In June 2021, FactSet visited our campus to recruit students for the role of Software Engineer, and I’m going to share my experience in this post.
Round 1:
- There were a total of 5 coding questions and 2 SQL queries divided among five sections. The difficulty of the questions was easy-medium, and it was on the HackerRank platform.
- Eleven people got shortlisted for the interview process after the first round among 200 odd applicants.
- There were 2 Technical interviews and 1 Managerial/Hr interview.
(Tell me about yourself, Any questions for me? are common in every round)
Round 2: First technical interview
- It was a pure DSA/Problem-solving round. There were three questions.
- It was a variation of https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/longest-subarray-not-k-distinct-elements/amp/
- It took me longer to solve than I’d expect as I was a bit nervous, but I managed to solve it.https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/count-pairs-two-sorted-matrices-given-sum/amp/
- I solved it pretty quickly, but the interviewer took a lot of time to explain the question.
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/root-to-leaf-path-sum-equal-to-a-given-number/amp/
- There was very little time left for the interview. So, I explained my approach for all the variations (2-3 variations)that the interviewer asked. There was no time left for writing the code, but the interviewer was happy with my approach. We had to solve at least two questions to move to the next round. The interview lasted for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Round 3: Second Technical round
- There were two strings, text and pattern. We need to find all the occurrences of pattern’s anagrams in the text string.
- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/minimum-time-required-so-that-all-oranges-become-rotten/amp/
- I struggled to solve this question for a while but managed to solve it eventually.
The interviewer asked me about my contributions to Tedx Ou 2020’s Web-Dev team, as I was a part of it. The interview lasted for about one and a half hours.
Round 4: Managerial/Hr round
- The interviewer was the director of some department in FactSet. It was more like a conversation rather than an interview.
- We talked about my open-source contributions, my blog https://mouktech.wordpress.com/ (shameless plug), and my article on GeeksForGeeks. We also talked about the current education system (he liked my views, especially on engineering). We then moved on to my short and long-term goals. Then I asked him to tell me about FactSet, and his pitch was excellent.
This round lasted for about 40 minutes. Two members got offer letters after the recruitment process, and I was lucky enough to be one of them.
Tips:
- In coding rounds, always be vocal. Walk your interviewer through your thought process, as it will keep them engaged throughout the interview.
- Don’t shy away from seeking help if you are stuck. The interviewers will always try to help if you ask the right questions. Every interviewer was super friendly.
- For the Hr/Managerial round, be as honest as possible.