At the end of July, a friend referred me for a Capital One SDA position. Then nothing for about a month.
9/5: The recruiter emailed with the OA, valid for one week. The OA wasn't hard but the time was tight — 70 minutes for 15 questions, 14 multiple choice and 1 SQL. The first seven questions used one CSV, the eighth was the SQL question, and the last seven used four more CSVs where you had to merge them yourself based on the question to get the answer. If you're running out of time, make sure to guess on everything and don't leave anything blank — you'll basically pass either way.
9/10: Submitted the OA.
9/11: Got word the OA passed, and scheduled a phone screen with HR for the same day — no technical questions, just salary, location, visa status, that kind of thing. Also scheduled the data challenge to start 9/13.
9/22: Submitted the data challenge — the eternal airline dataset that never changes. There's no standard answer, as long as your reasoning makes sense it's fine. The data cleaning takes some time.
9/24: HR emailed that I passed the data challenge — honestly didn't expect it to be that fast — and went ahead and scheduled Power Day for the following Monday, 9/30.
9/30 Power Day (case - BQ - case - DC)
Round 1 was a case interview, an exact repeat of the "shared workplace" question from this forum. The interviewer was really nice and spoke clearly, and the question matched the writeups here almost exactly, so it went smoothly. I spent the last ten minutes asking the interviewer questions and it wrapped up fine.
Round 2 was behavioral questions, the classic three (accomplishment, failure, help others), with one follow-up after each — what did your manager say in response. I felt like the interviewer was kind of phoning it in. She finished asking in fifteen minutes. Then it turned into small talk, asking if I had any questions for her or about the company, and after forcing conversation for another ten-plus minutes it still ended early.
Round 3 was also a case, another classic repeat question from this forum, the "coder" one. The questions were about the same as what's in the writeups here, except at the end there might have been an open-ended question that wasn't asked very directly (I don't remember exactly how it was phrased). My mind went a bit blank at the time and I didn't catch what was being asked. What it was actually asking was: which is more profitable, 1000 lines of code or 2000 lines of code, and should you take on this client — again, as long as your reasoning makes sense it's fine. Either work overtime or hire more people, and calculate the cost of each. After this round I felt like I hadn't answered well, and figured if I didn't pass it would definitely be because of this round.
Round 4 was the data challenge presentation. I prepared a 20-page slide deck to walk the interviewer through, and there were basically no questions during it. After I finished presenting, they asked to look at the code — how did you implement this part or that part, and why did you handle it that way. After I explained, the interviewer nodded along and said it made sense. I spent the last ten minutes asking the interviewer questions and that wrapped up fine too.
Overall I felt good about every round except the third one. That same evening at 8pm, HR emailed saying congrats, and I finally felt like a weight had been lifted.
Right now I'm in team matching... once I match with a team I'll sign. Landing a full-time job isn't easy these days, and Capital One sponsors visa status too. Wishing everyone good luck with their job search and lots of offers!
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