Landing a 6 month internship at BNY Mellon — a journey

Hie! I am Suras Kumar Nayak, a 20 year old Eclectic, Effervescent and Efficacious engineering student pursuing B.Tech in Information Technology from IIIT Allahabad . I am going to take you on a not so small journey of how I managed to land a 6 month internship at BNY Mellon starting from applying to receiving my offer letter.
DISCLAIMER : This is not just an interview experience but rather the flow of my emotions throughout this journey till now from my inner self to the tips of my fingers and onto my keyboard.
How did I apply ?
I am a competitive coder and so I like to solve problems on platforms like Hackerearth, Codechef, Codeforces etc..
It was somewhere in june during my summer vacations while I was solving challenges on Hackerearth (placement preparations of cource.. mehh.) I came across this hiring challenge for 6 months intern at BNY Mellon. I had barely participated in any hiring challenges until then and was curious to know what kind of questions get asked, at the same time I also wanted to check my capabilities so I gave it a shot.
I don’t remember the questions exactly but there were 4 programming questions in total, I was able to solve 3 of them completely and 1 partially. I remember that all the questions were of medium difficulty and were challenging to solve.
Getting Shortlisted
After completing the test I didn’t know if I would get selected or not so I thought not to think about it much and carried on with my daily life. Since I was preparing for my placements and also doing a summer internship I was more focused on that and carried on with my daily routine.
Then in mid july one fine day I received a mail which read “Congratulation! Successfull in BNY Mellon”. It said that I was selected for an interview and would like to fix the timings. I was really happy and excited since this was gonna be my first off campus interviewing while I still haven’t sat for placements yet.
Interview Round 1 — Telephonic
I got the details for my interview. It was conducted on CodePair platform. On the day of the interview I was a little nervous but I kept my cool and confidence and said this to myself, “After all this years of study I have my knowledge and skills, all I need to do is present it properly and give my best”.
The interview started with a brief introduction about myself. Then I was asked about my favorite programming language and the reasons for it. Then the interviewer told that I have an hour of time and would be given two programming questions to solve, the platform had an editor where I had to write my code which would be visible to the interviewer as well.
The first question was a ad-hoc question which I solved within 15 minutes. Then the interviewer moved onto data structures and gave a question on linked list, I had to put a little effort but managed to solve it with 15 minutes as well. After every question she was checking the output with custom inputs and trying to see if my code could pass the corner cases as well. When she was satisfied and said good job, I was really happy inside and I though that maybe I have impressed her (my internal thoughts.. ) then she said since we have time she gave me another question to solve, this was based on string manipulation. It was a little tricky but I was able to solve that as well. She said great job and we were done with the interview.
I was really happy after this round and was confident that I would definitely be shortlisted further but I didn’t want to jinx it.
Interview Round 2 — On Site
I received the mail that I have been selected for the next round and that it was going to be a face-to-face interview at their Pune office with all travel and living expenses paid. After reading this mail I kind of zoned out for a minute and could not believe what I had just read.
I was very excited (the most I have ever been..) and eagerly waiting for the day to finally come and it came. Five star travel and hotel arrangements were made, I had never been to such an extraordinary hotel before and could not believe that I was finally there, I think for a moment I forgot the reason that I had come for.
Anyway on the day of interviews we reached the BNY Mellon office and it was just wonderful, I had never seen such beautiful office interiors ever, it was just mind blowing. There were many people that day who were just like me waiting for the interviews to begin.
Finally the wait was over and I was called in. I was really nervous (of course..) but once we broke the ice I felt comfortable and was ready to answer any question asked.
The interviewer asked me about the coding challenge and telephonic round. Then he dove into my resume and asked me about my summer internship, since the company I interned for was also a fintech company he asked me about my experience, the kind of work I did and the challenges that I faced. Then he asked me about my projects, I had some interesting projects and so we had a good long discussion on it.
Now comes a very interesting part. He then asked me about what kind of problems I would like to solve with modern technology, I answered by saying,
‘’Everyday new problems would arise and solutions would be found but for whom are we doing it for? how many people are being benefited it from? is it something that would help to build a better society? Though I have the ambition to solve huge complex computer science problems but at the same time I also aim to use technology for simpler tasks like betterment of the society and betterment of the human race which is equally important and rather a neglected fact.’’
My words may not have been exact but my emotions were the same. He was very impressed by my answer and saw the soft side of me and praised me. Then we moved onto further questions where he asked me about my shot term and long term goals and we concluded by having a discussion on the kind of work done at BNY Mellon and the technology stack being used.
It was a very interesting round since it was more like an intellectual discussion rather than a cliche technical interview. I enjoyed it a lot.
Getting Selected
After clearing all these rounds one by one finally I got the mail that I was waiting for. it said
‘’Congratulations! We are happy to inform you that post your interviews you have been selected for the internship with BNY Mellon Technology.’’
I was on cloud 9. This was the best day of my life. I had the biggest smile that not even the most delicious food could ever bring on my face. I have also memorized the date August 27, 2019.

The offer letter
Getting selected and all is fine but the deal is not closed until you get the offer letter. But finally I got my offer letter and now I could officially brag about it to everyone. I also ordered ice cream for my parents at home to celebrate.
The letter addressed to me as Mr. Suras Kumar Nayak. I have never been given such respect before in a letter, but then of course I have never received such a formal letter either so there’s that.
Compensations being offered
SSuuussssssshhhhh….!!! this is very confidential and cannot be revealed. But I can give some hints.
- It is a 5 digit value.
- It has at least 2 zeros at the end.
- It is definitely greater than what my friends are gonna get at Amazon and Flipkart. (It’s all that matters…)

Yup that’s me, the awesome human being I am…
It has been a great journey till now and I am really excited and just can’t wait to continue my further journey at BNY Mellon.
#bnymellon #bebnymellon #internship #corporatelife
