Morgan Stanley Interview Experience (Off-Campus) 2023

I applied for this role off-campus months ago, most probably last October.

The first round was an online test, There were three rounds for the test:

3 Sections in the Evaluation 

• Debugging: This section assesses the candidate’s skill to diagnose and identify any bugs in code and fix them.
• Aptitude: This section assesses the capacity of an individual to interpret things objectively, to be able to perceive and interpret trends to make a generalization, and measures the numerical ability and accuracy in mathematical calculations.
• Programming: This section evaluates the programming skills of the candidate in a simulated environment.

Debugging was pretty easy, the only issue was IDE was pretty slow. They were not exactly debugging but had also 2 questions like filling in the blanks or completing a code to do the intended functionality(total 7 questions). I was able to solve 6/7.

Aptitude was a bit tricky for the time given. Not sure how many I gave correctly.

Programming was easy with array and very basic graph structure-based questions. I was able to solve all 3.

 After 3 days, I got a call saying that I was qualified for the first round of interviews, which was technical. The interview was scheduled 3 days later(after the weekend).

The interview was very friendly and focused on C++ basics.

C++

#include<vector.h>
void main(int r1,char **r2)
{
    int n;
    if(r1>1)
        n = r2[0];
    int *stuff = new int[n];
    vector<int> v(100000);
    delete stuff;
    return 0;
}

He asked me to find errors in the above code.

Then he asked a question about giving employees their arrival and departure time, what’s the minimum amount of chairs you need? This was very similar to 

• Minimum Number of Platforms Required for a Railway/Bus Station

 I started coding but my method wasn’t the best, and I was unable to change my approach due to time constraints. Then he asked about overloading and smart pointers. There were no OS or DBMS questions throughout any of the interviews. 

I got a call in 5 days saying I have passed the final round of interviews, Technical+HR. This round was 4 days later. 

There was a detailed discussion about my most recent project on Elasticsearch and how would I implement Elasticsearch in C++. When I described the process happening, he asked for one particular part, creating inverted indices. I said I would use maps and a linked list of documents according to priority for easy addition. Then he asked why linked list and not vectors. Then he asked if space complexity mattered in storage, what will you choose, vector or linked list, I said vector, since it didn’t store previous and next info. He agreed, then came back to the previous question again. Then it clicked, insertion and deletion O(1) in linked-list.

Then he shifted to HR questions. It was mostly based on my teamwork experience.

• What all team projects have you worked on where you had a leadership role?
• Who led the projects?
• How did you manage when one of your team members didn’t work?
• There was copying that could be seen in online classes how did you deal with it?
• Were you able to maintain the relationships that you had offline online?
• How did you work on your studies when online?
• Online vs offline studying

Overall this round was great, I was able to answer all HR questions.

Currently, it has been 2 weeks+ since the last interview. I haven’t received any further updates so far. Fingers crossed.

Edit: After exactly 3 weeks, I got the offer : )