Capital One Senior Business Analyst
When I was prepping for this interview and came looking for interview reports, all I could find were ones for data analyst roles, so I told myself that once I finished mine, I'd write one up to help other people interviewing for business analyst positions.
Let me introduce my background first (though probably nobody's interested) — I have a Business Analytics master's from a top-30 school on the East Coast, did my undergrad in China, and before coming to the US I worked for about a year at a market research firm whose name starts with N.
I don't really remember the timeline anymore. I think I applied to C1 one day basically just as a backup application, and by the time I'd more or less forgotten I'd even applied, the recruiter reached out asking if I had time to chat. I felt like their recruiter doesn't really screen people at all — they just had me walk through my resume, asked about sponsorship and when I could start, and scheduled the next round right there on the spot.
The second round I just finished today — a phone case interview. A classmate of mine had interviewed for this same position before, just at the Chicago office, and we ended up getting the same case. I'd asked him about it beforehand, but honestly it didn't help at all, because there were a ton of numbers with a bunch of zeros that you had to keep calculating back and forth — honestly it was a bit confusing.
Mine was about an NGO raising money for a local after-school program, and I had to figure out what to do. I rambled on about my ideas — I'd interviewed for a similar case at BlackRock before, but that one was about BlackRock planning a fundraising event and what you'd do, which was purely strategy stuff without much math. So I pulled out my old client-schmoozing skills: we could run an event about zzzzz, to increase revenue we could do xxxxx, to cut costs we could do yyyyy — I was getting way too into it and got cut off with a blunt "let's stop here." He then gave me two options: one was hosting a gala, venue capacity 100 people, each person donates $1,000, cost is $100 per person, and renting the venue costs $20,000 (I think); the other was an online marketing campaign that could only reach 1,000 people — I forget how much each person donates, there's a one-time fixed cost, and I forget that number too. This part was actually pretty simple.
Then he asked how to increase net income, and I started rambling again, so he told me not to go too far — basically, assuming we can only invite/reach that many people, what would I do. I said some things about increasing revenue and saving costs, no idea what this guy thought of that.
Then he said that out of the total people, 800 of the 1,000 were low-budget donors who'd give less, gave me roughly how much they'd donate and the cost, and asked how many big donors we'd need, and which of the two options was more profitable. This part was pretty confusing — he never made clear up front whether the 1,000 was the total headcount or what. I got halfway through the math and felt something was off, so I asked him, and he said "don't forget it's 800 out of 1,000." I said, "didn't you say the first option only has capacity for 100 people — can I just apply 80% to that?" He said sure. Honestly I don't think that really makes sense — just because 800 of 1,000 people overall are low-budget doesn't mean 80 of the 100 gala attendees would be — but since he said it was fine, what else could I do.
In the end I worked out the per-person numbers, and online came out higher. He asked which one I'd pick, and I said you can't just look at per-person value, you also have to look at the total amount we can raise — if one option has a lot more potential to grow its audience, you might pick it even with a lower per-person number. He said I was going too far again, then told me to stop overthinking it and just pick one. I picked online because the total was higher. He just said "alright" and didn't tell me whether I was right or wrong.
By the end of the interview I felt like my voice was actually shaking. Then he said that even though we did this case, at C1 they actually don't do this kind of thing day-to-day at all (so why even bother interviewing me with it then — I was furious). He said their day-to-day is helping data scientists build models and stuff like that. Honestly I'm pretty good at rambling on about models and my own projects, but he didn't let me say a single word about any of that — straight into the case, not even a self-introduction. Ugh.
Apparently their next round is another case too, which got me worried for them — what if someone is really good at bullshitting their way through a case but actually knows nothing about models or data? If C1 keeps doing this, won't they eventually be in trouble... okay, I'm going too far again.
Honestly I've got a few other final rounds going on right now too, and I've done case interviews plenty of times, both in China and in the US. In my experience, C1's case style is pretty different from a typical consulting case — they don't really care about your framework or strategy at all, they just hand you a pile of messy numbers and make you calculate, calculate, calculate. This round left me with a nagging feeling that I'm just not a great match for C1. I'm guessing I also didn't meet this guy's expectations, since he called me out twice for rambling too much. My guess is I'm going to get rejected.
Apparently C1 replies fast — a friend of mine got a rejection the day after their interview, so mine might come tomorrow. C1 definitely isn't my only option, and even though today's round left me a bit worried that I'm not a good match for them (whether they even want me is a separate question), I actually really do like this position — the work sounds genuinely interesting to me, and I like all the open locations. Earlier the recruiter asked if I had a location preference, and I've been saying "no preference" just to get a job, but this time with C1 it's actually true — no preference at all. If C1 somehow ends up taking me, my original plan was to settle in and never job-hop again, but that feels pretty far away right now... sigh.
Anyway, I've rambled about a bunch of random stuff. The position I applied to listed Richmond, and it was a Richmond-based recruiter who reached out to me, but the person who interviewed me today was a manager based in Texas. I asked about it today, and apparently which office's manager interviews you doesn't determine which location you'll end up in.
If I remember anything else, I'll add it in the comments.
Discussion
Loading comments…