for that questions during the test and all will be marked accordingly. On 10 March 2021, I received a mail stating that the technical assessment round is scheduled for 21 March.
Round 2(Technical Assessment)
Participants: About 5000 as per pre-placement talk conducted by them
The Technical Round was of 2 hours 15 minutes and was conducted on HackerRank. It comprised of 5 sections:
- Programming – 30 minutes: 1 easy and 1 medium level questions (for me, one was based on the string and the other was based on binary tree).
- Computer Science – 20 minutes: 7 MCQs based on Computer Science subject topics like OOPS, OS, DSA and code output questions.
- Quantitative Aptitude – 25 minutes: Math-related MCQs. There were a total of 8 questions.(Really very hard, able to do only 2)
- Advanced Programming – 45 minutes: 1 hard level question on advanced Data Structures (for me, based on the graph).
- Subjective – 15 minutes: 2 essay-type questions (situation-based questions like in a two-person team project, what u will do if the other member has some personal problem due to which he cannot be a member now).
The criteria for passing the second round was to clear at least 3 of the 6 sections (including CGPA as a section) in the technical assessment. I attempted one coding question properly from the first section, 5 MCQs, and both the subjective questions and was able to pass 10 test cases in the advanced programming section(partial marking is there for coding questions).
On 31th March, I received a mail that said I have cleared the technical assessment, and interviews for all those selected will be scheduled in the upcoming week. On 6th April, I received my interview date which was 9th April. All my interviews were conducted on the same day with Zoom as the video-conferencing platform.
Interview Rounds
Participants: About 500 as per pre-placement talk conducted by them but saw only 70 persons in the waiting room on my interview day, don’t know how many were selected.
Round 1:
- First, there was a brief introduction.
- Then, moving on to DSA, using HackerRank CodePair as the live coding platform, Interviewer asked me to code the solution for ‘find loop in linked list and remove it’. I wrote the code as a simple function in java, and we don’t need to run the program, we just need to write it and discuss it.
- Next, the interviewer asked me some basic questions like why gs, my strengths, and weakness, the difference between bst and binary tree, types of traversals in binary tree.
- Next, the question was “check if tree is mirror to another”
- Next was a probability question: “what is the probability of selecting two cards one at a time from a deck of 5 cards(numbered distinctly from 1 to 5), such the first card is one greater than the second card.”
- Then, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions and that was the end of the first interview.
- I was able to answer first one, made blunder in second program due to nervousness and not able to answer the probability question, but answered all theory questions
Round 2:
- First, there was a brief introduction.
- Then, moving on to DSA, Interviewer asked me to code the solution for ‘print pairs having sum equal to k from an array of integers’.
- Next, question was “print all possible combinations of elements having sum equal to k from an array of integers” and third was “buy sell stock 2 times in such a way to maximize profit”.
- Then, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions and that was the end of the second interview.
- I was able to answer all question within minutes and also able to code it and dry ran it for the test case provided.
- After 2 rounds all are waiting for the hr round, but after 3 hours at 8:30 pm, they said only 14 students should wait here and all others can now leave the meeting as these 14 students will undergo one more technical round to confirm their ability. I was one of them.
Round 3: It started around 9 pm.
- First, there was a brief introduction. The interviewer was a very cool person. He asked some oral questions and said only “tell algorithm no need to code”.
- so questions were what is bst, how to delete node in bst, what are avl trees, avl tree rotation (was not able to answer this), one interesting question :
- “You have two unsorted arrays and u have to give merged and sorted array, will u merge first, then sort or sort first then merge and why”
- then, quick sort vs binary sort.
- Then he asked some basic questions like will u have any concerns regarding the tech stack used in gs as it may be different from what u learned till now and Then the interviewer asked me if I had any questions and that was the end of the third interview.
- I was able to answer all questions except avl tree rotations.
- It marked the end of interviews for the day. One needs to be very patient as you have to sit in the virtual waiting room from 10 am to 10 pm. So be ready for that.
Verdict: After waiting for three weeks of waiting, finally “not selected” mail arrived.
Tips:
- If you know the solution, don’t jump on to directly give the optimized answer, always start from brute force.
- Be patient, as one may not have the practice sitting in a virtual interview for 12 hours.
Success Ratio: As per pre-placement talk, 2-3 out of 1 lakh (cannot confirm). They said if they like then they hire, they don’t have any specific vacancy count.
Finally, Best of Luck