Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs was one of the interviews where I realized pretty quickly that preparing only standard DSA questions would not be enough. The process tested coding, CS fundamentals, problem-solving, and how well I could explain the projects on my resume. The online assessment was divided into multiple sections. Apart from coding, there were questions on aptitude, probability, permutations and combinations, along with CS fundamentals and a few subjective questions. The coding section had easy-to-medium problems, followed by a separate advanced coding problem. I cleared the assessment and was called for the interviews. My first interview started with my introduction and a detailed discussion about one of my projects. The interviewer went deeper than I expected, asking about design decisions and why I had selected particular technologies. We then moved to DSA. One of the questions was to remove strings that were anagrams of an earlier string. I explained the hashing-based approach and its complexity before coding it. The second round felt more like a problem-solving session. I was asked to check whether a string could be converted into a palindrome by removing exactly K characters. I started with recursion and then discussed the resulting complexity. The interviewer also changed the conditions during the discussion to see how I would adapt the solution. Another problem involved finding a pair whose sum was closest to a target, followed by variations involving the difference between elements. There were also questions around OOP, DBMS, and basic operating-system concepts. One of the discussions involved comparing SQL and NoSQL databases and understanding MongoDB's data model. The final interaction was comparatively relaxed, with questions about my interests, projects, and why I wanted to work at Goldman Sachs. After completing the interviews, I received the confirmation that I had been selected for the internship.