CIBC Financial Service Associate Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Other Interview
Experience: One year since I took the interview, so no idea exactly what questions they asked. But I was asked to write the code on paper in front of him and was asked to debug it. Some puzzles and aptitude questions along with other basic coding questions. It was great that the guy was interactive and started asking about my projects and college life.
Btw the answer to the logical question is: I should say " you will shoot me". Paradoxical.
Tips: Feel free to ask anything that you would like to know from them. Also frankly say that you don't know a certain topic if you have no clue what it is about. They don't like people wasting their time.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: This was not exactly a technical interview. He asked me to write a code to find the day of week when a certain date in any year of the calendar is given. I answered it and then he starting asking general questions as to why do u want to join the company, etc.
I gave answers to most of them convincingly. But I kept him engaged by explaining my life at college, the extra curriculars I did at college. Also I asked him about his experience as a software engineer. I asked him to reflect upon his career and how I should approach about my career.
Tips: The best part about HR interviews is they expect you to ask them lots and lots of questions. The more they are engaged, the more are your chances of impressing and getting selected. And more importantly, ask the interviewer about his experience with the present firm. This also works with my manager when ever he has a one on one with me :P
Cheers and all the best.

Skills: Soft Skills, General Aptitude, LOGICAL THINKING ABILITIES, Coding Skills And Knowledge On Data Structures
College Name: IIT Hyderabad

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The selection procedure for the candidates was based on their internship, academic projects and most importantly their CGPA.
The first round was roughly a 45 minute interview (at least for me, not sure about all others). They were really interested in knowing more my internship with the Standard Chartered bank. Apart from the situation based HR questions, they went after evaluating me based on qualitative case studies, one after the other. Fresh ideas for running and delineating any business was required from the word go. I was asked around 6 cases more or less focusing on improving business and adding new verticals. In one line – enthusiasm, passion, business insights and powerful/effective communication skills was what they were looking for.

The second round again lasted for 30 minutes. This time I was tested on a numerical case study. The panel of interviewers got changed this time around. Apart from this, stress based HR questions were asked for other half of the interview. Be confident and be yourself.

They finally selected 3 students.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Email your resume to HR coordinator and they will shortlist your resume and invite you to attend face to face interview. You can also walk-in when vacancies are available.
Tips: Ask your friends already working with RBS to inform you as and when vacancies arise.

Round: Group Discussion
Tips: Prepare the topics that are already in trend.
Duration: 30 minutes

Round: Test
Duration: 45 minutes
Total Questions: 50

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Once you pass this round, you will be informed by the hr coordinator to come up for document Screening and after that they will inform you about your joining date via email or call .

Skills: Communication, Writing Skills, Computation Skills, Reactions, Quantitative Aptitude, Comprehension, Behavioural Skills
College Name: Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Since it is a Finance profile, it would help if you have any finance /economics/ MBA projects to write about. DB looks for a good CPI and decent projects or extra curriculars and interest in the finance sector. It also wouldn?t hurt to mention your technical skills here.


Round: Test
Experience: And since most of the finance work in India is back office (with all due respect to all those who have been placed in this sector) you have to be comfortable with numbers and calculations. The test is a typical CAT type paper mostly concentrating on quantitative analysis and data interpretation. There is also a bonus finance section for those who have knowledge on the subject. Again practice cat type papers well and sit with a knowledgeable friend of yours to discuss topics in finance.

Tips: Realize when you are in a recession period. No job comes easy. Most of us who are not insanely intelligent like that one dude in your wing need to practice hard for the test to get through. In a recession/slack scenario core companies save the day. Don?t neglect your core courses.
Duration: 45 minutes

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Started with an informal chit chat. I grabbed my opportunity. In my first line I told them that
I had done my internship with Lehman Brothers. (Remember I wanted to drive my
interview). No wonder the next 5-6 questions were on my internship. There were followed
by a couple of questions on swaps, spreads etc which I had mentioned in my resume (Note
questions were not out of the blue

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: DB directly shortlisted from resume. There was no test. After the initial shortlisting procedure, I had a months time to prepare.
Tips: I had started preparing for my resume from August when SPO had asked to send in master resume. After making a rough draft I had sent it to a lot of seniors from my department who were placed in different companies and edited it accordingly.

Round: Test
Tips: I had used the material from T.I.M.E and also from CL to prepare for it. Also,there were some classes arranged by SPO and CL which I had joined.

