Interview with Citi

Companies visit our campus during the months of June-July to hire interns to work during the following summers. CitiCorp visited our campus on 18th August 2018, Saturday. I was hoping to get selected in this company and had been dreaming to get into it since the start of my preparation for the internship season.

An online test was conducted on 17th August. The duration for the online test was 2.5 hours. The online test had 4 sections.

A brief description of each of them:-

1. Section 1: Technical Knowledge- It contained questions on C/C++, Java, time complexities, sorting, etc. All the questions were multiple choice questions for the first three sections.

2. Section 2: Quantitative Aptitude- It contained questions on profit/loss, pipes/cisterns mental ability and basic maths.

3. Section 3: English- It contained synonyms, antonyms, comprehension, sentence reordering.

It was followed by 2 coding questions. The questions were matrix chain multiplication and a subtree checking problem.

Approximately 150 students sat for the online test, and 42 were shortlisted for the second round.

Interview: There was a panel of 7 people which was conducting the interviews. My turn came at the end.

Round 1: Technical Interview.

The interviewer asked me for my resume. I handed him over my resume. Then he asked me to brief him about my resume. I gave him a brief introduction about myself, my family background, my interests in public speaking and debating. Then I asked him if I should tell him about my projects. On his replying positively, I explained him first about Emotify, a project built during the hackathon. I explained him in detail about the project and the technologies used. Then he gave me certain scenarios and asked me how my algorithms would handle those cases. I explained each one of them with

confidence. Then I told him about the course projects we had done. He listened to each of them carefully.

He then asked me which languages I am fluent in, to which I replied C/C++. He asked me the differences between both of them. I listed out all the differences. Among those points one point was related to object oriented methodologies. So, he wanted me to explain him the features of OOM. I explained him what abstraction, polymorphism, encapsulation, overloading meant. He then asked me about access specifiers, I explained them as well. He wrote a few excerpts of code on paper and asked what would be the output. Then he asked me a puzzle, given 25 horses and 5 tracks how many minimum races are required to find the fastest horse. I knew the answer was 7, but didn't say right away. I tried a wrong approach a few times with confidence to get to an answer. He seemed impressed about the fact that I was trying. Later, he asked me if there was anything I wanted to ask, so, I asked him about my role in the company. He explained in detail about it. We shook hands and the interview ended on a positive note.

Out of 42, only 14 were shortlisted for the second round.

Round 2: HR Interview

There were two panellists sitting to interview me. I was the last candidate. I entered the room and greeted them. They already had a copy of my resume. One of the panellists asked me introduce about myself. I again told everything about me, for them to know me better. The introduction went on for 5-6 minutes. He then asked me to explain my role in the various projects I had done. Then he asked me about the qualities I have and other don't. He then asked me what leadership meant to me. He also asked about my role model and the reasons behind it. He asked me why Citi and why was I interested to join a fin-tech company. He also asked me if I wanted to give them any suggestion regarding the pre-placement talk.

After all this, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked two questions to show them that I was interested in working at Citi.

Out of 14 shortlisted, 7(4girls+3guys) were finally selected. I was one among them. The whole team of Citi then congratulated us and took a photo will all the selected interns.

#SummerAtCiti