Goldman Sachs Interview Experience

I had 1.5 years of experience when I got to know about the job opportunity at Goldman Sachs. A job consultancy firm contacted me for the opportunity  .
Total of 8 rounds including hacker rank and coder pad round.

Round 1 (Hacker rank) :
There were 2 questions which I don’t remember now.
1. 1st question of easy level : all test cases passed.
2. 2nd question of medium level : out of 7 test cases 5 passed and 2 timeout.

I got the call for coderPad round after almost 1 month of Hacker rank round.
Round 2 (CoderPad) :
1. Trapping rain water problem.
2. Find minimum sub array whose sum is at least to the given target.
eg: Sub array: 1, 2, 5, 6, 11, 2 Target: 12 Answer: 11, 2

Solved both the questions with all test cases passed.

After a week or two I got the call for face to face round. It was a super day Saturday. I gave back to back 5 f2f rounds, all rounds of 1 hour or more.
I do not remember all the questions asked in interview but trying to cover most of them.

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F2F 1:
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Project discussion. (Prepare at least one of your project very well)
3. Do you know Linked List. Difference between java linked list and c linked list.
Find 2nd last element of Linked List. Then generalize it to find nth last element. (Cover all the corner cases while writing the code)
4. What is set in java. Features of set. How set works. What is the underlined data structure used. How set is implemented in java.
Implement Set in java.
5. Detailed discussion on java collection.
6. What is Hash Map and how it is implemented in java. Default size of Hash Map, how it grows/scales.
7. Difference in java set and map.
8. Any questions from interviewer…
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F2F 2:
1. Project discussion.
2. Given a string which contains sequence of open/close parentheses/braces/square bracket. Find out whether the sequence is balanced or not. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/check-for-balanced-parentheses-in-an-expression/
3. Extended the above question, added a symbol single quote (‘) along with parentheses  /braces/square. (Trick is, you cannot identify single quote is opening or closing as in computers both opening and closing single quote is same).
4. How to sort a huge amount of data which cannot be loaded into RAM at once.
5. Implement a DS which gives the list of employees whose b’day is most recent. How would you save data o fetch recent b’day most efficiently.
eg: Employee List with b’day E1 – July 4, E2 – Jan 5, E3 – Sep 3
If today is Dec 29 it should return E2.
6. Replace each number in an array from its recent bigger number on right. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/replace-every-element-with-the-greatest-on-right-side/
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F2F 3:
1. Project discussion.
2. Stock buy sell problem and its variance. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/stock-buy-sell/
3. Given a string, return new string which removes alternate duplicate of given string. Cover all test cases. Write all possible JUnit test cases.
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F2F4:
1. Project discussion.
2. System design problem based on the project we discussed above.
Implement the same project discussed without database. What data structure you will use to store data. How data will be queried.
3. Write rest service for CRUD operation (including correct syntax). Difference between PUT and POST. Significance of PUT.
4. A 3*3*3 cube is dip into color and then divided into 1*1*1 cubes. Randomly picked a 1*1*1 cube and saw one face of cube. Probability of that face to be colored.
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F2F 5:
1. Project discussion.
2. There are n number of people in a room. If any two people doesn’t know each other, they shake hand. At the end, ever body announces their number of hand shake.
What is the possibility that ever body’s answer is unique/repetitive. Give proof for your answer.
3. Technical discussions.
4. Why do you want to switch job.
5. Any problem working in proprietary language.
6. Explained how GS works.
7. What would be my responsibilities, languages used within the team, technology.

At the end of the day I was told that all my rounds were positive and I should expect few more rounds. After a week I was called on sight for hiring manager round.
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F2f 6:
1. Project discussion.
2. Write a program to reverse string in java (given few constraints).
3. There are three boxes with label Orange, Apple, Apple&Orange. Label is incorrect as per the box’s actual content.
At a time you can pick out only one fruit from one box. Given that boxes has infinite supply of fruits. What is the minimum number of checks required to correctly label the boxes.
4. Minimum number of square tiles to cover a surface whose length and width is given.
5. Bag of coins puzzle. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/puzzle-bag-of-coins/

I was asked for my expectations and got the offer as per my expectations. 🙂
Special thanks to GeeksForGeeks, which helped me crack the interview.