Barclays Interview Experience (On-Campus)

Barclays visited my college for the Role of BA3. Computer (CSE) and Electronics (ECE) students were eligible. The criteria for registration was students should have greater than 60 % marks in the Std X, XII, and 6 CGPA in Engineering, and should have no backlog.

The online test was conducted on 22nd September on the HackerEarth Platform and there were 2 sections, Aptitude Section and Programming Section. The duration of the test was 1 hr 30 mins.

The total test was for 425 marks, we were not informed about the cut-off.

Aptitude Section (Technical): The aptitude section had 30 technical MCQ questions and each question had either 6 or 16 marks assigned to them. The section had questions from  

• Programming languages: C, C++, Java, Python
• Database: MySQL , MongoDB .
• Web Programming: JavaScript, NodeJs.
• Operating System
• Cloud, Azure

Programming Section: This section had 2 programming questions and the questions were different for everybody. My questions were:

1. Value of expression (50 marks)
2. Maximum mismatch (20 marks)

I spent my maximum time doing the MCQs and only my second code was working. It is okay if none of your codes are right, the only requirement is that you meet the company’s cutoff.

The results were declared 3 – 4 days after the day of the test and 14 students were shortlisted for the interview round  

Interview Round (Technical + HR): The interviews were held on the WebEx platform. The interviewer was very chill for me, it felt like I was talking to a friend rather than attending an interview. Asked me questions based on my resume and the work I did in the internships, asked me to explain to him one of my projects and kept on questioning about the technologies and the methodology used in the project. 

Tip: Do not lie in the CV, they ask questions from your CV, so it is important to know everything you’ve written in your CV. 

After a quick introduction, I was asked to code for: 

A program where the multiplication of two numbers is to be printed, but the twist was I had to code it without using * ( the multiplication function ) and without using any multiple functions whatsoever. ( I did it using a loop where numbers were added together until the loop ends)

And later, the Interviewer showed me a denomination code (Find the minimum number of currency notes and values that sum to the given amount ) and asked me to give boundary conditions, boundary conditions meaning when would the code not work, so I gave the answer as 0.

In the end, I was asked a practical question: If there is a company product launch tomorrow, but the night before you realize there is a mistake in the code, what would you do?

The final list of the selected candidates was announced a few days and 2 were selected !!  

Suggestion for Preparation: Prepare for OOPS questions from Java and also Databases queries because some of the students were asked on databases as well. Learn any one coding language properly, as I was asked questions based on my code in the interview.