Standard Chartered Interview Experience FTE (On-Campus)

Hello! I am a penultimate year student studying at NIT Hamirpur. Standard Chartered visited our campus on 21 August 2020 for FTE as well as Internship roles. The whole process was really smooth without any delays. It took around 5 days to conduct 7 rounds of 4 Online tests plus 3 Interviews. For sure, the whole journey was a roller coaster ride but required patience, perseverance, and confidence.

Eligibility Criteria: Open for all branches of B.Tech with a minimum CGPA of 7.00 & no past Backlogs.

21 August 2020: 3 Rounds were conducted on this day. We all got our test links. The timings to give this was quite unique i.e. 12 AM-12 PM. However, due to some technical issues, it was extended a little bit. Around 200 students were selected to give this round.

Round 1: It was a basic behaviour test which checked how you solve any situation and your perspective about reacting to the same. You need to drag your choices from most likely to least. It was a friendly round with no elimination.

Round 2: It was logical reasoning test which tested your reflex and logic. It was not like a normal aptitude test as instead of time constraint for the whole test, it had constraint for each ques i.e. each question offers you 75 sec. It consisted of patterns in which you have to find the missing element. You just need extra concentration and focus to solve them. You can even practice pattern problems to boost your confidence. Since it tested your skills in various aspects, hence it was an elimination round with a cutoff 40%.

*You only receive the link for the next round if you clear this.*

Round 3: It was Numerical Reasoning test which tested your mathematical and problem-solving skills. It consisted of various sets of problems i.e. a set consisted of around 3-4 problems with the same data table which did provide some aid. You just need to analyze the table initially as you get 90 sec for the first ques of a set and 75 sec for rest. Keep a calculator beside. The problems were quite related to real-life as you just need to do formulations and calculations to find a result. It was also an elimination round with a cutoff of 40%.

After attempting these rounds, you will immediately get your report on your mail. You need not wait for the whole day to check the result. The report will tell your scores. Hence, you can fairly guess about the status. You can still clear this stage if your result has a deviation of 5-10% depending on the relative performance of other applicants.

22 August 2020:

Round 4: The students who cleared previous round will get the link for the coding round which was held on Techgig. The questions were tricky, but not extremely difficult. This round consisted of 2 questions: 

1st was given 30 min and 2nd was given 60 min i.e you have to attempt the questions in a fixed order. The difficulty comes at a point that you can submit only once which means you can compile as many times for the defined test cases. Once you submit, your code is tested on hidden cases and you can’t submit again.

1st ques looked difficult but the solution was easy. You just need to find the trick. We had to find the total number of matches played in a knockout match for the given number of teams. The second ques was based on Dynamic Programming+Bitmask which was kind of difficult. We had to find the maximum subset-sum such that no two elements in the set have the same digits in them.

Tip: Make some cases and run your code on them. Try to cover the corner cases, so that after submitting, your code doesn’t give TLE, Runtime Error, or WA.

27 candidates were shortlisted after this round for the interview.

24 August 2020: After the coding round, applicants have to appear for the interview at Bluejeans software. Pre-Placement Talk was organized in the morning, before the interview where they clearly depicted about Standard Chartered. It was a fascinating and informative talk and clearly depicted the vision and work of the company.

Round 5: My first round for the interview held around 2 pm. It took around 30 mins. The interviewer carefully listened to my logic and reason behind any statement and cross-questioned to check whether I have a clear understanding of the concept. So, the interview began with my introduction followed by my experience and previous internships. He properly analysed my resume, the skills I wrote, and everything. I gave him detailed information about what I learned in my internships which included not only my technical skills but also personality skills. Working with a startup/company always teaches you many things and evolve you as a person.      

They also asked about problems faced during my internship and how I solved, to which I answered about caching i.e. How I had to implement caching in Android. Then, they asked some more ques about the same eg LRU Caching, Disk Caching, etc.

They also asked me to implement a particular activity. Apart from the frontend, they asked each and every detail about how requests and responses happen. How you make a client in Android to send a request to the server. They also asked me about Apis, REST API, and their methods. In which case you will use POST Req and when you will use PUT. So, if you have experience in integrating APIs, do read about possible details, methods, and how you parse the JSON response.

From the DSA Part, they only asked about basic Hashing and Binary search problems which were quite easy. The interview went quite well. I was able to answer their questions and their doubts regarding my statements.

8 candidates were selected for the next round.

Round 6: I got the call for the next round in the evening. Only selected candidates got the call for the next round which was held in 2 batches i.e one on 24 and the other on 25. This round was not that technical. It basically judged my expectations from the company, technologies I am interested in, and they also explained some of their projects. Then, they asked me about my experience and if I was to design API, what would I look up to, what would be the most important things to take care of. It took around 15-20 mins.

25 August 2020: The next batch of Round 6 was held which took around the whole day as it consisted of selected applicants for internship and FTE.

Round 7: After Round 6, candidates were called for HR Round where they asked questions about the applicant’s history, interests, and why he/she is interested to apply for this role. They also asked about the feedback for the whole process and if they have any questions for them.

P.S:

1. Always try to interact with the interviewer. Try to clearly explain your point in a simpler way.
2. Try your hands on some tech stack and have experience in that. As already told, experience/internships apart from adding skills to your technical part also enhance your view about solving any problem.
3. Try to be honest with your resume as it depicts whatever you have learned during the journey. Write only those skills you are confident about and whose concepts are clear.

7 students were selected for the internship.

Verdict- Selected