Bank of New York, Mellon SDE Interview
Name: Indrani Sarkar
1. Which company have you been placed in and what’s the job description?
>> I got an Intern and FullTime offer as a Software Developer, from Bank of New York Mellon. The job location being Pune or Chennai. I have also received an offer from Oracle as an associate consultant for both Intern and Fte.
2. Tell us something about your college life and experiences. Were you a part of any club or society throughout your college life and how did they help you?
>>I really enjoyed my college life. Traveling around Ranchi, trying out every restaurant with my friends on weekends, and thank god for that because I believe K17 batch is the unluckiest of all. Out of 4 years of engineering, we could only enjoy 2.5 years of it. Talking about clubs, I was in dance club, Rotaract and Literary society. However, I left all clubs other than the dance one, since I really liked to dance, to focus more on my studies and to manage time for some serious coding. I was always the person who did all the work only when the deadline was close or if someone really pushed me to do so, but then the years in college has made me overall an organized person and more workaholic than I ever was. I would say enjoy the course of your time in college because these four years of experience and fun will transform you into a mature person for sure in a good way :D.
3. What message would you give to the first and second-year undergraduates on effectively using their time and maintaining their academic as well as social life?
>>I would encourage first and second-year undergrads to really enjoy all the fests and be in the clubs of their choice because being social is an important aspect of being a good employee who knows how to communicate his thoughts. I personally started coding very late, mid of my 5th semester. So I would not tell you to neglect your studies. Take out time every week to improve on your academic skills, it will help you in getting internships and give you a mental time to be ready to face your dream companies. Being early to the race is always better than being in the line at the last minute(I was the one who came in last-minute however would not suggest you follow me on this one :p).
4. Can we apply for other companies also, when already placed in one?
>>See there are different categories of type in our college:
Type 1- Companies in this type (like Infosys) are mass recruiters and if you get placed in this category you cannot sit in type 1 again but can sit in type 2 and dream companies.
Type 2- If you get placed in this category you can only sit again in dream companies afterwards . There are a lot of companies that come in this category.
Type 3(Dream)- Companies include Microsoft etc, if you get placed in this you won’t be able to sit in any other companies on-campus.
Apart from this, you can apply off-campus through Linkedin and there are a lot of other job portals like glassdoor.
5. What are the technical skills that are important for EEE graduates?
>>I guess for EEE students, focus on core subjects maintain a gpa of atleast 7 because Tata Steel is the only company that comes for internship in 3rd year. Other than that for FTE Intel, Addverb, Infineon and some other companies offer special roles for core eee students.
6. How early one should start preparing for internships and how important an internship is? Where did you pursue your internship?
>> Explore your options and take time to choose and do all of these in your 1st year. Once you are in your 2nd year, start working towards your goal, since companies like Microsoft and Goldman Sachs start coming to college at the start of 3rd year. I would not say that internships are that important, but it sure looks good in your resume and will give you some brownie points in a job interview. I personally didn’t attend any interviews for internships except 2 companies, because as I said, I just started with coding in my third year. I did an internship off-campus in a small startup to gain some actual industry-level skills as it would not hurt to gain a little experience side-by-side.
7. How to choose and apply for internships, so that we can make our way in the right company that we want to join?
>> Firstly, I would suggest you make an online presence on Linkedin, Freelancer.com, and internshala, they have a lot of opportunities for you guys. Keep the alerts on only for the companies of your choice so that you only get the important notifications. I would also suggest you go to the jobs page of companies through Linkedin and apply from there so that you don’t miss the deadlines.
8. What was the selection procedure for your company? Can you repeat some of the important questions from each round of your interview?
>>Talking about BNY Mellon I had a total of 5 rounds, First one was the Code Divas Online test of 4hrs with 4 questions, in which 10 people including me had bagged consolation prizes. The second round was a tech round in which one of the questions was to reverse a linked list using stack and there were 2 more questions which I don’t remember, I was also asked a lot about OOP’s and my personal internships and projects. The third round was a code kata round which was a java specific round, in which we were needed to extract the data from a class which was not very hard if you know basic oops concept. The fourth round was also a tech round in which one question was to find the intersection node in a loop formed by two linked lists, then one question was similar to balanced parenthesis in an array of strings and maximum replacements we could do to make it balanced and the last question was to return an array as sorted array in which we needed to remove each string which was an anagram of the earlier string from a given array of strings. The last round was a bar raiser round with normal HR questions, basically, it was just a discussion to find out about my future interests and knowing me personally as a person. About Oracle it was similar, 1 coding test comprising mixed oops, DBMS, java questions. 2nd round was a tech round similar to BNY but a little less technical because role was of an associate consultant. The last round was tech+hr with normal questions on projects and internship experiences and future expectations and all of that.
9. How important is Competitive Programming/Problem Solving skills in interviews for decent IT companies? Do Interviewers seek for developer skills or want DSA knowledge?
>>It is very important for all the coding companies even for mass recruiters like Infosys. You should have sound knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms, because when you enter as an entry-level engineer, you will be expected to give solutions in code and you can only do that if you have a logical thinking approach, which I guess, doing competitive programming will help. And don’t get discouraged, you all have a problem-solving personality already in you. You just need to be able to convert it into code. Talking about developer skills, it almost has an equivalent weightage. Because in the future you would be required to develop or modify apps or provide solutions to make it more efficient and for that, you need to know how they are made in the first place!
10. What is your advice to the juniors who want to get placed in the field you’ve chosen?
>> I would suggest you to pick up any language from C, C++, Python, or Java and start learning data structures and algorithms and practice questions from leetcode, hackkerrank, interview bit or whatever suits you best. Learn about objected oriented programming in the language you choose and make your operating system, DBMS concepts good. Also, a little knowledge of networking systems is beneficial. Dynamic Programming is also an important concept that is asked in most of the big coding companies.At last, I would say practice, practice, and practice. One can’t get good with codes overnight.
11. What was the toughest part while preparing for the interviews?
>>Toughest part for me was to start coding from scratch in my 3rd year. While everyone was getting internship, I was still there figuring out if I wanted to give GATE and go into the EEE world, give CAT and study MBA or start coding with that helplessness in my mind of never being able to code. However, there were a lot of people who were already in the IT field from my branch. Seeing them I realized, if they can why can’t I. I had a decent GPA of 7.59 and believing in myself and respecting my capabilities and limitation paid a lot. Believe me! If I can, You can too!
12. What is the entire interview process for the IT companies which come to BIT Mesra?
>>First-round is always a coding round. It may have a series of OS, DBMS, OOPS concepts, and proper coding questions with testcases to pass. It can also have aptitude questions. After the first round, there may be 1–3 technical rounds depending on the company. The last round is an HR round. I would say never take the HR round lightly because most of the people are rejected in this round only!