Barclays Interview Experience for SDE Intern | On-Campus 2023

Barclays visited the IIT Guwahati campus in November 2022 to hire interns for the 2023 summer internship for the SDE role.

Eligibility criteria 

• Departments eligible: CSE, MNC, EEE, ECE (minor in CSE, Mathematics, ECE).
• CPI cut-off: above 6
• Backlogs: No backlogs
• Location: Pune/Chennai

Round 1 (Behavioral Online Assessment): The first round was the behavioral round, which was of around a 1-hour duration. It comprised around 150 objective-type behavioral questions, i.e., how a person would behave in a particular situation.

Round 2 (Online Technical Assessment): They sent the link for the OA technical round based on the performance of the behavioral round. 

• This round basically consisted of two coding questions, and the time given was 1 hour and 30 minutes. 
• The first question was a standard easy-to-moderate question, but the constraints were very rigid. 
• So, basically, they demanded a very optimized solution (in terms of space and time). I was able to do it in around half an hour.
•  The question was somewhat similar to the below question: GFG Practice – Edit Distance
• The second question was a moderate-to-hard question based on DFS and DSU in graphs. I passed around 6/12 test cases for that particular question. 
• The question was somewhat similar and harder than the question below: Minimum cost to connect all cities

Based on the performance of this round 24 students were shortlisted for the interview rounds.

Round 3 Technical Interview Round: Interviews were held on December 7, 2022, at approximately 8 a.m in the morning. It was conducted on the Microsoft Teams platform. I was among the first few candidates to be interviewed. Interviews are only conducted by VPs at Barclays. So, don’t write anything that you don’t know on your resume. They’ll catch you in a blink of an eye. You should be able to recall everything you wrote on your resume.

The interviewer was on time, and she had my resume. 

• She asked me the typical “tell me something about yourself” question like every other interviewer.
• I told her about my background and gave her a nice intro of mine in which I mentioned that I am from Biosciences and Bioengineering (a minor in ECE), after which she shot a question at me, “If you’re from Biosciences and Bioengineering, 
• Why did you apply for Barclays?” and I answered it quite nicely, for which she was quite impressed.

Then, she started with the following:

Project: A proper explanation, right from the scratch and in detail. She did a lot of cross-questioning in between.

• Then, she asked me to open an online IDE and asked me to share my screen. She gave me a standard question to solve. The question was somewhat similar to Finding a triplet that sums to a given value. I solved it. 
• Then she asked me about DBMS. She asked me to implement a few SQL queries, and I was able to do so.
• She then proceeded to OOPS. She asked me about inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism—all three. 
• She asked me to open an online IDE and implement operator overloading, and I did it comfortably. 

This interview took around 45–50 minutes. 

After the interviews were over, 11 people were shortlisted for the next round of interviews. The next round was held after half an hour. 

Note:

• Barclays is a firm that emphasizes more CS fundamentals than DSA. 
• So be prepared with OOPs, networking, DBMS, and OS. 
• Also, make sure you explain the project completely so that the interviewer doesn’t have any doubts.
• Be thorough and honest with whatever you put on your resume. 
• You should know about everything that you wrote in your resume.

Round 4: Behavioral and HR: In this interview, the interviewer wanted me to work on a problem statement in which he gave me different scenarios and wanted to know how I would behave in those scenarios. 

• Then he asked me standard HR questions. He laid huge stress on this question and the way I answered him, which determined their values. 
• You MUST be familiar with the famous Barclays values: RISES. 
• They are asked in every Barclays interview. Please read through Barclays RISES and understand what each of its values truly means.

 The interview lasted for 25–30 minutes.

Results: On the same day, after 3–4 hours of interviews, the results were declared, and 7 people were selected for the summer internship, and I was one of them.

Tips:

• My advice for Barclays would be: Have a good technical background along with a good personality. 
• They want a smart, knowledgeable geek who can also lead in their company. 
• Make sure you’re well versed in everything you’ve mentioned in your resume—your projects, and your skills. 
• Have a strong understanding of DSA, OOPs, DBMS networking, and operating systems. 
• One thing you HAVE to do is check out “geeks for geeks” articles for every company you work for; it’s a lifesaver!

  All the best for your interviews!