Deutsche Bank Analyst Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers

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

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: A lot of fundaes regarding the writing of the resume were given at a session by McKinsey earlier in the year. I prepared my basic resume based on that and changed it according to suggestions from some friends. Pre-placement talks are essential for getting a broad understanding of the company and the work that one is going to be doing in the job, inspite of the fact that a much nicer version of the reality may be presented in these talks. If one does not have a good idea about a particular sector or a company, attending PPTs can help a lot.About 90 people were shortlisted initially for the inteview, based mainly on a test conducted by the company earlier. The test evaluated students on basic quantitative and DI skills. Out of those, after an interview of about 20-25 mins, about half were shortlisted for the second and the last interview, which immediately followed the first one.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: In my case, the only interview I attended was for Deutsche Bank, and it did not require any such special preparation.However, some basic finance fundaes were obtained with the help of google and wikipedia. I prepared for interviews with some of my friends. We conducted mock interviews of one another, asking possible questions, especially the HR ones. If done seriously, it helps a lot, in terms of preparation for the few stock questions in interviews and others that one can anticipate. A lot of improvements can be suggested by your friends in terms of framing answers correctly and many other things. Preparation is best done in groups.

College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Subjective Technical
Experience: Theory questions were asked in this round, like basic fundamental definition in java, oops, etc
Tips: should know all the basics of core java and Oracle.


Round: Technical Interview
Experience: Theory questions were asked in this round, like basic fundamental definition in java, oops, etc
Tips: should know all the basics of core java and Oracle.


Round: HR Interview
Tips: Be confident and be clear about what you say about your hobbies.

College Name: Shri Shankaracharya Engineering College, Bhilai

Round: Test
Experience: There was an online test of computer basics questions are quite easy but time was a factor as there were 25 MCQ question with no negative marking and time is 25 minutes.Total 35 students were shortlisted for the interviews. Soon after the interviews were conducted.
Tips: Read the question carefully and have a good practice on geeks quiz for MCQ.
Duration: 25 minutes
Total Questions: 30

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: As I entered the interview room interviewee asked me to introduce myself. Then he asked me about the most challenging project I have done and why this project is so much challenging to you. I explained him the project from the scrap and but at the end he was not satisfied with my explanation then I again explained the project to him. After that he asked me to explain my website project then he got satisfied with my both projects. Then he asked me you have interest in Operating system, OOP

Round: Test
Experience: 28 questions, 18 quantative + 10 financial awareness, negative marking. I took one pass through the Quant section, leaving about 5 questions, went on to the financial section, realized I wasn't going to score that well there so went back to Quant eventually attempting all 18, having to guess 1 answer since I ran out of time. I attempted probably 2-3 in financial. The test matters a lot to get shortlisted - some CSE students didn’t get shortlisted apparently because of a low test score. I would suggest that focus should be primarily on the quant section rather than the finance section - a friend in CSE who said he did well in the finance section didn’t get shortlisted.

Quant
1. Find next in sequence : 10,1,.......7,7...11,5 - don't remember the rest of the sequence but it looked random
initially it but if you take the difference between alternate terms an obvious pattern emerges .
2. Probability of two people telling the truth = 0.4,0.6 - what is the chance that they are inconsistent in what they say ?
3. A 3 digit number is a square less than 500, the reverse of the number is also a square. on repeating last digit still a square. What is the difference between the initial square, its reverse.
4. In a 1000m race if x gives y a head start of 40 meter, x wins by 10m. how much will x win by if y gives x a head start of 40m
5. With 16 matches, how many distinct triangles can you make?
6. You row at 7kmph in a calm lake. fisherman drops something 14 km upstream and the river current is 3kmph, how long will it take to reach you (14/7 = 2hrs ).
7. The sum of the multiples of 7 between 200 and 400 is what (trick was instead of calculating, to observe that the answer is odd and of the 5 options, only one was odd)?
8. Sum of consecutive page numbers in a book starting from 1 to n is 1000 - one page was repeated. which page was it? (idea was to subtract each choice from 1000 and see if it was n _ (n + 1)/2)
9. Last digit of 508508
10. 6 men + 4 women. Make a committee of 3 from them - Guy X wont be with Guy Y. Guy Y will be only with Woman Z in committee. How many ways of making the committee?
11. Run in circle of radius r. 1st 30 seconds at r meters/min, then next 1 min at r/2 m per min next 2 min at r/4 and so on. ratio of times taken in round n, previous round
12. |(x ? 11)/2| < 3 what is the range of x?
13. number of integer solutions to 3x + 6y = 13 (take 3 common on LHS and the answer is clear).
14. 5 students give an objective exam (+1 for correct, 0 for wrong) with 5 questions each with 5 choices. Their answers were given in a 5x5 matrix. Given they all got different marks, who got the lowest.
15. A,B,C,D stand in a line in increasing order of height. Given that X was shorter than Y but didnt stand first, and (a few more conditions) , who stood last? (X and Y had been specified as one of A, B, C, D - I don’t remember exactly since I gave the test 10 days back).

