BNY Mellon Interview Experience (On-Campus) 2023

Recently, BNY Mellon visited our campus at the end of August, and here is the interview experience.

First Round(Online Assessment):

 3 questions to be solved in 120 minutes. The test timing was from 11:00 a.m. The first 2 questions, were of medium level and included concepts such as strings, and DP. The third question was a hard one and included a greedy approach.

Out of 400+ students, 26 students were shortlisted for interviews. Firstly 21 students were shortlisted, but due to diversity hiring, they added 5 more girls, despite the fact they know very little.

Second Round (Technical Interview): 

My interview was said to be scheduled for Wednesday, but we don’t know due to some miscommunication between PCC, and HR, our interviews were taken on Tuesday itself. So, be alert on your phone, and emails. My interview was scheduled for 12:00 p.m., and I was unaware of it. HR called me and asked why you were not joining the interview. I immediately explained them and joined the interview. My interview started at 12:15 p.m.. I was very nervous because I was late for the interview for 15 minutes, but the interviewer was friendly, and he made me comfortable. I introduced myself, and then he asked me about my internships in more detail.

The interviewer seemed to be more familiar with Power BI, as I had mentioned it in one of the projects, he asked me multiple cross questions on it, like the hierarchy system in Power BI, which led to the discussion of primary key and foreign key when combining data of multiple tables in real-time. I answered all of them. Then, he started asking me about arrays, and about the different data structures that you had studied. In arrays, he asked me the internal workings of C, and how it allocates memory and maintains its continuity in indexing. Now, he jumped to the difference in linked lists, and arrays, and stated the conditions, and which operation you would preferably choose in different scenarios like searching, instant access of data, etc.

Now, he went to the coding question, and a hackerrank link was provided to us, with the password. It contains 4 DSA problems, due to time constraints we have only been able to get through the first one, it was an OOPs question, with the implementation of access specifiers, and writing code to solve a basic DSA problem within it. The last question was strange, which I was not expecting in the first round, was, that, he asked what do you know about BNY, but I answered as I had listened to the PPT well. The interview was over at 12:45 p.m., exactly half an hour. I was afraid that as I was late in the interview, he allow me in the next round. I apologized to him again for late coming, and then asked about the tech stack they work on. Out of 26 students, 19 students were selected for the second round.

Third Round(Technical Interview): 

I was lucky that I received mail of the second round. The second interview was scheduled at 3:45 p.m. for 45 minutes. I was very nervous because it was taken by a senior employee who had an experience of about 5 years, but the interviewer was very friendly. It started with the introduction, and then all the questions which I could remember were from my resume only.

In my internship and projects, I had worked in MERN stack, so the first question the interviewer asked was why you had used MongoDB in your projects instead of SQL. Then, again cross-questions were asked, like what is sharding, and how data is stored in DBMS. Then, we had a detailed discussion, on one of the projects that were a Chrome extension that was solving a real-world problem, he was happy seeing the problem that we had solved using it but was not happy when I told him that it took 1.5 months to build it, as according to him, it should be completed within a week, but it was fine.

He also asked me, can we implement chrome extensions in android apps. I answered all the questions successfully. Now, he moved to the core subjects of Computer Science i.e. OOPs. He asked me everything about OOPs, that one could thought of, starting from the pillars of OOPs, then coming to the detailed discussion on polymorphism, static and dynamic. Then, we discussed about what is the diamond problem, and the solution to it. I answered it according to C++, but the interviewer was a Python guy, so he didn’t liked the solution, then he asked me how you could solve it in my Python, after one hint I was able to answer.

Now, he moved to the coding part, interviewer was not a C++ guy, so he told me that either I may code in Python, or he want be able to help in C++, but I still choose C++. The question was related to string partitioning of a website URL, on dry running the code was working fine, but was giving some memory error, on running, which I was not able to resolve, then after spending even half an hour, I wasn’t able to resolve the error, so interviewer suggested me to move to python language, I did the same, and was able to code it. At last he asked me why you want to come in the IT industry depsite of having a Civil branch. The interviewer seem to be happy, and the 45 minutes interview extended to 1 and a half hour i.e. 90 minutes. Out of 19 students, 14 students were selected for the final round.

Final Round (HR + Technical): 

I was the first interviewee for the HR round, and it was taken by the indian head of BNY, I was super stressed, and I thought of a HR round, according to the other interview experiences, but it turned out unexpected. It was a half an hour interview, which held 2 days after the second interview. The interviewer was not much friendly which increased my pressure more, he just told me to start with the introduction.
The interview turned out to be a complete disaster as it was a super hard interview completely based on your web development skills, and the internships and projects you did. I was asked to explain the complex data models that I worked during my internships, and was also asked to write mongo DB queries, to implement new features in that applications, and also the complete working of APIs, that you had worked in it, similar was done in my projects.
At last, he asked system design question to me, how you could build large scale applications. Nothing related to aptitude, standard HR questions, DSA, programming, puzzles were asked to me, and interviewer left at sharp 12:30 p.m.. I was highly disappointed, as neither my coding skills nor my aptitude were asked from me, only a small part of mine was tested, as a fresher, from a person who had an experience of more than 25 years in the industry. But this was not the case with others, in many of my friends interview, that were taken by the managers of a particular branch of a company, were very friendly. They asked them, basic DSA questions, and standard HR questions like how you would see yourself in 5 years.

Results came after 1 week, at around 6:00 p.m., and I was rejected.

Out of 14 students who gave BNY interview, 2 were girls and 12 were boys. 2 girls were selected, and out of 12 boys, 1 boy was selected. So, total 3 students were selected. The company also came for internship, and hired 13 students, out of which 10 were girls and 3 were boys.

Some tips:

1. Believe in yourself, I was rejected not because I knew less, but because the interviewer knows very much, and expecting a 20 year old boy, knowing about how to scale applications, and writing complex mongoDB queries for software engineer role. It was not my day.
2. It totally depends on your interviewer and your luck, one friend of mine, was selected despite she had done no internship, and was only knowing Reacts basics, and basic DSA, and I was rejected even though I had done 3 internships, and had 3 real-world problem solving projects, which had 5K+ monthly page visits, and knowing full-stack development to a good extent.
3. Don’t loose hope, stand again, and fight back success will be yours a day.
4. Sometimes, diversity hiring leads to very less skilled software engineers.

All the best….!