I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Capital One
Interview
The first round was an on-campus behavioral interview which consisted of four questions. After the first round was the final on-site interview which included a behavioral, case, and job-fit (technical) interview one hour each.
The interviews were not too stressful and they asked very simple questions for the technical interview. I'm not entirely sure what they're looking for in a candidate since there's no way that their technical interview can screen out a lot of people. I had no idea if I made a mistake on the technical, case, or behavioral interviews, but it was probably behavioral since that's pretty subjective (if you fit the culture or if they want to work with you).
From the on-site interview to the tour it was pretty obvious that Capital One takes care of their employees; they give you snacks and a one hour break randomly scheduled in your onsite interviews.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string, return the first NON-repeating character that occurs in the string.
EX: "adzbdcab" returns 'z'.
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!