Leetcode Status: 600+ problems, easy: 150+ , Medium: 350+, Hard: 70+
Status: New grad, B.Tech/B.E. in Circuit Branch from Tier-1 (IIT/BITS Pilani)
Position: Development Engineer at Standard Chartered Bank
Location: Chennai/Bangalore
Date: January, 2023
Round-1: Pymetrics Game Assessment
It was based on various games, just watch a video on youtube and you are good to go. Simple games related to aptitude were there. This was an elimination round and you get the link of next round only if you clear this.
Round-2: Valued Behavior Assessment
There were 14 situation based questions and we had to select which one would you prefer more. It was fairly based on the values of SCB. Try to read their values and brand promise before you start this assessment. This was also a rejection round and next round's link was only sent to the selected peeps who cleared this one.
Round-3: Coding Assessment
Now, this was a Hackerrank test and two coding questions were asked. The first one was a DP on matrix problem, something related to find the number of paths from (0, 0) to (n - 1, m - 1). It was a very standard one.
Next question was the deciding factor, it was tricky problem related to DP on Trees and you can find this problem here: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-question/2972137/reverse-edges-standard-chartered-bank-oa/1742335. My approach was right but I used set to store the reverse edges and that gave me TLE on 5 test cases. I was able to pass 9/15 test cases.
Interview Round - 1:
14 students were shortlisted for the interviews and I was one amongst them. The interviewer was a very sweet guy who did not start off by asking my introduction. He started with my recent SDE internship and projects. We had a good discussion on that for 5-10 mins. After that, he asked me some OOPs related basic questions which I was able to answer. He asked me to design a Bike class as well, which I did and he was satisfied with my approach. He asked me some basic questions on OS, various types of OS and difference between them. Then, he started asking me Banking related terms that just blew me off and I was not able to answer any. He saw that I was not comfortable in Banking related things, so he asked me to design Amazon/Flipkart where you can place the orders. Honestly, I had prepared for System Design a bit but it was my first time solving HLD problem in an interview. I gave him a design and he was satisfied with that since, he was not expecting me to come up with such a complex design in a 30 min interview. I had studied Twitter's HLD and that definitely helped me. At the end, I asked him about my feedback and he was overall happy and told me that I will be moving to next round.
Interview Round-2 :
Only 6 students were through to the next round and I was also one of them. The interviewer introduced himself and asked for a brief introduction of mine. This round was about my projects and HR. I had prepared some ready-made answers on some popular HR based questions and he was satisfied.
HR Round:
Only 5 were shortlisted for HR round and I was also one of them. It was just a 5 min round where HR asked about my family background, future aspirations etc.
In the evening, I got a call from my Placement Cell that I have recieved the offer XD.
Note: It is quite important for me to highlight my failures as well. For me, success is almost a failure and I recieved a lots of rejections during my process. I was rejected in OAs of more than 40+ companies in internship season and I got one chance to sit in interviews at FAANG and I bombed it so hard.
Even in placement season, I got chance to interview at various companies like suki.ai, Barclays, Jio, Urban Ladder etc. and I messed up final rounds. But, I never lost hope and kept on grinding leetcode and finally got the offer in these difficult times.
I was never a competitive programmer. I just started learning DSA right before 2 months of my internship season. Competitve programming is definitely not necessary but it is great to clear OAs.
Compensation details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/3041894/Standard-Chartered-or-ChennaiBangalore
Thank you for this wonderful community! Cheers!