Deutsche Bank Interview Questions, Process, and Tips for Freshers

Round: Technical + HR Interview
Experience: DBOI provides services for its Banking sibling, among other clients. The internship was a 12 month traineeship, that promised to have heavy emphasis on drafting instruments, notices and the like.
My r

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: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Resume short-listing was done on the basis of CGPA, extra curricular activities and only those having a overall strong profile with a good balance of PORs and academics were short-listed
Tips: Well, one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that your resume needs to be perfect from you side.When I say perfect, it means there should be no typographical errors, no spelling or grammatical mistakes. It should be edited properly and thoroughly checked so that any chances of mistakes can be nullified. Your resume should have information related to projects (research or applied), any intern-ship or other experience of similar kind, relevant courses ( finance or statistics course, in this case ), positions of responsibilities ( PORs ), extracurricular activities and other skill sets. Points in resume should be concise and self explanatory. You should keep in mind that the interviewer takes only a few seconds to review a resume and therefore appropriate details in your resume should be highlighted to make it easy for interviewer to review it. For Deutsche Bank, having a intern-ship experience or a academic project in finance or a foreign exposure definitely helps. PORs also helps in the same fashion. Your resume should be as uncluttered as possible and at the same time should have all the details of above mentioned things presented concisely.

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: It was the first time in many years that DB decided to have a group discussion round. So most of us did not have anyone to share their experience with us. We had around 6 people, at once, in this round. Personally, It was a good experience for me, although I did not read about this topic much and had a discussion with my friend about net neutrality just a few minutes before my GD. I spoke against net neutrality contrary to all other five candidates with me. I described how moving away from net neutrality will help in providing resources to more people and open up the gates of world of internet to the deprived ones. I was objected by al,most everyone in the group but the idea is to maintain your cool, listen to other candidates and try and defend your idea and express your opinion about the topic.
Tips: Some basic tips for every group discussion goes without saying. Starting or ending the course of discussion definitely helps but at the same time it is important to understand that it is not a compulsory action that needs to be taken .I observed it in my discussion that people were so much adamant about initiating the discussion that the moderator had to request people to calm down and not create a fish market there. The idea is to think wisely before you speak. After hearing the topic, you should take your time decide whether you wish to speak for or against and then think of various points and aspects of the topic. Its always helpful to take a pen and a notepad so that you can write the points in short which you can refer later in the discussion. You should NEVER switch from the stand you have taken in the beginning. This is regarded as a weakness so NEVER do that. At the same time it not at all means that you should initiate a war of words(quarrel) with the candidates who has expressing the opposite opinion in the discussion. You need to be humble, polite while you talk. Do not use HINDI/any other native language in the discussion. Be confident while you speak and let other other complete. Try not to interrupt someone and avoid blame game to other candidates, be generalised in you opinion instead of grilling other candidates. If you plan to start the discussion, It would be helpful if you describe the problem briefly, lay down the important points which you think needs to be discussed also can suggest the way discussion can be undertaken and at the same time invite other candidates to share their views when you have finished sharing yours. If you are planning to conclude a discussion, you must remember that its a discussion and not a debate, so it is not necessary that you discussion will end up with one party emerging as correct, so you should try to jot down all the points mentioned by the two parties during the discussion and a give a generalised overview of the discussion, instead of forcing your own opinion onto it. You can try and discuss the pros and cons that were explained by different candidates and try and give a possible solution to make the system better.
Topics of GDs for DB are generally based on the current issues in the country . So you should read about current issues as that will help you to use the recent events and other highlights during the discussion to support your point.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: I was the first candidate from the short-listed candidates to be interviewed so the interviewers were not bored of taking interviews. The interview started well. I was not able to answer the very first finance question that they asked me related to P/E ratio. But, after that I was able to answer all questions comfortably. So overall the technical interview went well.
Tips: You should be aware of all the current issues. For that you can read Economic times follow Bloomberg, Business Insider regularly, talk and discuss with your other friends to learn more about the same. For the finance topics, you look at Khan Academy lectures on finance. They are very concise and at the same time introduce you to the basics of finance. You can also look at J.C. Hull's Options futures and derivatives. Sometimes they may ask some puzzles. For that Braingle.com and TechInterviews is a good site to begin with followed by PratikPoddar's CSE Blog. Its important that you remain confident throughout the interview. Its okay if you don't know answer to all the questions being asked. You can politely mention that you do not know answer to the following question and that you will follow up on the same after the interview and then at the end of the interview you can followup with the interviewer. This shows that you are interested to learn new things and are not here just because you are short-listed. It is good to ask question related to the company at the end of the interview. You can frame questions based on PPT of the company.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: All the questions were standard HR question. Other than the negative quality question, all the other question passed swiftly.
Tips: Answers should be prepared to these standard HR questions. Negative quality question should be answered carefully so that it does not influence your interview much.