Round: Group Discussion
Tips: I did not prepare much for the GDs. I just participated in 3-4 mock GDs organized by the placement preparation cell.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: I had prepared all my interns and projects along with the courses written in the resume. I had prepared my answers from all the basic questions which are generally asked in an interview and was very thorough with them. I had also gained sufficient knowledge about the work profile of DB along with all major deals in the past year. Specially, for DB's interview I had also prepared for the current affairs by reading newspapers daily for about 3 months and also kept up to date about some major happenings in and around the world such as Syria happening, US shutdown, crisis and bubbles, etc.


I had my interview scheduled at 6:30 in the morning with DB. My first interview went really well and the person told me that I should definitely see the next panel.
Tips: Please do not write those courses in your resume which you found tough as it will create problem at the end moment when you have to prepare so much.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: My second interview was fine and most of the questions were from current affairs and my resume. They also asked me to guesstimate in this interview.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: In my third interview  I messed up some economics related concepts.I thought they wouldn't like me but I was called again

Round: HR Interview
Experience: My fourth interview also did not go well but then somebody from the HR hinted that they liked me for a certain profile and would want to know my take on that.

General Tips: Be yourself and give your best shot. Have faith in yourself. Do not panic.
College Name: IIT KANPUR

Round: Written Test
Experience: I attended interview at hyderabad location for java Sr.Software Engineer.
1Q) Find out given string palindrome or not.
Ex: madam
2Q) Find first and last index searching number in a array.
Ex: [1,2,3,3,3,3,4,5]
Output : 2,5
3Q) Arrange Strings in alphabetical order.

Tips: Prepare numeric and string related algorithms

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: First, I had a look at loads and loads of ‘good’ people’s resumes, which left me feeling very inferior. Then I looked some ‘not-so-great’ people’s resumes who landed up with good jobs nevertheless, which gave me hope. I prepared a rough draft (which eventually had no relation/similarity to the final resume) which was sent to infinite people for an honest critique, and an honest appraisal I received which shook me to the core. Tips from order (chronologically or in order of importance?) to which stuff to include and NOT include were garnered. I never found the need to look at resume-writing material, with one workshop organized by McKinsey and other people’s resumes being enough
Tips: Pre-placement talks are greatly under appreciated by students, with the focus being the pizzas most of the times. Yes, the pizza is important, but it helps if you pay attention first to what the company people say (and not just the compensation package). I had an ambitious resolution to note down all the biggie companies’ good points with things said and qualities expected and such stuff- needless to say, this resolution fell flat on it’s face midway through PPT season. However, if not anything else, the PPTs were a great source for picking up the jargon for preparing in the final days. And asking questions after the PPT is over by sacrificing a pizza can be beneficial too, especially if you are targeting a particular company/type of company. (Note- As luck would have it, the company i got recruited by was the single company who's PPT i DID NOT attend, with me having to rely on second-hand information. So you decide). As for actually choosing the job, I had full (maybe a bit too much?) faith in the placement body’s infinite wisdom for deciding the order of companies invited for placements. I had consultancy and finance as my two preferred options, for which I talked to loads of seniors, relatives and family friends. It is important to know what you want to do, or at least what you don’t want to do (in my case, a coding/tech job was out of the question), because this is often asked during your interview. And the long discussions I had, although sometimes leaving me in a more confused state than before, helped me eventually.

