Citibank Interview Experience (On-Campus) 2023

During the placement season, Citibank visited our campus for the role of PBWM Technology Analyst. They visited the campus around the last week of August. The company had a two-step recruitment process after the Pre-Placement Talk. The eligibility criteria to apply was a minimum of 6.5 CGPA with no active backlogs, only for B.Tech. students of computer science and circuital branches.

Round 1: Online Assessment

The Online Assessment was conducted on the SHL (AMCAT) platform and had four sections as given below. Each section, except the last, had close to 16-22 questions. There were sectional timers with an average of 1 minute given to solve each question. You cannot switch between sections, and you cannot navigate through the questions within a section. There was no negative marking.

• Verbal and English Language Aptitude

It consisted of MCQs, which could be on vocabulary (antonyms, synonyms, prepositions), comprehension, and basic grammar (corrections or alternate ways of writing the same sentence). There were two English passages, and 3-4 questions corresponding to each passage. Tip: Try to grasp the important information at the first glance itself, instead of revisiting the passage for each question.

• Quantitative Aptitude

This section comprised MCQs on topics like work and time, probability, permutations and combinations, percentages, ages, profit and loss, etc. The questions were simple; however, time management was the key in this section.

• Computer Programming

It mostly had MCQs based on OOPs in C/C++, searching & sorting techniques, and implementation of basic data structures like arrays, stacks, queues, and trees. This section was easy.

• Coding Section

Unlike the other sections, this one had two questions with a total time limit of 45 minutes. For most people, the level of questions was similar to easy-medium level interval problems. In rare cases, people got hard-level questions on graphs. Both the questions that I was allotted were easy, and I was able to pass all the test cases for both questions:

1. It followed a storyline. But, to sum it up, we were given an array and two numbers, and we simply had to return all the numbers from the array that belonged to the range between the two given numbers.
2. This question also followed a storyline. We were given an array, and we had to sort the elements based on their frequencies.

I was able to finish the assessment around 30 minutes early.

After the online assessment, 20 people were shortlisted for the interview process of round 2, and 10 people were waitlisted.

Round 2: Techno-HR Round

This round was held on the Zoom Platform and lasted about 35 minutes. There were two interviewers, both of them were friendly.

The first interviewer asked me to introduce myself. Then he asked me to describe my experience and the work that I had done in my previous internships. I had used a relatively new tool in my last internship, and he was interested to know its working, which I explained by taking simple real-life examples as well.

The next set of questions were technical questions based on DBMS & SQL:

• What is a Full Join?
• If I have a column of names, how would I get the names of people starting with <my_first_name>?
• What is the difference between SQL and NoSQL databases?

We then moved to a detailed discussion of my projects. I had used Firebase in one project and MongoDB in the other. He was interested to know the reason behind choosing these technologies and put forward several questions related to them as well.

The interviewer seemed satisfied with my answers.

The next interviewer started by asking me about my favorite hobby and any role model in this field if I look up to. He then discussed that his son shares the same hobby and if I had any recommendations for his son to pursue it further.

He then asked me the reason to apply for a software-centric role, since I am from electronics branch, and my reason for choosing the branch despite me liking software development.

He proceeded with asking me to translate some SQL queries to Firebase queries.

This was followed by some standard HR & behavioral questions, like, Why do you want to join the company? Where do you see yourself in 5 years, etc.

Lastly, they asked me if I will be comfortable working with legacy code and wrapped up the interview by asking me if I had any questions for them.

Overall, the interview experience was pretty good for me.

Verdict: Rejected.

Only four students from the CS branches were selected, and I wasn’t one of them.