Goldman sachs || Analyst || Rejected

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goldman sachs
analyst2.5 yearsRejected
August 24, 202429 reads

Summary

I applied for an Analyst role at Goldman Sachs and completed four rounds of interviews including an OA, a Coderpad round, and two Superday interviews focusing on data structures and software engineering practices. Unfortunately, I was rejected, likely due to a couple of cross-questions in the final round.

Full Experience

I recently applied for an Analyst role at Goldman Sachs through their career portal. I have over 2.5 years of experience at a product-based finance MNC.

OA Round: Hackerrank

This round consisted of two easy to medium level questions on the Hackerrank platform. I was given 2 hours but managed to solve both questions efficiently within 30 minutes.

First Round: Coderpad

This was a one-hour round. It began with an introduction, and then I was asked two coding questions. One was a variation of Pascal's Triangle II, where given a row and column, I needed to return the corresponding number. The second was an "Average Sum" problem: given a list of pairs with name and score, I had to return the average score for each student. This was an easy question, and I noticed it's quite repetitive, as I'd seen it in other interview experiences. Although I had an hour, I coded the most optimized solutions for both questions very quickly, and the interview ended in 30 minutes.

Superday Interviews

Second Round: Data Structures

This was also a one-hour round with a panel of two interviewers. We started with introductions and a deep dive into my current projects. Since my current organization is also fintech, they showed a lot of interest. They then gave me a few coding questions:

For the first two questions, I started with a brute-force approach and then coded the most optimized solutions. For the third question, we ran out of time, so I only discussed the approach, but they seemed convinced.

Third Round: Software Engineering Practice

This was my final one-hour round. It started with introductions and another deep discussion on my projects, again due to my fintech background. I was drawing my current project architecture and explaining it, but they were asking very key questions. Although I answered most cross-questions, I wasn't able to fully convince them on a couple of points.

In the end, they asked one coding question related to aggregation on two levels. I was asked to write clean code in a text file and I successfully coded it, and the interviewer was convinced.

After a few days, I saw on the portal that I was rejected. I tried reaching out via email and phone for feedback, but received no response. I believe my inability to fully convince them on a couple of cross-questions during the last round might have been the reason for my rejection. I feel interviewers should be more flexible in understanding others' projects rather than imposing their own rigid thoughts.

Interview Questions (6)

Q1
Pascal's Triangle II - Specific Element
Data Structures & Algorithms

Given a row index and a column index (0-indexed) for Pascal's Triangle, return the corresponding number at that position. This is a variation of the LeetCode problem.

Q2
Average Score of Students
Data Structures & AlgorithmsEasy

Given a list of pairs, where each pair contains a student's name and their score, return the average score for each unique student.

Q3
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock
Data Structures & Algorithms

You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the i-th day. You want to maximize your profit by choosing a single day to buy one stock and choosing a different day in the future to sell that stock. Return the maximum profit you can achieve. If you cannot achieve any profit, return 0.

Q4
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II
Data Structures & Algorithms

You are given an integer array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the i-th day. On each day, you may decide to buy and/or sell the stock. You can only hold at most one share of the stock at any time. However, you can buy it then immediately sell it on the same day. Find the maximum profit you can achieve.

Q5
Reorganize String
Data Structures & Algorithms

Given a string S, check if the letters can be rearranged so that two characters that are adjacent to each other are not the same. If possible, output any possible result. If not possible, return the empty string.

Q6
Aggregate Client Stock Quantities
Data Structures & Algorithms

Given a list of tuples (clientId, stockId, Quantity), return a map or list of aggregated tuples (clientId, stockId, totalQuantity), where quantities for the same client and stock are summed up.

Example Input:
["simran","hdfc",30,
"xyz","idfc",10,
"xyz","hdfc",20,
"simran","tesla",10,
"simran","hdfc",20,
"xyz","tesla",10]


Example Output:
["simran","hdfc",50],
["simran","tesla",10],
["xyz","idfc",10],
["xyz","hdfc",20],
["xyz","tesla",10]

Preparation Tips

My preparation included practicing common LeetCode patterns and reviewing past interview experiences to identify repetitive questions. I focused on being able to derive optimized solutions from brute-force approaches during the coding rounds.

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