Goldman Sachs Interview Experience 2020 | On-Campus Internship

Round 1 (Online Assessment Test): Tier-1 college

• Platform: Hackerrank with tab proctoring and webcam proctoring enabled
• 5 sections(There is a section-wise time limit in their coding round)

Section 1 (Coding questions): The time duration for this round was 30 min.

1. Given a string, check whether its second half is a palindrome or not (In case of a string of odd length, the second half should be the larger one). (10 marks)
2. Given a binary tree, count the total number of magic parents, where a node which is not NULL and has both left and right children and the sum of the number of nodes in the left subtree is odd and that of right subtree is even (or sum of nodes in the left subtree as even and right subtree as odd) should be considered as a magic parent. Node 1 is always the Root node. (20 marks)

Input format: The node_number  string(representing the relative position of the node wrt root node,i.e node 1).

E.g: This is representing a tree having a root node as 1 and 2 is the left child of node 1 and 3 is the right child of node 1 and 5 is the left child of node 3.

2 L
3 R
5 RL

Section 2 (Maths and Quant):

• Marking: +5,-2
• 25 min
• 8 MCQs
• Questions on probability, combinatorics, properties of modulus, binomial theorem, etc.

Section 3 (CS MCQs):

• Marking:+5,-2
• 20 min
• 7 MCQs
• Based on topics like Data structures, Algorithms, OS, Networking, etc.

Section 4 (Coding question):

• Marks: 100
• 45 min
• The concept used in that problem is described at the below link 

https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/45897. 

Section 5 (Essay section):

• 2 value-based type questions each having 10 marks(to be answered in brief)
• 15 min

The questions of section 5 were as follows:

1. Suppose you and your friend are doing an important project having some deadline. Then suddenly your friend left the project in the middle because of some unavoidable reasons. What you will do in that situation?
2. Mention one instance where you were highly motivated and excited for a project and you achieved exceptional results in it.

Shortlist Criteria, GS follow GPA+TEST Score(Beware of the negative marking and time constraints of each section)

Round 1 Technical interview (45 minutes): Platform was Zoom for video Call and Hackerrank CodePair for coding

1. This round began with a formal introduction, followed by a few questions related to my project
2. Then, he asked to write code for the problem: Find minimum number of insertions to sort the given array
3. I was able to write the code for finding the Longest Increasing Subsequence (LIS) using dynamic programming and then using that finding the minimum number of insertions required.
4. Then, the interviewer told me to write some test cases, that would cover all the cases including some corner cases, and run the code on those.
5. This round went well, and I was selected for the next round.

Round 2 Technical interview (40 minutes):

1. This round began with a formal introduction
2. Find the next greater number, with the same set of digits, being used

Due to my bad luck, Hackerrank Codepair was not working, for the interviewer, at that time. So, he just asked me to explain my approach. I was unable to explain to him the correct approach, at once.

Math question: Given an 8×8 chessboard whose each square has a side 10 cm. A coin is tossed, find the probability that, it lands inside a black square. I was able to explain to him my approach and give the correct answer 

I asked him, on what basis, are interns assigned the department, in which they work. And what kind of projects, do interns work on.

Unfortunately, I was rejected.