There were four interview stages in total, the first stage was a telephone call with a member of Human Resources. Who discussed the job in detail and asked me a couple of questions. The second stage was a tech test involving the programming language Java, this took around 45 minutes. The third stage, was an in-depth interview discussing your strengths and why you want to work for the company. This process was all conducted by a senior software engineer and a mid-level engineer. The final stage which I did not progress to, would have involved heading to the company offices in Bristol to do an in-depth tech interview test. While the overall interview experience was positive, I had a few issues with the scheduling, communication, and design of the interview. During the call with human resources, I was told not to worry about the tech test as it was deemed “easy”. And my lack of knowledge about Java was “not an issue”. However on reflection of the tech test, while I did practice and study, it was clear the interviewers wanted to see somebody with more knowledge. Additionally, some of the questions and examples are written in the tech test were worded slightly confusingly e.g(unfamiliar keywords and not enough examples). Moreover, the in-depth interview occurred straight after the tech test which I was unaware of. This definitely contributed to my lack of confidence throughout the rest of the interview. My suggestions to other applicants. Make sure when studying Java to cover all areas. e.g.(strings, numbers, for loops, arrays/lists/, objects, while loops and of course syntax) Conduct in-depth research into Sopra Bank software (it's a bigger area than you think).
