My Goldman Sachs Internship Selection Process ( EHCP 2021)

9 min readMay 1, 2021

I recently received an internship offer for summer 2021 at Goldman Sachs. This blog will take you through the whole process right from my preparation strategies, and my experience with the whole process.

How I applied?

I got a notification through my college cell regarding the Engineering Campus Hiring Programme that Goldman Sachs conducts every year. I registered for the same through their official portal around the first week of February. The programme is open to all final and pre-final year students , so anyone can apply through their official portal regardless of a college notification.

The Process

There are numerous rounds in the hiring process. Here is a detailed explanation of each round that I was evaluated on:

1. Online Aptitude Round

After patiently waiting for close to 2 weeks, I received a mail to attempt an online aptitude round scheduled for 20th February. Aptitude rounds in general are taken for granted by many students, However, I would say the GS aptitude round was very tricky. It was a 90 min test conducted on HackerRank, with 6 sections as follows:

Numerical Computations — 8 questions
Numerical Reasoning -12 questions
Comprehension — 10 questions
Abstract Reasoning — 12 questions
Diagrammatic Reasoning — 12 questions
Logical Reasoning — 12 questions

The scoring was +5 for the correct answer and -2 for an incorrect answer. This round was challenging as one would have to be very careful about making smart choices as to which section to attempt and in which order. Another important point to remember is to stay calm during these tests. There was a technical error in one of the sections, due to which many applicants couldn’t attempt the whole section. This was reported to the GS team, and they reached out to us through mails stating that the glitch has been taken into consideration and a fair evaluation will be conducted keeping the same in mind. As long as the team is kept informed of any glitches, there is nothing to worry about.

I personally attempted around 35–40 questions and was not sure if I would qualify for the next round.

Tip: Before giving any online hiring tests, I would highly suggest going through the test pattern and sample questions. This will give you an edge because you will know what kind of questions will be asked and how to approach such questions. The GS sample questions and patterns I found on youtube as well as their sample test link helped me in attempting more questions.

2. Online Technical Round

I received a mail on 10th march stating that I had cleared the aptitude round and was invited to attempt the technical online round on 20th March, which later got postponed to 21st March. This round was again conducted on Hackerrank, for 135 minutes. The sections were as follows:

Programming ( 2 questions- 30 minutes ) — Easy and Medium Programming questions. My test consisted of 1 array-based and 1 tree-based question.
• Quantitative Aptitude (8 MCQ’s - 25 minutes)— Multiple choice questions related to mathematics. Questions around statistics and probability were asked.
• Computer Science(7 MCQ’s - 20minutes )— Multiple choice questions related to concepts of Computer Science. My paper consisted of questions on stacks, queues, Banker’s algorithm & Code output
• Advanced Programming (1 question - 45 minutes)— A hard programming question on advanced data. This question was DP/Graph-based.
• Tell Us About Your Self(2 questions - 15 minutes) — subjective questions to understand your thought process. Example: You are working on a project and one of your teammates stops working. What would you do in such a situation?

Overall, I would say that this round was not very difficult. I was able to attempt most of the CS fundamental MCQs, close to 2 coding questions, both the essay-type questions and a few quantitative MCQs.

Tip: Apart from these 5 sections, there is a CGPA section. To clear this round 3/6 sections were to be passed. So a good CGPA meant, you are required to clear only 2 more sections which should not be a problem.

3. First Interview round

On 31st March, I received a mail stating that I had cleared the technical assessments and the interviews will be scheduled anywhere between 5th-9th April. I was super excited but also nervous since I had less than a week to revise for the interview rounds. A few days later I was informed that my interviews were scheduled for 7th April.

Tip: All the interviews will be conducted on the same day for the candidiate. This meant that every candidate needed to be available right from 10AM upto the time all their interviews were completed. This can be quite exhausting, so definitely get a good amount of sleep the previous night and stay hydrated and motivated on the day of your interview.

The interview process was conducted on Zoom along with Hackerrank Codepair links. There were close to 90 other applicants on the zoom call on the same day as me. This differed on each day, some days had just 50 students while the other days had many more.

My first interview began at around 11 AM. The interviewer was friendly and introduced himself first and shared his GS journey with me. This was followed by my introduction and then a discussion on my resume. I was asked about teamwork in one of the projects, which I explained to the interviewer in detail. We moved on to the HackerRank codepair platform where he asked me a simple question: Find the first non-repeating character in a string. I was able to solve this question easily and went ahead to write a pseudocode for the same. The interviewer then changed the question a little: Find the third non-repeating character in a string. Again, I was able to solve this and implement it in the pseudocode. He then asked me an array question based on some queries. I explained my logic to him, but he told me It wouldn’t work in all cases. I then tried using maps to solve this question and explained that logic to him. I wasn't asked to write the pseudocode as it had been almost 30–40 minutes since the interview began. Since I had mentioned using a map, I was asked some questions based on maps. I was also asked the time and space complexity of my pseudocode. With this, my first interview came to an end and the interviewer asked me if I had any questions for him. I had a small discussion with him about his time at GS and what an intern could expect from the firm.

