I stopped by the Capital One booth at my school's career fair. Shortly after, I was contacted by a recruiter to set up a first-round on-campus interview. The interview was purely behavioral, consisting of questions to the tune of, "How did you overcome X?" I was told in my interview that I had performed well and that I would be advancing to the next round. (My interviewer must have had a long day of duds).

Final rounds consisted of three interviews, lunch, and a tour of the Richmond Capital One office. At final rounds, there was a group of approximately 15 candidates who, I assume, all went through the same process.

The three interviews consisted of:

• A case interview
• A technical interview
• A behavioral interview

The interviewers were all kind and gave me feedback at the conclusion of each interview. The interviewers were a mix of management staff and software engineers. After the interviews, one candidate was asked to stay for further questions (I assumed this meant he was receiving an offer), while the rest of the candidates were shown out of the office. Much to my surprise, I received a phone call not two hours later, while I was still driving home, congratulating me on the interviews and giving me an offer.

After interviewing, I got the impression that while I was applying for a software development position, the focus of the interviews was personality and critical thinking. This was a little off-putting because it makes me believe that it is possible to be hired at Capital One as a Software Engineer without being a great coder.

For technical preparation, I would recommend purchasing or downloading a copy of "Cracking The Coding Interview," 5th edition. All of the technical questions I was asked came directly, word for word, from this book. Proper preparation, along with good communication skills, is a recipe to perform well and get a great offer.

The case question was about mortgage securities, a topic I am not particularly familiar with.

Luckily, after some question asking and thinking aloud, I was able to work my way through the case.