Financial
1. Rupee-dollar exchange rate (options were ranges of 1 rupee answer ws 39-40)
2. value of some index (some non-Indian East Asian country’s stock market - I forgot the name)
3. Effect of interest rate cuts on a bond coupon
4. Simple question on call option - which of following is not true about it
5. 1st Indian IT company to be listed on Nasdaq

6. Given a pie chart where it showed that for capital, a company relied 80% on equity and a small fraction on debts, what investment strategy is the company using? Conservative/Aggressive?
Duration: 40 min minutes

Round: HR Interview
Experience: I was the last person DB interviewed that day. Towards the end, the interviewer said “I am sure you are going to join Tower Research and not DB”. They also seemed to have decided before I came in to the interview that I would get an offer with some other company and would not choose DB - kept attacking the answers I gave to ‘Why not Microsoft/Tower’. In hindsight maybe I shouldn't have listed all the 4 tech companies I had interned with.

College Name: IIT KANPUR

Round: Test
Experience: It was DB. They first took PPT in main Audi. Audi was completely filled with students and I was sitting on the last seats still thinking about my GS test. When they told in PPT that they had taken only 8 students last year, it made me realize that out of about 600 students currently present in Audi (I thought 600 was good estimate for students present in Audi),my chances are 0.01 % approx.. It made me shivered and I stopped thinking about anything even the job and became casual. This casualness worked. So, I suggest you to be normal and don’t panic. Because, nervous is going to make your situation only worse. DB took two tests. First test was normal aptitude testing mainly your speed in which I had solved 22 questions out of 25 when people on an average had solved only 14-15 questions and even lesser. Second test was quant based test which had 6 questions-two from probability, two from linear algebra, one from class 12 ( I don't why they gave this question ) and one from algo. Thanks to MIT OCW and Pratik poddar, I did very well in it and solved all of them. Only question which I did wrongly was of class 12 because of overconfidence. After that test, I regained my confidence and did well in all other written tests. Most of these tests were simple aptitude tests but with lesser time. So, you need to have good speed to solve these questions. Finally on announcement of short listing results, I was shortlisted into both of my dream companies even after screwing In GS test. Moreover, I was one of the two guys in whole IITK , who was shortlisted for DB quant profile. It made my day. I talked to our seniors working at both these companies and started preparing for interview.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: First one was on the phone by a DB guy on HR interviews. He asked me why not higher studies, why DB, if asked by both GS and DB, which one would you prefer and some others. Believe me if you are having a high CPI, you have to prepare for the question “why not higher research” definitely.

Second was on the skype. He asked me puzzles related to algorithms, probabilities for one and half hour. Again,
thanks to Pratik poddar, Baswana sir and some hints from the interviewer, I did well in it. Whenever you have any problem, do ask for hints to interviewer.
On the D-day, I had been shortlisted into 4 companies in which two were DB and GS– my dream. First one was with DB and I had same interviewer from the skype. As, I had already met him, I became casual with him. He took my interviews for almost two and a half hour. Fortunately, it was my day. I solved all the problems with some hints from him. Then, came HR interview at DB. He asked about my family, parents, relatives, my childhood, my dream and some basic finance questions.Thanks to SPO volunteer Saurav at DB (something happened which you need not know), I was called. I went there leaving my 3rd round of GS. Again, DB guys asked me few questions on exchange rate which I answered perfectly. Finally, they offered me the job. To be frank, I wanted DB job more than GS, but seniors suggested me to go to 3rd round of GS too. When I went there for my 3rd round, I don't know why but they asked me to leave. Anyway I was happy as I had gotten job in one of my dream companies .

General Tips: Overall I can say that you must hope for the best and prepare for the worst. So make sure that you are prepared on all counts. You never know what might go wrong (I have taken it from Abhinav Jain) and do try to make every single event of placement favorable to you. Who knows which event is going to make your day. In case&#44; you have any query related to DB or quant profile, you can ask Saurav Yashaswee, Y8 batch of Maths Dept.. He helped me a lot during preparation and undoubtedly, is one of the best persons to ask questions on quant profile and DB, who is going to be present in the campus during your placement session. In any case, you can contact me on facebook.
Skill Tips: Before starting, I want to clarify that this feedback is only an indicator of things which I believe about
placements and have tried to do during placement session. It has helped me but you should choose it only if you feel that it is going to help you too. You can include stuff like how did you narrow down to your career plans, the sectors which you were targeting and the rationale behind choosing them, difference between your expectations from the placement process and what you encountered finally, what you did to prepare, what you missed out on, what you think should be done, about the tests and GDs that the companies took, your thoughts before the final placements, about CAT, GRE, GMAT etc. and other fun stuff.
1. Making Resume:
Your resume is, if not the most then, definitely one of the most important things to decide your future career. It doesn't only help companies to shortlist you but also help you to decide your future path, inpreparation of HR interviews and knowing you better. If you have made your resume correctly, then itclears most of the doubts related to your carrier like whether you are made for job or research, if job thenfinance, consulting or core and if research, then which field. So, do devote a lot of time in making your resume. Proper way to make a good master resume is sit down alone for few hours, try to recall all the big,good or small (believe me even a small achievement can help you to get a good job or university as it hashappened in my case in getting into Deutsche Bank) achievements of yourself and make a list of all thosethings in good words. Show this resume to your friends, seniors and incorporate their feedbacks. Give thisiteration for at least 3-4 times. If your master resume is made perfectly, then making the resume for company specific is very easy. Oneimportant thing which you should note is if you feel that you resume is overqualified for a company; try tocut a few points from your resume. I have seen that few of my friends have put the same resumes for companies of the first day to last day and even when they were selected for the first day company, theyweren't even shortlisted for the 3rd or 4th day companies as companies felt that they were overqualified.
Please try to avoid this mistake.