Skills: Confidence, Finance Current Affairs, Finance Basics
Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Kanpur
Motivation: I wanted to get some experience in finance and understand more about investment banking. This was the main motivation for me.
Funny Moments: I was held on the negative quality question for quite a few minutes. They asked me who are my friends here at IITK and asked what would they say about my negative quality. I happened to take up one of my friend's name who was one of the guys offered a PPO from DB and was also under the mentorship of one of my interviewers. He almost gave this a guy a call to enquire for my negative qualities. I ended up laughing over this incident in the interview which was not received pleasantly by the interviewer. One lesson learnt from this incident was t never laugh unless the joke is funny to interviewer :P :P .

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: write a well rounded resume. add coding experiences.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: answer questions confidently, irrespective of whether it is correct or not

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: medium level questions. emphasis is on problem solving algo rather than final result.

Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Madras
Motivation: wanted to get a flavour of finance this summer intern but also wanted to do some math modelling and coding. The profile that d

Round: Resume Shortlist
Tips: Finance related stuff in the resume helps.

Round: Other Interview
Experience: They are a mix of HR and finance questions since I had a finance based resume.
Tips: Be thorough with your strong points and show enthusiasm towards the internship.

General Tips: There is no set rule to select. Just be confident on whatever you have done.
Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Madras
Motivation: Liked finance.

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: 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: Resume Shortlist
Experience: There is a standard pattern which most of us follow. I just tried to highlight my strong points as my CPI was not very high. I was good in sports and music, so I made sure that I highlighted them. I did attend most of the Pre-Placement Talks. The one thing which I gained was the exposure.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: As far as HR Questions are concerned, they totally depend on you. Your seniors can always help you out finding answers for them. But I recommend you to think on your own; because that way your honest answers come out and believe me they ALWAYS work however naive they may sound. Nobody expects you to know everything. The fact that you can relate to those answers will boost your confidence as you would be able to defend them well.

Round: Behavioural Interview
Experience: When going in for an interview, its expected of you that you know about the company you are sitting for. So obviously you have to search the net and know few important things about the companies. I prepared for CAT so that took care of the puzzles and quantity part.

Round: Test
Experience: Initially they took a screening exam. It was quant and logical based mainly and few Questions were on market and economics. Some 80 students were short listed. They short listed around 40 students after 1st round of interviews and gave final offers to 22 after 2nd round of interviews.

Round: Other Interview
Experience: The first thing which is asked in an interview is mostly Tell us about you. After that they concentrated only on my extra-currics like football, swimming and singing which was my forte. They asked me general questions about my home town and family. Asked me about my strengths but didn't go to any weaknesses.Then they asked me if I had any Questions for them. I asked a few. This was it for the first one. DBs CEO was taking this interview. He started off with asking Questions from my resume about my projects n stuff. Then he too started asking Questions about my city and family. Questions were mostly the same as the first one. It ended on a very positive note and I came out with a smile.
Tips: Do prepare well for the screening exam, it has a good weightage. Interviews were generally HR type for me but they asked puzzles to few. So preparing them would help too. Overall, any particular mistake that you committed during the whole process? My resume was not well compiled although it didn't matter but I should have taken care of it. Prepare your resume well in advance, it will surely help.

General Tips: I always wear something which I could carry comfortably. I recommend the same for everyone. And also start wearing formals a month before the placement season starts, this way you'll get used to them and would feel comfortable.
College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Around 55 students were shortlisted for the final round

Round: Interview
Experience: I was asked by a very senior guy why I wanted to join a finance firm despite of having a good record in chemical engineering.  He then asked questions from my resume and we talked about MBA as an option and why I did not want to go for an MBA straight after college. It was more like a discussion.

Round: Interview
Experience: The second panel had 2 people from Corporate Finance and one from Markets. They asked me questions from Chemical engineering, a business study that I had written on my resume and a couple of maths puzzles. The interview went pretty smooth.

Round: Interview
Experience: The final round had 2 senior people from markets and one from Corporate Finance division. They started asking about my internship and how I could relate it to the situation in India. Since my project was on wind energy, they asked me to draw a comparison between wind, solar and thermal energy and which is a better source. They also asked about finances related with the establishment of a wind farm.  Then we had a discussion on counseling service, reasons for suicide and what could we do to stop the,. Then they asked about the difficulties I faced in public relations.They were not judging me on finance and were trying to have a conversation with me, testing my confidence.

General Tips: Be calm and you can do well
College Name: IIT KANPUR