Round: Test
Experience: Deutsche Bank took a written test as Round 1 for elimination. This was followed by a shortlist of 92 people, who had to sit for a Tech interview. ~80% of these people went ahead to give an HR interview, with 22 people being offered jobs eventually. The written test had 3 parts- The 1st part was a proper CAT-style test which focused on quantitative abilities. Most of the questions were those we already encounter, and almost everyone who got through scored really well in this section. The 2nd part had a few questions on general market awareness, like 'Who has the highest market cap' or 'what's the current oil price per barrel'. The 3rd part was finance-based, with questions on inflation, coupon rates, options, futures, currency conversions etc.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: The first 'Tech' interview started off with a fairly non-tech question- 'Give us 3 reasons why we should hire you.' Then, they went on to questions on quick arithmetic (what's 58 x 62?), probability (how do i divide 50R and 50W balls into two identical containers so that if i pick a ball from a random container, the probability of picking a W ball is maximum?) and finance (what are options? what is strike price? what is a premium?). They asked me whether I had any other nonacademic courses I had done in my stay in IIT which I liked, which was where the Literature and Economic Reforms courses from past semesters came in handy. The interviews for different people were very different, with some people getting deep into finance or economics, some concentrating more on things like market awareness, stocks, shares etc and some having to survive stress interviews.
Tips: First, there's a test to crack, which requires a good quantitative base. This is where CAT preparation helps a lot. There are general awareness questions which depend more on, well, the student's general awareness. The finance section is typically unworkable- it helps if you can write down out there whatever you know however wrong it might be, because those guys simply want to know how much you know, even if it might be slightly irrelevant to the question asked :P Then, there is the tech interview. Now many people (including the company people during the PPT) will tell you 'It's ok if you don't have finance fundaes', but they sing a totally different tune during the actual interview. And honestly this makes sense- if you want to get hired by a finance company, the least you can do is read up some basic finance stuff, instead of sitting there and saying 'I have zot finance knowledge, hire me.' There was a Derivatives workshop organized by Lehman Brothers which, although not being too helpful, at least introduced me to the jargon. Then some quickie wiki sufficed to increase my fin-gyaan. And it always helps if you start off with a 'I know very little of finance, but what i know i know it well' kind of a statement :)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The second HR interview was a pretty cool one, starting off with the standard question 'Tell me something about yourself' to things like hobbies and non-academic stuff done in IIT life and elsewhere. Questions like these present a nice opportunity to the interviewee to lead the interview as and how he/she likes. I mentioned my passion for international football, from where we embarked on a long discussion on which club i like, which are my favorite players, why, etc. I was asked what are the parameters i give importance to in selecting a job. I was asked whether have prepared for CAT, what scores am I expecting, what do I wish to do in the next 2/3/5/10 years, what do I expect from this job, etc. There were two people conducting the interview, with one fellow asking most of the questions. I addressed the second person with a 'don't you have anything to ask?' to which she asked me 'tell me five people you would love to invite for a DB sponsored dinner'. A creative, tongue-in-cheek, honest and somewhat humorous answer got me through it. They then asked me - 'Do you have any questions for us?' where i got cleared a few doubts about the quality of work, the training and future growth opportunities as an employee of Deutsch Bank. The tests took ~45 minutes to finish, and each interview was for around 20 minutes or so.
Tips: The most important thing I did was sit down with 2 other friends and conduct mock-stress-HR interviews of each other. This thing helped me greatly, primarily because I treated it with proper seriousness. Many things come to light if your friend’s are forthright and frank, because this is the place where you can go wrong as much as you want without severe repercussions (This mock interview especially helped a friend of mine when we asked him questions which seemed off-tangent but ended up being asked in his actual interview!). Also what proved to be extremely helpful was a long and intensive Wikipedia session, where I sat down with a friend and wiki-ed for each and every word mentioned in the job description document supplied by the company along with the JAF.

General Tips: For most companies, your resume is all they will know about you, so make sure you know properly what you have written in the resume, where it is and how many points. This prevents you from being surprised when the interviewer refers to stuff which, let's just say, has been made to look bigger and better than it actually is. Bluffing in resumes or during the interview is of no use, people can catch these things very easily. Instead, it helps if you can make things appear a wee bit fancier than they are, as long as you can pull them off. The interviewer is god. Treat him/her with respect and argue decently without getting dirty, however irrational things might sometime seem. An honest 'I don't know' is better than some contrived bluff, as long as the 'I-don't-knows' are rare. Impromptu interviews seldom go well. Some preparation is always essential. Prepare for HR questions, and don't be surprised if you are asked a lot of Department-specific questions. A knowledge of what the company does is important, as also is knowing what the job profile being offered does and doesn't include :) Vis., dressing, étiquettes, coffee etc Dress well, first impressions are important. Don't wear a suit if you aren't sure you'll be comfortable (i wasn't), a tie
works just fine. But informal clothing is a no-no. Have a bath and a shave (for boys mainly). Have a folder containing some spare sheets and copies of your resume. Have a decent, working pen. Avoid plastic bags or similar things which make irritating noises. And don't get too frazzled by questions asked to other candidates. Make eye-contact (but don't try to play mindgames) with the interviewer while talking. And smile, enjoy the interview, or at least give the impression that you are having a good time :)
College Name: IIT BOMBAY