Goldman Sachs Interview Experience 2021

Recently, Goldman Sachs visited our college for offering a summer analyst internship for the pre-final year.

I am happy to tell you that I cracked this opportunity and am here to share my experience throughout the hiring process.

There were overall 4 rounds conducted.

ROUND 1(Online Test ):  The first round was an online test that analyzed the students from various perspectives. There were no eligibility criteria set by the company for the first round just you need to be in 3rd year. Any branch, with whatever CGPA, no matter you can sit in the first round.

• The round was conducted on an online platform (Hackerrank) and consisted of 5 sections and time was allotted section-wise i.e. for each section some time was fixed within which the section must be attempted. Switching between the sections was allowed but whenever you switch to one section the timer of the section starts and the same of the other ones are paused.
• First section was a coding section in which 2 basic coding questions were asked and around 30 mins were provided to answer the questions. Both the questions were very standard-based, one was based on 90 degrees anti-clockwise rotation of the matrix, and the other one was based on the prefix sum array.
• Second section was containing MCQ’s and the topics included were probability, calculation, permutation and combination.
• The questions were required to be solved in around 20 minutes.
• Third section was the ADVANCE CODING SECTION and was provided in 45 mins. The question was basically based on converting string to binary tree then returning the last path which was the largest among all starting from the root node to any leaf of the tree. 45 minutes were enough to code it out and the challenge of the question was just about the implementation once you are good enough to think out the solution.

Fourth section was subjective type. Time offered was 15 min. 2 questions were asked in this section.

1. If you are working on some project and you are about to finish it on time but suddenly your partner is not able to continue further than in this case what will you do.
2. Anyone instance when you were very excited and determined to do something and you ended up with better results than your expectations.

Fifth and the last section was of 20 minutes and was containing MCQ’s based on the data structures, oops and os based.

Around 26 students were shortlisted to proceed to the next round.

ROUND 2: This round was for about 30 minutes. 

• The interviewer initially asked me to introduce myself for 5 minutes or so. Then I was given a link where the screen was shared between the interviewer as well as the student, where we can write, run and debug the code.
• I was asked Longest Palindrome Subsequence in the given string. First, we have to explain our approach to the interviewer and then if the interviewer is asked to code then we have to code and explain it out as well.
• I was able to make the question, and the interviewer was satisfied by my approach and the code.

ROUND 3: The interviewer initially asked me to introduce myself. Then the same link which was given in the first round was used again. This round was of about 60 minutes.

• I was asked about CHOCOLATE DISTRIBUTION PROBLEM but the variation was that we were given some ranks of the persons also, it was solved using the 2 pointer approach and sorting.
• The next question was the N-QUEEN problem, first of all, I was asked only to share my thought on how would I have approached the problem. The approach was backtracking. Also then I was asked to write the pseudo-code for the problem and then explain all the steps used and the conditions.
• In this question, 2 variations were there one was to print any one of the answer which is possible and the other was to print all the possible answers for the problem. The approach was same just some conditions were to be changed while returning the value of the function.
• Then another question was of having N gas stations and we have to make a circular visit and require to find the minimum index of the station from where we should start so that it is possible to visit all the stations and come back again.

ROUND 4: The interviewer initially asked me to introduce myself. and then started asking me questions from my resume. This round was of about 20 minutes.

Some of the questions were:

• About projects, which technologies were used, and the motivation of the project and explain what you have contributed to this.
• Have you studied Object-Oriented Programming? What role do they play in programming?
• Overloading vs Overriding
• Which data structures did you study
• Array vs LinkedList
• BFS vs DFS
• 3 Bulb Puzzle
• Are there some questions for me? I asked about the culture and opportunities I will get if I will be able to get selected
• Tell me some experience about the first round of the process.

This was all, the trick is to keep calm and let the interviewer know what you are thinking!