I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Capital One in Feb 2023
Interview
The interview process at CO is a 3 step process. 1. First step is a discussion with HR. 2. Second step is a coding challenge from CodeSignal 3. Third step is a panel interview with 5 interviewers regarding various topics Discussion with HR Right off the bat I didn't like the HR person I spoke to but I continued with the interview process regardless. He sounded totally disinterested in the hiring process and was just doing it as a job. I could make out he didn't care if the right candidate was being hired or in being a candidate advocate. This call has nothing much to do with your experience but just going through the second and third steps. Coding Challenge I was able to pass the coding challenge with some prep. There are 4 questions timed at 70 mins and is nothing like the preparatory challenge they provided which are 2 hard questions timed at 5 hours. The 4 questions range from easy to hard and can be completed in the allotted time. I was able to complete 3 of the 4. Panel Interview 3 of the 5 interviewers were nice and genuinely interested in what I had to say. Those 3 interviews went well and were the system design and the two behavioral interviews. The 4th interviewer who was a Sr Director didn't have much interest in the interview. He kept looking out his window and didn't pay much attention to what I had to say. This was the case study round and the weird thing is despite your programming language preference, they only have two choices - Python and Java. My first preference was JS which was not an option. My second preference was Java but the interviewer insisted I do the case study in Python because he was more comfortable with Python. Anyways, Python is actually pretty straightforward and I was able to do the round well. But the fact that he was so disinterested left doubts in my mind. The 5th interviewer was a nice person and came with a frontend coding challenge to build an app in React. I was explicitly told by the recruiter (as verified in my notes) that this was going to be an algorithmic coding challenge. Obviously, there was a mismatch and I wasn't prepared to code in React. I repeatedly told the interviewer of this mismatch and though he heard what I had to say, he never acknowledged the fact that this could be a mistake on the part of CO and the recruiter. He pressed on saying that let's talk through it and there's no need to write the code. I was able to talk through it but he clearly wasn't satisfied and kept insisting how managers at CO must know how to code. This despite me repeatedly reminding him that I had cleared the first round coding challenge. That concluded the panel interview and I emailed the recruiter thanking him for arranging the interviews and also letting him know of the mismatch regarding the coding challenge interview. Didn't hear back. Followed up a second time offering to redo the round or to do a take home challenge. Didn't hear back. After a week, I get the automated response that they weren't moving ahead with my candidacy. The recruiter completely lacked communication skills and empathy and I blame him squarely for the poor experience with the interview process and subsequent outcome.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. System design 2. Coding challenge - build an app in React 3. Case study; read and correct some code 4. Behavioral questions
I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Capital One in Jan 2023
Interview
They call it a three step process, but it's closer to 8+. 1. Talk to the recruiter 2. Code screen 3. Interview "Power Day" 3a. Behavioral interview 3b. Behavioral interview 2 3c. Case interview (details below) 3d. Tech interview - system design 3e. Tech interview - coding 4. Team fit interview (they insist this isn't an interview but I had to meet three hiring managers before getting an offer, so I would absolutely call this an interview)
Interview questions [6]
Question 1
Code Screen: I won't put the actual questions here, but the code screen was 4 algorithm (LeetCode style) questions that you have to implement over the course of an hour. I don't think you have to finish the whole thing to pass, but the first two are very simple and should only take a moderate coder 15-20 minutes at most. The third one was also a simple solution but took a little longer to implement. The fourth question was the only one that had constraints that prevented me from using the simplest brute force solution.
Behavioral interviews: Each of these consist of three standard "describe a time where you..." manager questions. The caveat here is that you have to answer in the SAR format (Situation, Action, Result). They tell you this up front and they mean it. Stick to the script and say: The situation was (...) My actions were (...) The results were (...) If you deviate from that, your interviewer will get lost very quickly.
Case interview: I expect these vary depending on your interviewer, but mine was a simple business case and they gave me a code snippet that was meant to be a partial solution to that business case. The interviewer and I discussed what the code was currently doing, if it solved the use case, and what changes we might make to improve it (and also actually making some changes to the code). So it was a combination of code comprehension, code editing, understanding the use case, and critical thinking.
System design: I thought this was a pretty standard system design question. Draw out your architecture, say what kind of technologies you'll use and why, describe some of the interactions between your components.
Team fit interview: This was my biggest gripe with the whole process. No one in the above sections is actually on or related to the team you'll be interviewing for. If you pass all of those, you then talk to a potential hiring manager and they decide if you're a fit for the role. As I said above, I still very much consider this part of the interview process because hiring managers can and will pass on you for little things or things out of your control -- e.g. my first one passed on me because I admitted Java/Spring isn't my preferred tech stack; my second one passed on me because they were actually looking for a tech lead and not a manager; my third apparently liked me enough and I did get an offer. If that didn't happen, I'm sure I could have eventually run out of potential hiring managers.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Capital One in Feb 2023
Interview
TL;DR - For those reading the reviews and thinking all of the engineering manager candidates are just being salty like I did, they're not. This test has to be the worst indicator of potential success that I have ever seen. I wouldn't even consider this a good test for engineers. The only thing this test illustrates is who has only ever solved HackerRank problems and never built anything real I only went a few steps into the process before I pulled my application. This is not how you find good software engineers or managers. The process that I went through consisted of two steps: 1) Recruiter screen 2) Online test consisting of four problems The online test is quite literally four questions where you parse integer arrays. The wording of the questions is incredibly confusing, by far the worst I've ever seen. In addition, you're not allowed outside resources outside of the Microsoft docs, so if you're a little rusty on some of the more nuanced features of arrays (because for some reason they only test your ability to parse integer arrays), you're SOL because you can't look it up like you would for any real world problems. I managed to solve all four problems, passing all test cases and was invited for the next round of interviews. I declined and pulled my application because if you want to find great engineers or managers, asking them to solve array parsing problems (especially in C# which has much more expressive data structures) is the worst way I can possibly think to do it. Besides, I was applying to be an engineering manager. Where are the questions around how you lead and motivate people, track growth and performance and determine how to efficiently run a team? An engineering manager, at least at Capital One as it was described to me, is not a hands on keyboard role, so why the heck are you asking potential candidates to solve HackerRank puzzles and nothing else?
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given two integer arrays determine what values of a[i]+b[j] are equal to a value of X based on the input from a third multi-dimensional array (who's format wasn't clearly explained in the problem description and was not obvious). Honestly, the hardest part of these problems is determining exactly what they want you to do because they are horribly written. It's like they were written by someone in a foreign language who has never spoken to another person, then passed through Google Translate before being pasted in the problem description.