I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Capital One
Interview
To start, I want to say that the communication with the recruiter was wonderful throughout the process. As others have stated, started with the recruiter screening, followed by a take home assessment. Then came the power day and this is where things went downhill.
Four hours straight with absolutely no breaks.
Round 1: the worst of the 4. The design portion. I had prepared extensively for my thoughts on how I would go about answering this portion only to be met with a interviewer who continuously interrupted me and explained that I hadn’t yet solved for a part of the question as I was literally explaining my solution for that part. He wanted a very specific answer and any variance was unacceptable. He was rude, and quite frankly disrespectful. I left round 1 feeling as though I no longer even wanted to work for this company.
Round 2 was marginally better by comparison. I had two interviewers who could not seem less interested in being there. They gave me the coding questions and as I solved for it they were essentially silent. One of the questions asked for an output of the index of two specific numbers, and the interviewer pointed out it was wrong until I explained it is outputting the index as the question states to do, not the numbers themself. And so he had be modify my answer to output the numbers instead.
Round 3: this round was a typical behavioral interview and I mostly enjoyed speaking to my interviewers. At this point I was positively turned off by this entire experience.
Round 4: case study. This portion was odd though not horrible. My interviewer was nice, but I don’t understand how this portion at all displays engineering abilities.
Overall I’ve experienced far more pleasant and productive interviews. If your power day involves sending out resources to cram and study for so that interviewees can pass, then there’s an issue.
I do not recommend this experience at all, and I do not hope to interview with them in the future.
Expecting a challenging experience, I found the interview at Capital One to be intense, particularly during the system design section. The question on designing a rate limiter with a token bucket algorithm took me by surprise; mid-way through the problem, I realized it was very similar to a drill I’d practiced on prachub.com just days earlier. The technical rounds included several DSA questions, and the interviewers were thorough but supportive. Ultimately, I received an offer and happily accepted, feeling well-prepared despite the pressure.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a rate limiter using a token bucket algorithm and discuss how it would handle bursty traffic and distributed deployments.
Recruiter screening to begin with. Then, technical discussion about java, spring boot, design pattern, small coding tasks and followed by design assessment for distributed systems. Finally, managerial round for the team fit
Scheduled a call with recruiter. Recruiter didnt show up for the screening call and cancelled it 5 mins after the scheduled time. Dropped a follow up email and got no response. After a week, I got an email from the recruiter stating I am selected for the next round i.e Assessment. Sent me an email with the assessment description but no link. When I sent a follow up email asking for the link, I got ghosted again. It was a bad experience. Felt like she is toying with me. Why ghost an applicant repetitively? Unprofessional recruiter who doesn't respect an applicant's time or efforts!