I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Citi in Feb 2025
Interview
I was invited to interview 3 months after application without initial contact from recruiter. First interview was very good, I was interviewed by back-end engineer. Even if my previous experience is in testing and test automation and I don't have commercial experience in Java programming, our conversation was fruitful and I completed algorithmic task and answered infrastructure related questions.
Second interview was supposed to be with QA director but he left the interview after introduction and job description due to urgent call (huge red flag). I was interviewed by another team member. We had flowing conversation about job process and it was more like a casual talk than an question-answer interview. We mostly talked about scripting (basing on my previous experience), SDLC and automation infrastructure. Interviewer was super nice and said that there will be definitely next stage.
A few days later I received a reject with the feedback "the manager advised that you didn’t have as much technical skills as other applications", the manager who left after 10 mins after the beginning. The end.
Interviewer didn't show his face as usual. I've interviewed with Citi bank several times over the years and they never show their face even if its a panel of people.
They asked technical language definition questions. Only has vague answers about what the job is because he doesn't know. His only job is to grill you on whether you know what one java syntax does compared to another. Apparently they think that's the only thing that's important to working for Citi. Do you know how the inner workings of this keyword in java, spring, angular, or sql? Yes? Great. We have 30 more similar questions for you. If you pass this round, we will do this again for 3 more separate interviews where each round another faceless interviewer will ask you another list. After the interviews you learn nothing about the company and give you no reason to want to work there.
1st round HR discussion- good
Second round Technical discussion - nice experience interacting with team
Third round manager - About discussions and understand the culture
Fourth round - HR manager round , To discuss about salary and benefits and
tech interview, asked some basic questions about python and two lc medium questions. Both aint too bad, but I didnt prepare for the interview so I communicated badly, as a result I didnt pass.
