I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at UBS (Zürich) in Sept 2023
Interview
This my ever first "interview" on this side of the pond (EU) that required an online Hackerrank test as the first step, without ever talking to a human. If you are the type that enjoys this kind of challenge (maybe fresh out of uni), then this is your chance! For all the other professionals, this is sad news. I will straight out refuse to do these kind of "challenges" in the future - it requires basically no investment from the hiring company, and humiliates the majority of candidates. It also has very little correlation to the skills required for these jobs. I thought investment banks were smarter than this...
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Online leetcode exercises on Hackerrank. One of the questions was to write an SQL query which included a column containing concatenated rows (=using GROUP_CONCAT) - this is a serious SQL anti-pattern...
I got the HackerRank test less than 10m after my application. I try contacting the HR requesting a call before the test but they do not reply. I decide anyway to work on the test. It is a 60 mins test with 3 challenges, 2 algorithms and 1 SQL. The time provided is not enough to build good quality code. I am talking about splitting the code in multiple short functions, each one with a proper name, single responsability, loosely coupled, reusable code, readability, proper errors management, input checks, and all other stuff that software engineers like. The position is a Lead level, I can't just stick everything in a function and "make the code work". I get an automatic response immediately after I submit the test. I have submitted only the first challenge, that took me 30 mins. I haven't even tried the others. Not enough time for good quality code.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- 1 challenge: you get two strings representing results of a competition for two players. calculate scores and return winner - 2 sql with simple calculations - you get a list of sentences and a list of string, each string has a sequence of wors. Find occurrency of these words in the sentences.
I applied online. I interviewed at UBS (Kraków) in Aug 2021
Interview
I applied it from the UBS job portal. Then, after 1 day I got a HackerRank coding challenge. Even though I solve the challenges and make all tests passed, I did not receive any feedback then. It is really disappointing. I don't recommend this company since it has lack of professionalism and will never consider it for any future opportunities.
