Goldman Sachs Analyst Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Test
Experience: 3 sections in quant, coding and ML
Duration: 2 hours 15 minutes
Total Questions: 30

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: I had 4 rounds of prob puzzles.
Each round had
Tips: Think out aloud. The interviewer will fix you when you go wrong.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: I did not do this round properly. I missed some very easy questions.

Skills: Probabiity
College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Test
Experience: Each section had 10 questions, 100 marks, with 45min duration for each. It consisted of Multiple Choice (+10, -3), Fill in the Blanks type(+10,0), and a coding question (+20).
Platform was HackerRank. You had to do good in atleast 2 sections
Tips: CS: DSA, Graph Theory, Time Complexity
Quant: Probability, Probability, Probability.
Machine Learning: Ensemble Methods, Bagging, Boosting, Decision Trees, etc. You need to know the concepts. No mathematical formulation or equations were asked
Duration: 1 hour 35 minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: First of all, the GS panelists were really nice, kind and helpful. They provide with several hints, given you are sincere and have that attitude of solving the problem.
There were 6 technical rounds in all, with different teams of GS.
3 rounds consisted of questions from Probability, Expectation, Markov process, etc.
1 round for algorithm puzzles.
1 round for strategy puzzles.
1 round for Finance (discussed on derivatives, call options, etc.)
Tips: Be thorough with the basics. Don't beat around the bush. Given a problem, discuss the solution first and then go about doing it.

Skills: Probability And Statistics, Algorithm, Knowledge Of Your Resume Points, Aptitude, Finance Basics
College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Puzzles, probability questions
Tips: Brush up on probability problems

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Questions on resume, especially interns.
Tips: Know your resume inside out.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Puzzles, algorithm questions
Tips: Learn algorithms from geeksforgeeks

Round: Technical + HR Interview
Tips: Be familiar with your resume, prepare for generic HR questions

Skills: Problem Solving Skills, Algorithm, Probability And Statistics, Knowledge Of Your Resume Points
College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Resume Shortlist
Tips: Know all your course projects well.

Round: Test
Experience: Solved mostly quant section.
Tips: Solving at least one of the sections well will suffice.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Wasn't able to answer some fully .
Tips: Know all technical details of your course projects .

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: Had to re-think again of all the possibilities .
Tips: Think of all possible ways . do not hurry towards the answer . approach to the problem is mainly what they see

General Tips: Know everything you wrote in the resume . do not hurry towards an answer . don't be biased in yhinking
Skills: Probabiity
Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Madras
Motivation: The profile of the company

Round: Test
Experience: There were 30 questions divided into 3 sections(Computer Science fundamentals, Mathematics and Machine learning) each containing 10 questions. Each question was of 3 points with the negative marking of 1 mark. 60 students were shortlisted from this round.

2nd paper consisted of 3 questions in each section. Each section was of 30 points with each question of different weightage.
Tips: Time is more that sufficient. Focus on only one section but try to excel in that

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Interviewers are very friendly and helped my if I got stuck anywhere

General Tips: Try to cover geeks for geeks as much as you can. It will help you a lot
Skills: Basics Of Machine Learning, Design Engineering, Probabiity, Algorithmic Approach To Problem Solving
College Name: IIT Kharagpur
Motivation: Highly relevant work to my interests

Round: Test
Experience: The test had 2 parts. 1)Objective (90 mins) 2) Subjective (90 mins). Both the paper were divided into 3 sections 1) Computer Science 2)Math & 3)Data Science .

To get shortlisted you need to do well on only one of the section.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Probability Interview and discussion on projects that I have worked upon on in the institute.

Probability questions were given a quadratic equation whose coefficients are RVs , what is the probability that the roots are real.

College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Test
Experience: 30 OBJECTIVE QUESTION 90 MIN . QUESTION LEVEL WAS TOUGH. GS Takes their tests very seriously
Tips: Do the section first which are you most famaliar with. They hire on section wise performance.


Skill Tips: Be calm . Approach is important than answer.

