East West Bancorp Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – placed my resume with website and about 3 days later i got a phone call from east west bank hiring recruiter. we discussed the usual questions, background/experience/ GDC over last year, why i was transitioning companies ect. The interview went really well and she let me know that there was a in-bank financial advisor in Irvine, CA she would like to recommend me for. I let her know that I would be interested in interviewing for that position.

After we concluded our call, about 5 minutes later i received a call from the some person. She let me know that she forgot to ask me something, I said sure what can I help with??...
she asked me if i was fluent in chinese, i let her know that I was not, then she said really your fluent in chinese at all. I was taken back and let her know that I did not speak any chinese at all. She then replied, Are you asian?. I was shocked to say the least by the question, i let her know that i wasn't. Her response...well we have a position open for an insurance specialist would be interested, I replied by asking her about the in-bank financial advisor role, she let me know that it had been filled....I let her know I wasn't interested in working as an insurance specialist and we ended the phone call.

my recommendation: if you want to work for this bank be asian...apparently

Reason for Declining – I wasn't asian

Interview Details – Hired both by Regional Manager Branch Manager

Negotiation Details – Not much can be negotiated. Salary will be in the range that company already set up.

Interview Details – Disappointed with the interview process. Interviewers were ill prepared. Recruiter could not provide a basic sense of the job or comp package prior to going in for the interview. Recruiter had indicated to ask for her if I arrived early, and she was nowhere to be found. In addition, she did not pass my resume on to the interviewer. This was concerning as it was not an entry level position.

Interview Details – HR will call you after their initial behavioral campus recruitment efforts. The questions are behavioral and ask about your resume and why you would fit a Relationship Manager role.

Reason for Declining – The pay was not attractive enough.

Interview Details – I applied for the job online and was contacted by the HR Rep about a different position. It was not in my area of expertise but since she seemed like I'd be a good fit for the job, I submitted to the interview. It turned out that it was a waste of time as the hiring manager for the new position was looking for someone with a different skills set. The rest of the interview consisted of awkward small talk.

Interview Details – Very long process and no offer or reject letter to well inform the candidate.

Interview Details – It was my first time going to an interview speaking English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.

Negotiation Details – Yes, I was able to negotiate with the HR Manager discussing my ideal salary for the position.

Interview Details – Initially, I sent my resume to a VP that I was referred to through a friend. The VP passed my resume on to the CFO who then initiated the interview process. The HR representative assigned to me was very friendly and professional, although he/she would often forget to follow-up with me for scheduling purposes. I got the impression that HR was swamped with work.

On the day of the interviews, I fist met with the CFO. She/he was very impressive. She/he was young, sharp, and intuitive. We had a pleasant discussion about my background the why I was desiring to enter a financial career. However, I was surprised to learn that she/he does not speak any Chinese.

On my second interview, I met with another very impressive middle level manger. He/she and I had terrific rapport and he/she said that he/she would be happy to hire me, although he/she thought I might be a little bored in the position the he/she had to offer. Again, I was surprised to find out that he/she was not a fluent or literate Chinese-speaker. Also, another surprising finding: the company does not even have a corporate license for basic statistical analysis software like SAS.

On my third and final interview for the day, I met with the CFO's assistant. This person was saddled with an unlikely and inefficient trio of responsibilities: investment relations, risk management, and corporate financial statement preparation. And, she/he appeared to be making most of the risk management decisions without any strong quantitative statistical treatment. Of course, since the company had no corporate licenses for SAS, this made sense to them--I suppose. Again, she/he was a non-Chinese speaker.

For an institution that books itself with the strategic goal of being a financial "bridge from the east to the west", it was downright unbelievable to see that many of the top management were not even conversationally fluent in Chinese. This finding led me to question the firm's ability to realize it's above-mentioned headline strategic goal. Moreover, it appeared from my interviews that the current financial health of the institution had more to do with conservative business practices (and luck) than with informed quantitative data-driven investment decisions.

Interview Details – First, 2 people started to interview me. One is the manager, and the another is her assistant. They asked me the regular interview questions, such as, tell me about youself. 34. tell me a time when you cannot meet a client's expectation. Can you tell me about a time when you had to deliver difficult news to your team?