Goldman Sachs Analyst Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
Chocolate Distribution Problem
You are given an array/list CHOCOLATES of size 'N', where each element represents the number of chocolates in a packet. Your task is to distribute these chocolates among 'M'...read more
Ans. 
The task is to distribute chocolates among students such that the difference between the largest and smallest number of chocolates is minimized.
• Sort the array of chocolates packets in ascending order.

• Iterate through the array and find the minimum difference between the chocolates packets distributed to students.

• Return the minimum difference as the output.
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Q2. 
Digits Decoding Problem
Ninja has a string of characters from 'A' to 'Z', encoded using their numeric values (A=1, B=2, ..., Z=26). The encoded string is given as a sequence of digits (SEQ). The task is t...read more
Ans. 
The task is to determine the number of possible ways to decode a given sequence of digits back into a string of characters from 'A' to 'Z'.
• Use dynamic programming to solve the problem efficiently.

• Consider different cases like single digit decoding, double digit decoding, and combinations of both.

• Implement a recursive function with memoization to avoid redundant calculations.

• Handle edge cases such as '0' and '00' in the...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This round was organized in day time from 2PM - 3PM
1 coding question and 1 code for debugging was given on the coderpad
Interviewer made it quite engaging with lot of discussions 
Time complexity and space complexity was also discussed in detail

Q1. 
Group Anagrams Together
Given an array/list of strings STR_LIST, group the anagrams together and return each group as a list of strings. Each group must contain strings that are anagrams of each other.
E...read more
Ans. 
Group anagrams together in a list of strings.
• Iterate through the list of strings and sort each string alphabetically.

• Use a hashmap to group anagrams together based on the sorted string as key.

• Return the values of the hashmap as the grouped anagrams.
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Round duration - 50 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round began with detail introduction about me , college and my previous company. Then my projects were discussed in detail . Focus was on company projects, one machine learning based project done during college was also discussed in detail. 
There were 2 interviewers ,cross questioning one after other, but it was still a good conversation. I felt like it would be a rapid fire round due to 2 interviewers but it was really good , no pressure and discussion went quite well. After introduction, I was asked a trie based question and another one I approached using heap and interviewers were satisfied with answer of both solutions

Q1. 
Boyer Moore Algorithm for Pattern Searching
You are given a string text and a string pattern. Your task is to find all occurrences of pattern in the string text and return an array of indexes of all those...read more
Ans. 
Implement Boyer Moore Algorithm to find all occurrences of a pattern in a given text.
• Use Boyer Moore Algorithm to efficiently search for the pattern in the text.

• Iterate through the text and compare the pattern with each substring to find matches.

• Return an array of indexes where the pattern is found, or -1 if no occurrence is found.
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There were 3 coding questions with medium difficulty level.

Good knowledge in logical reasoning and mathematics (especially probability) is required.

2 array based questions

1 array and 1 linked list based questions were asked

Q1. Logical reasoning and some general interview questions were asked.
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Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Test was at 11am, we were gicing the test from home, aand were asked to switch on the web camera, and there was tab monitoring. The test had negative marking as well for MCQ questions +5, -2, so only answer those question which you are absolutely sure of.

Q1. 
Greatest Common Divisor Problem Statement
You are tasked with finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two given numbers 'X' and 'Y'. The GCD is defined as the largest integer that divides both of the...read more
Ans. 
Finding the greatest common divisor (GCD) of two given numbers 'X' and 'Y'.
• Iterate through each test case and calculate GCD using Euclidean algorithm

• Handle edge cases like when one of the numbers is 0

• Output the GCD for each test case
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Interview started at around 10:30am

Q1. 
Circular Tour Problem Statement
Consider a circular path with N petrol pumps. Each pump is numbered from 0 to N-1. Every petrol pump provides:
1. The amount of petrol available at the pump.
2. The distanc...read more
Ans. 
The task is to find the first petrol pump from which a truck can complete a full circle or determine if it's impossible.
• Iterate through each petrol pump and calculate the remaining petrol after reaching the next pump.

• If the remaining petrol is negative at any point, reset the starting pump to the next pump and continue.

• If the total remaining petrol at the end is non-negative, return the index of the starting pump.

• If th...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

Started at around 1pm, Interviewer was a senior person from hiring team

Q1. Can you describe the design of a parking lot system?
Ans. 
A parking lot system is designed to efficiently manage parking spaces and provide convenience to users.
• The design includes entry and exit points for vehicles.

• Parking spaces are clearly marked and organized for easy navigation.

• There may be designated areas for different types of vehicles, such as compact cars or motorcycles.

• The system may incorporate technology like sensors or cameras to monitor occupancy and assist in ...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Final round, with Senior person non-hiring team

2 DSA questions, leetcode medium level. Duration 1 hour

Q1. 1. Trapping rain water 2. Some array problem solved by HashMap
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Q2. 1. Java basics, collection framework 2. Find peak in an array
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Q3. 1. Edit Distance 2. Topological sort
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Q4. 1. N rook placing problem 2. Again Java basics
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Q5. 1. Give array elements randomly with no repeatition 2. Behavioral questions
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