okay so i just finished the capital one new grad software engineer loop and i have a lot of feelings. writing this partly to process, partly because i spent a long time looking for recent posts and couldn't find much specific to the entry level track.
capital one's new grad pipeline has a few phases. there's usually a hackerrank OA first (for campus recruiting), then a virtual technical interview, then a final loop that's either virtual or onsite depending on the role and team. my path was: online assessment, then a final virtual day with 3 rounds.
the OA. two coding problems, 90 minutes. mine were medium difficulty on the data structures side. one involved a modified BFS on a grid, one was a string manipulation problem. standard hackerrank format. they use a plagiarism detector so don't even think about it.
the technical interview. one coding question, about 45 minutes. they gave me a problem involving linked lists. the interviewer asked me to walk through my approach before coding, which is always the right move. they also asked me a couple of conceptual questions about time/space complexity and when you'd use a hash map vs. a tree.
behavioral rounds. this is where i was least prepared. capital one is SERIOUS about behavioral at every level, including new grad. they use STAR format and they'll ask you to go deeper if your example is vague. i got: 'tell me about a project you led,' 'tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate,' and 'why capital one specifically (not just tech).'
that last one tripped people up in my cohort. you need an actual answer about why a fintech company, why financial services, not just 'it's a great company.' they want to know you thought about it.
prep resources i used. leetcode medium, mostly arrays/strings/graphs/dp. i did 60-70 problems over 6 weeks. for behavioral i wrote out 8 stories from projects and internships and made sure each one could answer 3-4 different questions.
comp. my new grad offer for SWE was around $110k base, $10k signing, and small annual bonus. no equity (capital one doesn't give equity to most SWE roles, that's not a bug, just how they comp). for entry level in mclean that felt fair but definitely below FAANG new grad.
one thing: they're pretty friendly interviewers. i was nervous about capital one being a big finance company but the engineers were chill.