Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) FTE Interview Experience

Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) visited our campus in August 2021 to hire final year students for the role of Technology Analyst.  

Their criterion was:

• CPI: 6.75 and above
• Branches Allowed: CS, IT & EXTC.

I cracked this opportunity and am elated to share my experience of the hiring process.

There was a Pre-Placement-Talk (PPT) on 4th August from 4 pm to 5 pm for all the candidates. Here, they introduced us to the Tech Stack available along with their projects, values, and details.

Followed there were 3 online rounds conducted overall.

1. Online Coding Test.
2. Technical Round-1.
3. Technical +HR Round.

Round 1(Online Test on HackerRank – 60 mins): The test was scheduled for 4th August 2021 from 7 pm to 8 pm. There were 17 questions in this round. The questions were of the format: 16+1 that is 16 MCQs and 1 coding. These 16 questions were a mixed bag consisting of DSA, OS, SQL, OOPs, and Logic.

The questions were of medium difficulty and there were marks for partial test cases in the coding question.

MCQ Questions Covered-

• DSA: Postfix expression given and to find first and last element of the stack after an operation is performed, Find inorder traversal for the given tree, To find the right answers for different data structure properties, time complexities of algorithms.
• Find time complexities and output of code snippets given
• OS: partitioning, paging concepts  
• SQL: to detect tables belong to which normal forms (1NF,2NF,3NF BCNF), query-based questions
• Numerical and logical questions based on mathematics
• OOP concept based questions
• The questions were more intuitive and not typical paper pen/formula-based. They were not very difficult but were very tricky.  

Coding Question-

1. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/edit-distance-dp-5/

Suggestion: I would suggest practicing from sites like GeeksforGeeks, Interviewbit, Leetcode, etc as it will then give confidence to solve problems. In addition solving quizzes from GeeksForGeeks and Interviewbit would help to get in touch with concepts of all core subjects.

Tips: Solve the questions with a calm mind. Don’t stress yourself during the test if you’re unable to recollect the concept. Don’t spend too much time on any question if you’re not able to do it in the first attempt then come back to it later.

39 students were shortlisted from the online test for the next round. The entire interview process was on Microsoft Teams.

Round 2(Technical Round 1 – 30 to 45 mins): My round was scheduled on 5th August at 6pm. This round tested technical skills like DSA (Data structures and Algorithms), OOPS, SQL queries, Python and questions related to projects and tech-stacks mentioned in the resume.

The interviewer asked me the following questions:

1. Give me a brief introduction about yourself (Explained about my interests, extracurricular, experience and projects)
2. Tell me about your internship followed by some questions on it (role, projects, development and contribution). Since I had mentioned python and C++ on my resume so he asked questions based on that.
3. What is python namespace?
4. Difference between list and tuple in python and notation of the same. Based on my answer (mutable and immutable) he asked, if a tuple of list is created then is it mutable or immutable?
5. What is a dictionary? Is there dictionary, tuple, list in C++?
6. What is range and xrange?  (explain with example)
7. Can we have negative index traversal (negative in range) in a list? How does it work? (accessing elements of list from behind)

Then he started with some DSA based questions.

1. A binary number is given. Find whether it is divisible by 16 or not without converting into decimal: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/check-divisibility-binary-string-2k/
2. To find number of substrings in C++. (I suggested a naïve approach) He then asked if anything can be done without for loop or any alternate answer. Solution in python for the same problem.
3. Given a summary of n characters print 4 characters on each line. Ex: 100 chars so 25 lines and 102 chars so 26 lines. Based on my answer asked me a solution without using endl/break.  

Then he asked me some questions based on SQL: https://www.interviewbit.com/dbms-interview-questions/

https://www.interviewbit.com/sql-interview-questions/

1. What is meant by indexing? Explain with example.
2. What is unique key and primary key?
3. Can we have NULL value with unique constraint? Can we have multiple NULL values? How does it remain unique then?
4. Then he asked me what is shallow copy and deep copy in python? ( I didn’t know about it then so I told him I was not aware of it)
5. Given a string and 2 teams A and B. Find all the substrings and if the substring starts with consonant give team A a point and if it starts with a vowel then give team B a point. Find the number of substring and the winner from A and B with its points.  
6. Given an nxn matrix find the absolute difference between the left and right diagonals. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-difference-between-sums-of-two-diagonals/
7. Do you have any questions for me? (Always ask questions: How has your experience been? How is the culture? How long has it been at the company?)  

Tips: If you’re aware of the concept but cannot give out the definition then explain using examples.

After this round, 23 out of 39 were shortlisted. Technical + HR Round was scheduled on Monday 9th August at 5pm for me.

Round 3(Technical + HR Round – 45mins to 1 hr): This round tested technical skills like OOPS, SQL, C++, Python, Puzzles and questions related to Internships, work experiences, projects and tech-stacks mentioned in the resume. It also included core subjects’ questions followed by HR questions to know how confident you are in answering situational based questions.

