El proceso tomó 1 día. Acudí a una entrevista en Barclays (Londres, Inglaterra) en ene 2010
Entrevista
Several online programming skills tests - you know the kind that only test knowledge, not whether people are actually capable of doing a job. I think you are expected to pass these with flying colours.
Face to Face interview:
All the people involved seemed nice enough but everything felt very rushed. This may be deliberate to see how you cope under the pressure. First a brief intro by the development manager followed by trawling through some terribly constructed programming examples of two classes - a cat and a dog?! which you have to critique. Mainly requires exact knowledge of syntax and keywords with little or no emphasis on correct approach or best practice. This is offputting if you're looking for somewhere that aspires to do things properly.
After that I was asked by the development manager essentially to describe what I understood by an agile development process amongst other questions with some implication that I should understand their exact process without having worked in it. I think this is to figure out if you would enjoy/despise bending over and having the large iron fist of Barclays Capital plunge your inner depths.
Another question from them was "How did you have time to do all of these things outside of work?".
When I asked what the "greatest challenges" of working in this role were the near corpse of a man sitting opposite me pulled a face of despair, sighed and groaned "it's just getting everything done. no matter how much you do they [the business] always want more". Confronted with this ghost of my working future and the fact the other two interviewers were barely out of nappies (the sheep settle better in the fold when young I'm told) I decided that the gulf between BarCap and my values was just too wide and I think the feeling was mutual.
The clock ticked past the critical second and the interview was stopped mid-sentence.
I'm told BarCap varies hugely by team so please don't be put off by my experience. I would apply there again with an open mind.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
What do you understand by an agile development process?
The interview felt less like an assessment of Java engineering ability and more like a pub quiz for obscure syntax trivia. Instead of exploring problem-solving, design decisions, debugging skills, or real-world development experience, the focus seemed to be on recalling exact language details that most professional developers would simply look up in seconds.
It's a curious hiring strategy: rejecting people who know how to build software because they can't instantly recite syntax that modern IDEs autocomplete for them anyway
Overall, the process felt outdated, disconnected from how software is actually written, and more reflective of academic memorisation than professional engineering competence.
Initial CGPA based screening.
Three rounds in total post that.
First eliminatory round consisted of DSA and sql round for screening.
Difficulty Leet Code Medium.Strings question.
Pen paper DSA in person. Leet Code Easy. A sorting variant.
HR or behavioural round.
Final verdict: Selected
Acudí a una entrevista en Barclays (München, Bavaria)
Entrevista
I arrived at the Barclays Munich office on Leopoldstraße. A friendly recruiter named Katharina welcomed me. We discussed Java microservices, Kubernetes deployments, and team culture. The atmosphere felt professional yet relaxed. Overall, a positive experience.
