My Background: I am currently in my final year pursuing a B.E in Electronics and Computer Engineering from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology. I applied for Goldman Sachs through their Engineering Campus Hiring Program. I am sharing my experience with this program, the entire selection process, and also some tips and suggestions which worked for me.
The Recruitment Process: The entire process is divided into four rounds with each round being an elimination round:
- Aptitude Test
- Technical Test
- Technical Interviews 1
- Technical Interviews 2
Aptitude Test: GS not only focuses on the candidate’s coding skills but also his/her logical thinking. Don’t take it lightly, this is the most important round, because if you are not able to clear this round then all your preparations for further rounds are worthless. This test was scheduled on HackerRank. There were a total of 66 questions divided into 6 sections. The marking scheme was +5 for the correct answer and -2 for an incorrect answer and the total duration was 1 hour 30 minutes.
The sections were:
- Numerical Computations — 8 questions
- Numerical Reasoning — 12 questions
- Comprehension — 10 questions
- Abstract Reasoning — 12 questions
- Diagrammatic Reasoning — 12 questions
- Logical Reasoning — 12 questions
I used Verbal & Non-Verbal Reasoning by R.S Agarwal for this round.
Tips: The questions in this round are not very tough. What matters here is your accuracy and speed. You need to solve around 45 questions correctly to clear this round. You will not be able to go through and answer all 66 questions in the given time limit, so be smart in choosing the sections you want to solve first.
I feel that diagrammatic reasoning is the main section that makes the difference as it had some questions that were new to me and were also time-consuming. But if you get the logic then there are 4–5 questions based on similar patterns which could be solved in less than a minute.
Technical Test: This test was also on HackerRank. The test has 4 sections and the duration was 1 hour and 50 minutes. All sections are mandatory and you can only attempt one section at a time i.e. you can not switch between the sections. Each section has its time limit.
- Programming ( 30 minutes ): One easy leetcode level coding problem and one medium leetcode level coding problem. In my test, one question was from the graph (basic DFS) and the other was from Dynamic Programming. I was unable to solve the DP question.
- Quantitative Aptitude ( 45 minutes ): 11 Multiple choice questions related to concepts of mathematics. There were topics like probability, integration, trigonometry, number theory, set theory, etc. 4–5 problems were easy and 3–4 were hard. I was able to solve 9 questions in this section.
- Subjective ( 15 minutes ): Two paragraph-based behavioral subjective questions. There was a 200-word limit for each question. It helps to always give examples to explain the points you’re making in these types of questions.
- Computer Science Fundamentals ( 20 minutes): 7 Multiple choice questions on CS fundamentals. 2 questions were from the operating system (paging and scheduling), 1 question each from time complexity, BFS traversal, infix conversion, heap and java based oops question. The questions were straightforward forward and I was able to solve 6 questions within 10 minutes. Keep your basic DSA knowledge strong and this part will be easy for you.
Tips: Considering CGPA as a section, you had to clear the cutoff in at least three sections to be eligible for shortlisting. This means that if you have a very good CGPA, then clearing 2 sections in the test would also be enough. Also don’t skip the subjective questions, and try to mark only the questions you’re sure about to avoid any negative marking.
Technical interview 1: After clearing previous rounds I was called for an interview. I was confident as I had already given interviews for companies like JPMC and Walmart.
- I was called for a zoom meeting at 10 in the morning with about 90 other candidates. There’s no fixed time for your interviews.
- You can be taken to the breakout room anytime. So, you need to be in front of your laptop almost always, which is very exhausting. After a long wait of about 3 hours, I was called into a breakout room with one interviewer. He asked for id proof and other credentials.
- Then after the introduction, he asked me to open the code pair link provided earlier. The question popped on the screen.
- The question asked was similar to https://leetcode.com/problems/word-search/
- I was given ample time to understand the problem statement and then he asked about what I understood of the question . After explaining this, he asked about my approach. I had 2 approaches for this question (DFS-based and Backtracking) .
- He asked about the basics of backtracking and then I was asked to write a pseudocode for the same.
- While writing code, I was quite interactive with the interviewer. I tried to explain even the minor details and edge cases and how my code covers those cases.
- It took me around 15 minutes to code the whole solution. Then I dry-run the code with the provided test cases.
- After all this, I discussed the time complexity of my solution.
- I provided him with the expected solution within the given time and the interviewer seemed very satisfied with my performance and concluded the interview by asking if there was anything I wanted to ask him.
Technical interview 2: After waiting for 1 hour, I was called for 2nd interview. The interviewer started by introducing himself (He vas the VP at GS) and then asked me to do the same.
- Then he asked about my projects. As I had a real-world project, so I explained to him the need and motivation behind developing the same. He was quite impressed with the motto of the project. The project was developed using flutter and firebase was used as a database. I was asked various questions like why flutter, why firebase, and the difference between flutter and dart.
- Then he asked about the authentication and how I have implemented various functionalities. Then there was a discussion on databases ( Majorly SQL Vs NoSQL) and also cloud computing.
- Then I explained my 2nd project which was a website (PHP based).
- After this, we switched to a code pair link. I couldn’t exactly remember the question but it was based on cumulative sum and binary search in a 2d array. I misunderstood the question and was told that I could solve this in O(N²) time and started coding. While writing the code I understood the correct meaning of the question and explained the correct approach which was of order O(N⁴).
- Then he discussed a few points and informed us that we were running out of time and no need to code the solution now and ended the meeting.
- The optimal solution to this question was in O(n² log n) but I started with a brute force approach which is of O(N²) and then switched to an approach with time complexity of O(N⁴)
Tips to Remember :
- Don’t worry if you got stuck somewhere, interviewers were very friendly and will help you if you keep brainstorming.
- I explained every line of my code along with time and space complexity.
- I always gave a brute force approach first and then optimized it to an efficient approach.
- Having a crystal-clear understanding of the question asked is of prime importance. Ask your interviewer to explain the question again if needed.
- Make sure you only put those things on your resume that you can explain very clearly. Just keeping 2–3 good projects are enough instead of mentioning many small projects.
- Always read the instructions carefully. Beware of negative markings