Skills: Analytical Skills, Coding Skills, Maths(esp Probability), Algorithm Analysis, Probabiity
College Name: IIT Guwahati

Round: Test
Experience: The test was very well designed with seemingly easy questions but which required deep understanding of fundamentals. I really enjoyed the quantitative part and the data analytics part.
Tips: I would suggest that you focus on the parts that you are good at . It is not necessary to do well in every part. So focus on your strengths.
Duration: 90 minutes
Total Questions: 30

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: I initially suggested a brute force method to solve this problem , which was correct but the interviewer asked for a smarter way to solve it using permutations. I initially struggled but i finally got the right answer.
Tips: Walk the interviewer through what you are thinking and think of the smartest way to solve it.

Skills: Problem solving abilities
Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Madras

Round: Test
Experience: You are not supposed to know everything. If you do exceptionally well in one or two sections in each paper and even leave third section completely (which I did) then you are through. Third section was mainly for CSE guys. In subjective part Algorithm section had 5 questions and maths section had 4 questions. Questions in maths section were based on probability, linear algebra, differential equation and discrete maths. Randomized algorithm course taught by Baswana sir was really helpful in doing probability questions. Questions were doable if you knew the concepts well. For algorithms part concepts taught in basic Data structure and algorithm course were enough. Questions were based on linked list, binary tree, stack, queue, sorting, Dijkstra etc.
Duration: 75 minutes minutes

Round: Test
Experience: Each section in objective paper had 10 questions and there was negative marking. On the basis of test they selected 75 candidates.
Duration: 75 minutes minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: I was asked about my thesis 3-4 times as I had done some good work in Thesis and had submitted 2 paper based on it. Also as my work was on (Data Compression) Information theory which involves a lot probability and the problems I worked on was of theoretical nature, so I was able to relate it with them. So it was one of my plus point. They asked some questions from topics related to my thesis.

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: They asked some algorithmic puzzles and some probability and other maths puzzles. At no point of time I was asked to write the code (but it totally depends on the team they are looking you for) I just had to tell them how to solve the problem.
Tips: Don’t hurry in interview and take your time to solve the problem. Also at every point keep interviewer engaged and keep telling him in which direction you are proceeding and also why you are doing this.

General Tips: Start preparing from summer itself. If you are targeting quant companies I will advise you start preparing even before for probability and puzzles as you can’t become good in these things overnight. I am not saying you to give 1 -2 hour daily for puzzles rather I will advise you to do just 1-2 puzzles whenever you have time and enjoy it.

Don’t leave everything for the last time you will for sure run short of time so finish the important tasks first. Make goals which are practically achievable.

Skill Tips: Focus on your Study.. Revise the subject that you have studied at the time of Interview
Skills: Technical Skills
College Name: IIT Kanpur

Round: Test
Experience: The initial round is a written round consisting of
1. Around about 30 aptitude questions,
2. 15-20 questions based on error finding, writing outputs and debugging a given C/C++ code,
3. Two coding complete questions.
4. A short essay writing type subjective question.
The essay/ subjective question could be something like this:
a. If you meet Goldman Sacks CEO in an elevator, what will be your conversation to impress him/her.Remember you are in an elevator.
b. Why should Goldman Sachs hire you and not someone else ?The time given for all this is around about 25-30 mins. So be fast on your feets and don't be rusty.
Tips: The time given for all this is around about 25-30 mins. So be fast on your feets and don't be rusty
Duration: 30 minutes
Total Questions: 50

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: The second round is the GD round. The topic is not very simple, but not very difficult either. Basically it tests that you have the ability to think on your feet. My topic was something like this:Say you are trapped in a deserted island where you are all by your own. You have been given a certain set of items but you can carry only some of them or else the weight will bog you down. You need to prioritize these items in the order of their needs for you to survive.In my case, the fact that I had seen Tom Hank's Cast Away proved to be quite useful as you can easily draw parallels between the two situations.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: This is followed by a series of interviews which may range from 2 to 4 and sometimes even more.Remember Goldman Sachs folks are very thorough with your resume and they listen very closely to everything you say. So be very clear about what you have to say and what not.Best of luck guys like emoticon

College Name: BITS MESRA