The interviewer asked me the following questions:

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Tell me about your Internships and work experience. ( Based on my description, he asked me the tech stack, the example of any code written and its usage)
3. What is shallow copy and deep copy in python? How it used in C++? Example of implementation in C++. (This time I answered it and gave a proper example): https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/shallow-copy-and-deep-copy-in-c/
4. What do you know about shallow copy and deep copy in java?
5. What is meant by garbage collection? How is it done in C++? How is it done in Java and python? Is there any difference? Give an example.(https://www.educba.com/c-plus-plus-garbage-collection/)
6. What is the purpose of garbage collection?
7. What is an abstract class and interface? What is interface in C++?
8. What is overloading and overriding? Have you used it in real time? Example of its use.
9. What is polymorphism and inheritance? https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/commonly-asked-oop-interview-questions/
10. What is run time polymorphism? Example with respect to overriding.
11. What is a list in C++? How is it implemented?
12. Is string mutable in C++?
13. Do you know about cloud? (I said no)
14. Then he asked a puzzle. Given 3 boxes with (1,2,3) with box 1 filled with red balls, box 2 with blue balls and box 3 with red + blue balls. Box 1 is labeled as R, Box 2 as B and Box 3 as R + B. All these boxes are labeled incorrectly. Each ball removed is equivalent to 1 turn. You cannot look into the box and have to remove 1 ball and decide the labels. In how many minimum turns can you put the right labels and how? I explained the approach and then he asked me questions on the basis of my answer. What if the first ball is removed from box B? Different cases for the same: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/gate-gate-cs-2017-set-2-question-7/

https://suresolv.com/brain-teaser/three-boxes-riddle-age-old-logic-puzzle

Then he started with HR based questions. You can refer to the link below for some preparation(https://www.javatpoint.com/job-interview-questions )

1. How was your internship experience? Why do you not want to continue in that company?
2. What is it from your internship company that you will bring to MSCI?
3. Do you have any knowledge about finances?
4. Give me an instance of the toughest experience in your life? ( I mentioned an experience related to leadership qualities but he wanted some technical experience so mentioned about a hackathon)
5. Why do you want to do a job and not pursue masters/MBA or study further? Is there anyone you know from MSCI or any relative from this industry?
6. What are you expecting from MSCI in terms of work, culture, etc?
7. Where do you see yourself in the next 2 years?
8. I had interned with a startup so he asked why I would not like to continue there. How was the experience? He also said that being a startup it would provide more exposure and challenges so why do I prefer a large company?

Then he moved to my projects and the role I performed in its building and the tech stacks used.

1. I had project based on web scraping and I had mentioned beautiful soup in it so he asked questions based on it. What is beautiful soup? How is web scraping done and what does it include? Also used a code for explanation. Then he asked what the project was about and any other contribution in it.
2. I had mentioned machine learning in the resume and projects based on it. So he asked my familiarity with it. Then he asked me about the different libraries I had worked on and their functionalities.
3. He then gave me some options and asked which tech stack would I prefer to work on if given and why?
4. Any questions for me? (Always ask questions: How has your experience been? How is the culture? How long has it been at the company? What challenges did the company face during the pandemic?)

Tips: You should know each and every word of your resume. Know yourself before any interview. Be calm and answer politely.  

My round ended around 6pm. Finally, after 1.5 hours of wait, at 7:30pm, the results were announced. 6 out of 23 students were given the offer and I was happy to be one of them. It was then followed by an HR discussion which was scheduled at 8pm.

VERDICT-SELECTED

Some Additional Tips:

• Don’t forget to research about the company. The interviewer may ask you about the company’s mission, vision, values or what it does.
• Don’t lie in your resume because they ask questions from it, so it is important to know everything you’ve written in your resume. If you know basics/intermediate/advanced level of anything particular then please mention it.  
• Don’t forget to prepare yourself for HR based questions. Sometimes, we focus a lot on technical questions and completely ignore behavioral questions.
• You can refer to the interview experiences on GeeksForGeeks. This really helps in the interview as you may across the same question that’s asked before.
• Don’t lose hope, even though you feel that you could not perform the way you wanted to. Stay calm and composed during the interview. If there is something that you’re not aware of then please tell them that you don’t know about it or if you’re guessing then you could mention about that to the interviewer.  

Resources for preparation for any company:

• Practice Data Structures and Algortithms from Leetcode(https://leetcode.com/interview/?gclid=CjwKCAjwjdOIBhA_EiwAHz8xm-kxQjivYzjUSb5TmBxTyZ2AI7v9ZailMearW2lFYdtGhEdV5tuIKBoC6sQQAvD_BwE), InterviewBit(https://www.interviewbit.com/) and GeeksForGeeks (company related questions).
• Interview Prep Resources (GitHub)(https://github.com/yash0530/InterviewPrepResources)
• Company Interview Corner (GeeksforGeeks)

All the best!