I have been thinking of publishing some material regarding the Java job interview questions that are commonly asked during Interview process in Investment banks and other tech companies.
There is quite a lot of material and you won't find answers to these questions in this blog. This is only a guide for Interview preparation based on my personal experience. Questions tend to change over a period of time as companies try to refine the interview process from time to time.
The interview process normally consists of 3-4 rounds and varies from Company to Company.
The first stage would be a screening process which would be a 30 min telephone round and would consist of some basic core java questions. You could find the list here.
Round 2 & 3 would be a face to face round which involve discussions around the CV and a deep dive into one of the Projects you worked on. You should be prepared to describe the architecture and design and explain the areas you worked on. There would be questions around the design choices you made and areas you think you could still improve.
There will more deeper discussions around Concurrency, GC, hashcode implementations..etc
There could also be a multiple choice core java questions and also some programming exercises.
1. Method to reverse a LinkedList
2. Program to do Breath first Search,Inorder traversal, preOrder traversal.
3. Program to reverse a String
4. Implement a BlockingQueue
5. Data structure to store Dictionary of words
6. Fibonacci sequence
7. Interval tree algorithm
Some companies ask you to submit a programming exercise which could involve designing a part of trading system or risk engine. This mainly to test your coding style and approach. Make sure you add sufficient unit test cases to the solution.
Round 4 will be a managerial round which would cover topics like TDD, Agile and other methodologies you have used. There will be lot of competency questions to check your team fit and soft skills.
There could be more rounds which would involve meeting with different business heads but by and large that is just a formality and mainly for you get a better understanding of the work place.
Make sure you ask right questions at each stage and could be a differentiating factor especially if there are multiple candidates till the final stage. Some of Investment banks are extremely choosy while picking candidates and it is imperative you leave no stone unturned.
Show you are interested in the work you are doing and if possible explain what you do outside of the work eg: blogging, open source work, tech meetups...etc.