4. Second Interview round

After my first interview round ended, we were sent to a different breakout room and had to wait until all other candidates finished their first rounds and students could be shortlisted for the next round of interviews. The first round was an elimination round, but only a small number of students were eliminated. This period was honestly very long. I finished my first round around 12PM and my second round started at around 4 PM.

My second interview was taken by one of the Vice President at Goldman Sachs. I definitely felt intimidated when he introduced himself and told me that he’d been working in Goldman Sachs for 10+ years. But, as the interview progressed, I felt at ease because he was friendly as well as approachable. He started off by asking me to introduce myself and then asked me why I moved to another city to pursue my B.Tech. Then we had a long discussion on the pros and cons of living away from home and my learning through the same. I was asked few more behavioral questions and then we moved on to the codepair platform where he asked me 1 recursion-based question: Find all combinations of sum equal to k. Since I was not very confident with recursion, I first took some time to go through some test cases and understand the question better, and then explained my logic to the interviewer. I could not complete writing the pseudocode due to time constraints, and we moved on to solve a puzzle. The puzzle was not very tricky, but it was not one that I had solved before. I took some time to analyze it and tried to come up with an answer which I later realized was wrong but close to the correct answer. With this, my second interview ended, and was sent back to the break-out room.

Tips: There are a few things that I follow while sitting for any hiring process that I’ll be sharing here. These might sound very minute but trust me these small things together can make a big impact on your profile:
1) Always dress formally for interviews.
2) Create a simple yet high-impact resume. Add details that are relevant to any job profile in general. Also, be honest with your skill set on the resume. Use keywords that will draw attention and highlight your work on the resume.
3) Be very verbal about your thought process during an interview. For example, run through each line of your pseudocode explaining what it does, or explain the brute force approach that comes to your mind when you understood the question and then build on it to reach an optimized solution. This will let the interviewer know how you approach a question and how you solve it.
4) It is okay to be nervous during an interview! You are not expected to know the solutions to all the questions asked to you . Feel free to be honest about not knowing a particular topic. Try to come up with a solution and make sure you communicate your approach well. The approach matters just as much as the final solution!
5) Read about the company and its values before the interview. Prepare a few question to ask the interviewer before hand. It shows your interest towards the position and the company.

5. Third Interview Round

After the second round ended, most of us waited in the breakout rooms up to 9 PM (yes! most of us exhausted from sitting in front of the screen for almost 12 hours). We were all waiting for the second round of interviews to end so that applicants could be shortlisted for the third round. However, only 5–10 students were called for the third round of interviews and the rest of us were informed that our interview process had come to an end and we would receive the results in about 2 weeks. Most of us assumed that because we hadn’t been called for the third round, it meant that we were eliminated from the 2nd round of interviews. However, the GS team made it clear to us that, it wasn't the case. All of us had an equal chance of receiving an offer.

With this, the day came to an end and all of us signed off hoping for the best.

Tip: GS wanted to analyze the problem-solving skills of the candidates very well. I had friends who were asked only puzzles in their second round of interviews, while some had extensive discussions on their resumes. Every interviewer has a different approach and one shouldn't be disheartened just because they were asked something less extensive than others. Also, sometimes a candidate can have an extra round of interview so that he/she can be analyzed more.This does not necesaarily mean that he/she was a better fit to the profile than you. It simply means that the interviewer needs some more interaction to evaluate their performance.

Finally, the results!

After the interviews ended, I wasn't very confident about landing an offer. However, I tried to stay optimistic, and finally, on 16th April I received an offer to join Goldman Sachs as an intern for summer 2021. I was ecstatic about receiving the offer and I look forward to having an amazing learning experience at Goldman Sachs.

My preparation:
1)Since the lockdown began in 2020, I started studying Data structures and algorithms religiously. I used recources from gfg, leetcode , youtube & college notes. No special resources are required!
2) On days that I felt I didn't want to code, I brushed up on theory subjects like OOPS , OS,etc.
3)I updated my resume and LinkedIn profile so that only relevant information was being conveyed.
4) Lastly, I worked on my communication skills. Questions like tell me about yourself , or where do you see yourself in 5 years are very common. No harm in preparing for these before hand! It gives you time to introspect and research and come up with a impactful answer.

Feel free to reach out on my Linkedin Handle for any doubts and I’d be happy to help!

Hope this blog was helpful and provided a detailed insight into the Goldman Sachs hiring process.