BNY Mellon · Primly Community

BNY Mellon coding interview online assessment: format, difficulty, and what I wish I'd known

qa_quinn · 4 replies

Did the HackerRank OA last month for a mid-level SWE role. Sharing the format because I searched for this and found almost nothing current.

Format: 90 minutes, 2 coding problems.

Problem 1 was arrays/strings. Specifically it involved finding the longest substring meeting some condition. Medium on LeetCode, probably 2 out of 5 stars. If you've done 50 or more medium problems on LeetCode this is not the stressful one.

Problem 2 was a graph problem. Shortest path variant with some additional constraints on which edges were traversable. Again medium difficulty, not hard. BFS/Dijkstra depending on how you read the constraints. I used Dijkstra and it passed all test cases.

No SQL, no system design, no debugging-given-code problem. Pure algo.

Stuff that mattered: Time management. 90 minutes for two problems sounds like plenty but the problem statements were long and a little convoluted. Spend real time reading carefully before coding. I almost implemented something wrong on P1 because I misread the constraint.

Edge cases. I got dinged on one partial test case that was an empty input. Classic. Check those.

Language: I used Python. No restrictions stated, most candidates probably use Python or Java given the environment they're targeting (heavy Java shop internally).

What I'd tell past-me: The OA is not the hard part. The technical phone screen after it was harder, more open-ended. The OA is basically a filter for people who haven't touched any data structures in 6 months.

Worth noting: they do seem to share results from the OA with the interviewers. My phone screen interviewer referenced that I'd solved both problems, so it's not just a pass/fail gate.

Good luck. BNY's process is long but not brutal.

4 replies

newgrad_neil

Were the problems similar to anything on LeetCode Discuss or totally novel? Trying to figure out if I should grind specific problem patterns.

qa_quinn

Classic problem patterns, not novel at all. Sliding window for the string problem, graph traversal for the second. Focus on patterns not memorizing specific problems. If you can explain your approach while coding you're probably fine.

backend_bekah

The 'problem statement was convoluted' thing is so real at financial firms. I think someone writes these problems and then three rounds of legal review happen before they're deployed. Read twice, code once.

hardware_hugo

Honest question: is a medium-difficulty OA actually a meaningful filter at this point? The LeetCode economy is so saturated I wonder if it's just selecting for prep time, not ability.