Goldman Sachs visited our campus recently. The CGPA cutoff was 7 and all the branches were eligible. The recruitment process consisted of online test and technical interview rounds.
Online Test: Time: 135 mins. Platform- Hackerrank. There were 5 sections in this round and every section was time-bound.
- Section 1: 2 coding questions, Time: 30 min.
- Section 2: 8 MCQ’s, topics asked were aptitude, probability, calculation, permutation, and combination. For each question +5 for the correct answer and -2 for the wrong answer. Time: 25 min.
- Section 3: Advanced Coding Section, 1 coding question. Time: 45 min.
- Section 4: Subjective, 2 HR questions situation based. Time 15 min.
- Section 5: 7 MCQs based on the data structures, OOP and OS based. For each question +5 for the correct answer and -2 for the wrong answer. Time: 20 min.
Switching between the sections was allowed and whenever you switch to any section the timer of that section starts and the timer of the previous section gets paused. 62 students were shortlisted for further process.
Technical Interview:
Round 1
Time: 35 min
- Lots of resume grilling, previous internship project discussion (she went deep into it), some HR questions like why do you want to join GS. Then, she gave me a coding question: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/removing-string-that-is-an-anagram-of-an-earlier-string/amp/ At the end, she asked if I had any questions for her. I asked 1-2 questions and it was over.
Round 2
Time: 25 min -30 min
- The interviewer was very friendly and probably a senior. He asked me about my last interview. Coding questions: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-if-string-is-k-palindrome-or-not/amp/ In this he made a slight variation and asked to remove exactly k elements. I provided a recursive approach to this question and he was satisfied and asked me to code it, and while I was coding, he asked me some questions like what would happen if he changes the base conditions that I have written. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-number-platforms-required-railwaybus-station/amp/ He was giving me this question but then he asked me if I have solved this question previously, I said yes. Then, he changed the question to: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/given-sorted-array-number-x-find-pair-array-whose-sum-closest-x/amp/ I provided him with the brute force initially for this and then he asked me to code it and didn’t ask me to optimize. After this, he asked me to think of some edge cases in which the code may not work. Then, he made a slight change in the question and asked given a sorted array and a number x, to find the pair in an array whose difference is closest to x. In this, he again asked me to think of some edge cases in which the previous approach may not work. In the end, he asked if I had any questions for him. I asked 1-2 questions regarding his work at GS.
Finally, 14 people got the internship offer including me :
Tips:
- Courses to be focused on: Majorly DSA, OOP basics
- Prepare puzzles and focus on probability and statistics as well, many other candidates were asked this.
- GS holds a variable number of rounds for each candidate, some had only 2 while others had 3-4.
- To conclude, I would say it’s luck + hard work both that matter in the end. Good Luck 🙂