On-site interview experience as follows:

• Wait in the lobby with other interns until currently employed engineers come.

• The engineers arrive, take you to lunch, and discuss their experiences at Capital One. Most of them had worked at Capital One for less than five years and had previous internship experience, so they were very approachable about answering questions and describing their honest experiences (the good and the bad). Don’t be afraid to ask questions! This will help ease your tension before the interviews.

• Then, you take a tour of the building. It was really cool and helped to relax before the interviews.

• The engineers lastly drop you off at the interview wing. Yes, expect a whole section of the building designed just to interview people. It had snacks, coffee, and the bathrooms were stocked with items like deodorant, just in case you were nervous and needed something. They then show you to your assigned room, where you stay the entire time (all three interviews). In the room is your schedule (mine went Case, Technical, Behavioral) in order. The room also has a whiteboard, calculator, paper, etc., fully equipped for your interview. I had never had such an intense interview before, which made me nervous, but now you know what to expect. I have also provided a full description of all the questions I was asked below, plus a few important tips!

Also, if you are not chosen to move forward, you receive no feedback as to why, which is unfortunate, so expect that.

Case - You are given a description of Capital One wanting to acquire a company that moved into the digital space (online banking). You’re asked many questions about the situation:

• Why would Capital One want to do this?
• What would be the way they would go about integrating systems?
• What would be the pros and cons?

This is a very abstract question, and you will be given no indication if you’re correct or not. Study up on business integration and how companies integrate tech systems.

Case - Given code on a piece of paper, how would you go about explaining what this code does to someone who isn’t an engineer?

Basically, you’ll want to trace the code and draw a diagram or something. In my interview, the code had statements that didn’t execute. They’ll expect you to be able to identify that and thus they’ll expect you to correct the code.

Tech - Design a banking system that allows for withdrawals, deposits, multiple types of accounts (checking, savings), and also keeps track of all transactions up to 6 months.

I believe they’re looking for a UML diagram or something of that nature, so STUDY how you would draw up classes and inheritance without actually coding.

Tech - Given an input in string form of “01-10-2018,” convert that into “January 10th” form. Make sure you add the “th,” “rd,” etc., at the end. Both outputs must be strings.

Behavioral - Describe a time you had to explain something technical to a non-technical person.

To give an example, the first time I answered this question, I told them about how I had to explain the essence of why we use data structures to my mom, but that was WRONG. My interviewer stopped me and explained that it needed to have much more detail and reflective material, so make sure you have a deep, cohesive example that you can reflect on easily. They will ask follow-up questions like, “How did you know they understood your explanation?” etc.

Behavioral - Talk about one of your greatest accomplishments. What did you learn about yourself? Looking back, would you have done anything any differently? Be super reflective and deep about all of your answers; don’t be cookie-cutter.

Behavioral - Tell me about a time you learned something new. There will also be a lot of follow-up questions about this, so be prepared to be reflective and asked for details. Key, key, key: do not be shallow; dig deep and find complex examples.