Goldman Sachs Interview Experience for FTE | Off-Campus 2020-21

Every year GS conducts the Engineering Campus Hiring Program for the hiring of Engineering graduates and postgraduates all over India for the role of FTEs as well as Interns. I applied for the same through the company’s career portal. Total of 1.5 lakh students applied to this program this year.

Aptitude Test (9th August 2020): This year the pattern was a little different. Initially there was an elaborate aptitude test with no CS or Coding questions whatsoever. The people who could clear this round, would get a month’s time as well as some resources to prepare for the next Technical round. The duration of the test was 105 minutes with +5 marks for every correct answer and -2 for every incorrect for MCQs and the two subjective questions had +10 marks each.

• Numerical Computations with a total of 8 questions
• Numerical Reasoning with a total of 12 questions
• Comprehension with a total of 10 questions
• Logical Reasoning with a total of 12 questions
• Abstract Reasoning with a total of 12 questions
• Diagrammatic Reasoning with a total of 12 questions
• Subjective questions which were 2

I attempted 48-49 MCQ questions and both the subjective ones. Around 2000 students were shortlisted from this round.

Technical Round (26th September 2020): Around two weeks later they announced the results for the Aptitude round. The next step in the process was the technical round. The company gave us a structured syllabus along with pattern of the test and two-sample tests. It had 5 sections with total duration of 2 hours 15 minutes. The section was as follows:

• Coding (30 minutes) – It had two coding questions. One was of 20 marks and one was of 30 marks. They were Medium level coding questions. I solved one fully and one partially.
• Quantitative Aptitude (25 minutes) – It had 8 MCQ questions on topics like Logarithm, Permutation and Combination, Trigonometry, probability, number theory, set theory, algebra, geometry and logical reasoning.
• Computer Science (20 minutes) – It had 7 MCQ questions on Computer Science concepts like OOPs, Operating System, Sorting and searching, graph algorithms, and basic data structures & algorithms.
• Advanced Programming (45 minutes) – It had one coding question which was based on graph algorithms (articulation point). I solved this fully.
• Subjective (15 minutes) – It had two basic subjective HR questions with a 200-word limit on each.

On 4th November, I received a mail for the intimidation of my shortlist for the interview round. 

I had three rounds of Interview and all of them were technical in nature. 

Interview Round 1 (6th November 2020): After a brief introduction, I was asked the following questions :

• Given an array of 3n size. Divide it in triplets such that the sum of all middle elements of each triplet is maximum. Condition: Every triplet will have elements in increasing order only.
• Connect n ropes with minimum cost
• https://leetcode.com/problems/set-matrix-zeroes/description/

Interview Round 2 (6th November 2020): After a discussion on my resume, I was asked the following questions :

1. Reduce the string by removing K consecutive identical characters.
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/description/
3. Longest Increasing Subsequence | DP-3

Interview Round 3 (6th November 2020): After a discussion on the projects I’ve listed in my Resume, I was asked only one question. It took about 35-40 minutes to crack after inputs from the interviewer.

• https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-subarray-sum-with-one-deletion/description/

And this concluded the interviews. There wasn’t any separate HR round and now we were told to wait for the results. Puzzles and previous year questions are very important in GS interviews.

On 10th November I received a mail from the company stating my result as selected for FTE.