Goldman Sachs Interview: How to crack, Experience and Questions

Goldman Sachs Interview: How to crack, Experience and Questions

The Goldman Sachs Group is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in New York City. It offers services in investment management, securities, asset management, prime brokerage, and securities underwriting. It also provides investment banking to institutional investors.

GOLDMAN SACHS Offers professionals the opportunity to work with some of the world’s most interesting challenges and influential leaders, while the team-driven culture leverages and rewards individual talents. It would be an honor to be a part of such a company. Here’s an interview experience of a candidate. Let’s have a glimpse of it.

Goldman Sachs Interview: Question 01

My Self: Let’s start with an introduction 

Candidate: 

• Basic intro: Here you can give your basic intro about yourself.

For example – My name is Mr. …….. I am a final year undergraduate student at …… university from the department of ……. and I belong to …….. 

• Internship: Tell about the internships you have been doing in your graduation period. 

For example –  I did my internship at …. year at the University of ….. in ……. and in my 4th year, I did my internship at ……….. 

• Hobbies: Here describe your extra co-curricular skills you love to do.

For example – Apart from academic activities, I love paintings, stage play etc.

Goldman Sachs Interview: Question 02

My Self: How was the Placement test of Goldman Sachs?

Candidate: 

• Sections:

The test has majorly 5 sections and each section had its time limit. It was good.

We had the liberty to switch sections.

Remember the most important is time management. 

• First section:

The first section includes 2 questions of coding like searching & sorting, graphs.

• Second section:

The second section involves Quantitative mathematics and includes 10 questions from probability, statistics, matrix algebra, linear algebra, etc. 

• Third section:

The third section is based on computer science which includes 10 theory questions from computer networks, operating systems, binary search, etc. 

• Fourth section:

The fourth section is the advanced coding section which has a maximum time limit of 45 mins. 

• Fifth section:

The fifth and the last section is subjective questions having 2 questions and a maximum limit of 15 mins which includes a situation-based question showing your leadership skills.

• Addition:

There was also an additional criterion where students above 8 CGPA were shortlisted.

Goldman Sachs Interview: Question 03

My Self: How was the interview experience and the questions asked there?

Starting from the first round.

Candidate: 

• First Round Questions:

Starting with the first round, there were 3 technical interviews.

Questions were easy and intermediate level.

The first question was the introduction itself.

Moving forward there were Resume questions involving your experiences like Machine learning, deep learning, etc.

Also, there were project-based questions.

Then the interviewer moved towards data structure analysis questions which consist of easy and standard Leetcode type questions, also questions similar to the Pascal triangle. 

• Time:  It was almost half an hour round. 

• Choice:  Then they asked a choice to go for Quant or Data structure to go further for the interview round.

            I chose to go for data structures and algorithms (depends).

Goldman Sachs Interview: Question 04

My Self: How was the second round experience, how has the difficulty level increased and how is it different from the first round?

Candidate: 

• Difference:

The first round was completely coding (live) using any IDE.

In the second round coding was not compulsory, the interviewer was interested in algorithms and the idea behind it, including dynamic programming. 

• Second Round Questions:

Situation-based questions were asked as well as standard Leetcode type questions were asked in this round.

I used Graph to explain problems related to data structures.

In this round medium level questions were there.

The last question was on 2-pointers. 

• Word of Advice: Advice which I would like to give to my juniors is to prepare some questions on your own which also represents your resume.

This was also a half an hour round.

Question 05

My Self: How was your experience of your Third technical round and how was it different from the previous two rounds?

Candidate: 

• Third Round Questions:

Third round was approximately one and a half hour long.

Starting from the introduction then questions based on previous interview experiences like on your internships or the project you have worked on and they will grill it hard.

I showed my experience in a presentable way like one of them was on stock trading. Then they moved towards data structures and algorithms and coding has to be done live.

• Interaction:

We should try to give a brute force approach first and then optimize the solution by interacting with the interviewer.

This was also a half an hour round.

Final Question

My Self: Any overall feedback for your juniors.

Candidate:

I would advice to prepare some questions that represents your resume. A person can drive the interview in the way he / she wants , it depends on the reply that you give to your interviewer. Maintain an avg. CGPA to fulfill the criteria. Also, focus more on skills .

My Self: Thank you so much for your word of advice it will surely help the juniors. Also your amazing journey and its experience would motivate the upcoming Candidates.

Candidate : Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to share my experience .