Wells Fargo Interview Experience for SDE Intern (On-Campus) - GeeksforGeeks (2024)

Wells Fargo conducted an on-campus recruitment drive specifically aimed at hiring talented Software Development Engineer (SDE) Interns. This drive was focused on pre-final year college students, offering them an opportunity to secure an internship with the organization and gain valuable industry experience before their graduation. More than 100 students applied for the internship process.

The process mainly involved 3 rounds:

1. Online Assessment Round: This initial round consisted of both aptitude questions and coding problems, testing the candidates’ problem-solving skills and programming abilities.
2. Technical Interview: This round assessed candidates on their technical expertise and understanding of core fundamentals.
3. Final Round: For some candidates, this round was exclusively technical; for others, it focused on HR aspects; and for some, it combined both, evaluating their technical skills, interpersonal abilities, cultural fit within the organization, and overall suitability for the internship position.

Each round will be discussed in detail further.

Round-1: Online Assessment (100 mins)

The test was divided into three sections: Verbal, Business Aptitude, and Coding.

1. Verbal: This section tested grammatical skills, vocabulary, and comprehension. Tasks included identifying grammatical errors, filling in the blanks, and forming paragraphs. Those with a moderate understanding of English generally found this section manageable.
2. Business Aptitude: This section featured questions requiring the interpretation of business data presented in graphs and charts. It involved analyzing data, interpreting graphs, and performing calculations. The difficulty level was moderate. It’s advisable to carefully examine the options, as straightforward questions might have tricky answers.
3. Coding: In this section, candidates faced two coding problems to be solved within 60 minutes. One problem involved linked lists, while the other was based on the Greedy Algorithm. The difficulty of these questions ranged from easy to medium.

I did my best on the test. I completely solved one coding question and got half of the test cases right on the other coding question. It is also important to note that each section is timed which means you need to complete one section in order to proceed to another section. It’s worth noting that the compiler didn’t support many common libraries, so you need to be careful about that. Out of all the students who took the test, only 27 moved on to the next rounds and I was one of them.

Round-2: Technical Interview (40-45 mins)

The interview took place over Zoom with two interviewers. At the start, I was quite nervous, but the interviewers were friendly and helped me calm down by chatting a bit before diving into the questions.

First, they asked me about the basics of React.js. They asked me some fundamental concepts like the difference between state and props, how lifecycle methods work in class components, and using hooks in functional components. They also about best practices for managing state and handling side effects, I explained it using examples from my past work.

Next, we moved on to database management and SQL. They asked about topics like normalization (organizing a database to reduce redundancy) and indexing (which helps make database searches faster). I also had to answer them some SQL queries, like finding the top five customers by sales and joining multiple tables to get useful information.

Then, they asked about Wells Fargo. I talked about what I knew regarding the company’s history, its main areas of business, and recent news. I also explained why I wanted to work there and how my skills would be a good fit.

After that, they asked some questions about data structures and algorithms. They wanted to know how I would approach problems using arrays, strings, and hash maps. For instance, they asked me to find the length longest substring without repeating characters, which involved thinking about efficient ways to traverse and store data.

Finally, they asked if I had any questions. I asked about the team I’d be working with, the technologies they use, the company culture, opportunities for growth, and the next steps in the hiring process. This gave me a better idea of what to expect if I got the job.

Overall, the interview was thorough and challenging, covering a wide range of topics that tested my technical knowledge, problem-solving skills, and understanding of Wells Fargo. The friendly nature of the interviewers helped make the experience less stressful and more enjoyable. After some time I got a message from my Training and Placement Cell that I was shortlisted for the final round. I was very happy and nervous at the same time.

References for Preparation:

1. DBMS Interview Questions
2. SQL Interview Questions
3. React.js Interview Questions
4. Longest substring without repeating characters DSA Problem

Round-3: Final Round

For the final round of my interview, I met with a machine learning expert who led the technical discussion. As we began, he started with some general questions, asking why I wanted to join the company and what made me to apply for the position. After this warm-up, he asked some puzzles to test my problem-solving skills.

The first puzzle involved two water containers, one of 3 liters and the other of 5 liters, and a tap. The challenge was to measure out exactly 4 liters of water using only these containers and the tap. After pondering for a moment, I proposed a strategy involving filling and pouring water between the containers in a specific sequence to achieve the desired volume.

Following this, he asked another puzzle set in a room with three light bulbs and three switches outside the room. The task was to identify each switch’s corresponding bulb by manipulating the switches, but the catch was that I could only open the door once. I carefully considered the scenario and devised a plan to deduce the connections between the switches and the bulbs with just one opportunity to observe the room’s lighting.

Transitioning to the machine learning part (he asked me questions from this part because I mentioned Machine Learning in my resume), he delved into topics like epochs, model training, and validation sets. He inquired about my experience in machine learning, asked me to discuss projects I had worked on and the techniques I had employed. He asked me the questions on the concept of learning rate and its significance in training machine learning models, discussing how it influences the convergence and optimization of the learning process.

As the conversation progressed, he asked additional machine learning questions on the topics such as:

• Different types of machine learning algorithms and their applications.
• The role of feature selection and dimensionality reduction in model training.
• Techniques for handling imbalanced datasets and overfitting.
• The importance of evaluation metrics in assessing model performance and selecting appropriate algorithms.

Throughout the interview, the machine learning expert provided valuable insights and guidance, creating a stimulating environment for discussion. His questions allowed me to demonstrate my understanding of machine learning principles and techniques, showcasing my readiness to contribute to challenging projects within the company.

Overall, the final round was quite interesting, offering a comprehensive assessment of my machine learning knowledge and problem-solving abilities.

References for preparation:

1. 3 Bulbs and 3 Switches Puzzle
2. Measure 4 liter with 3 and 5 liter bottle
3. Machine Learning Interview Questions

On the same day at around 8:00 PM we got the results of this company for the internship program. They selected a total of 7 students, sadly I was not one among them. But, still this interview gave me a lot of exposure as it was my first ever corporate interview. Taking the learnings from this interview and aiming for even bigger in the near future.