2. Attending PPTs:
Attending PPTs and workshops of companies help you make a decision about selecting the companies inwhich you want to go. Do attend PPTs of companies about which you have no idea or the companies you are aiming. As, in my case, attending PPTs helped me to reject few companies which I was aiming. Try to be attentive during PPTs and do take notes of some special characteristics of a particular company (likestructure, compensation, work, seniors present in that company) as it will help you in some HR questionslike why this company, why not others, where do you see yourself in this company after five years and itwill also reflect your interest in the company to interviewer.

3. Selecting sectors or companies:
Your resume, work of a company and your interests help you decide the companies which you dream of and the companies which you feel that you are sure to get into. Try to make two list-first -of your dreamcompanies and second-of companies which you think you have a chance given your profile, your CPI, yourextra-currics, internships etc.. People generally try to prepare for their dream companies and not for otherlist of themselves. So, what happens is that if you are not getting into your dream company (Your dreamcompany in most of the cases is going to be dream of about 80% of batch of IITK), you have also reducedthe chance of getting into a company of your second list as you haven't prepared for that. Also, prepare for the worst. If you aren't getting into any company of both the list (which generally won’t happen ), thenwhat next (CAT, MS/PhD, IES, IAS or opening your band etc.).In my case, it was clear to me that my dream job was getting into DB quant or GS. On rejection, try for IBM,Adobe, Qualcomm, Intel ( as a wireless and signal processing engineer, you don't have much choice even in core), Erricson. On rejection even in these companies, try for MS or PhD in any university.

4. Talking to your seniors:
It is one of the sections in which IIT Kanpur lacks from other IITs. Try to contact seniors of the companies of your lists. Show them your resume, ask them how to prepare for the company, ask whether you are suitable for the job. They have experience of the company as you and also as an insider in the company and in some cases, they may recommend you for the job.

5. Written test:
Believe me even if you don't have good extra currics or a good CPI, even if you have done well in writtentests of companies, you will be in the race of your dream company. This is one of the areas in which IITKanpur always lacks. I have seen few of my batch mates having higher CPI, good internships, good extra currics but couldn't make into even shortlist because of written tests. Do prepare for it seriously. Even if you aren’t preparing for the CAT exams, try to practice time or CL’s study materials, most importantly of Probability, Permutations and DI section. Some companies put direct questions from previous CAT exams. Remember one thing that most of the times, it isn’t test of knowledge but of speed. Speed will come only on practice, not by only knowing things. Also, some consulting companies ask questions related to English Grammar, Vocabulary, so take a look at this section too from CAT study materials, if you feel that your English is weak.

6. Quant and Core Preparation:
If you are looking for quant companies, then you also need to revise your basic maths (like linear algebra,probability, some common distributions like uniform, normal, binomial), basic data structures and algorithms from DS and some puzzles from different websites and books (like of Pratik poddar, 40 puzzlesin probability, CMU toad). If you aren’t finding good study materials for maths or algorithms, use MIT OCW(it has helped me a lot). Make sure that you understand the basic concepts behind these things because they may ask any type of questions related to these topics and you will be answer only if you know theconcepts. For core companies, you need to revise some of basic core courses. For EE guys, if you are looking for VLSI, brush up EE 370 (most imp.) and EE 210. If you are looking for signal processing/communication profile, brush up basic DSP and communication concepts. Some questions were also asked from Kalman filter and wavelet transforms which I had no clue. So,be prepared for surprises. Also brush up C coding and basic data structures as it is generally asked in most of the EE core companies. Do note that you need to prepare seriously for your core companies too as after the interviews of first and second day’s companies and their rejection, you don’t have both time and mind to prepare for them. Finally note that these tests are not tough. These are the students who make it tough. So, never panic in the tests and try to give your 100%.

7. HR interview:
After being shortlisted into a company, Do not take HR questions lightly. You should prepare for somequestions like tell me about yourself, why this, three strengths and weaknesses. Practice these questionswith your wing mates and try to make proper eye contact while answering these questions.
College Name: IIT KANPUR