Placement Experience | J.P Morgan Chase & Co. | Pushya Bansal

I’m Pushya and I majored in Electronics and Electrical Engineering. I have been a 7 pointer throughout my college life. Had a pretty mediocre resume — no big-wig industry names, no publications. So if you are curious how I made it to JP Morgan as a QR Analyst, read on!

I am currently working with JP Morgan and Chase as a QR Analyst. I am not going to write what should definitely be studied to get into your dream company (because some things work for some people while they don’t for others) but I will share tips that worked for me.

First things first, your resume. I spent quite some time making my resume, because I strongly felt that an interviewer does not only look for a current skill set but also looks for enthusiasm and curiosity for learning new things. So make sure your resume is extremely honest. It is better to leave out a project if you think you don’t know it well and won’t be able to learn by the time the interview process starts, rather than blanking during the process.

Preparation

I started preparing for placements at the end of July, after coming back to college. I practiced the majority of the questions from InterviewBit. If I was not confident about a particular topic, then I practiced those questions on GeeksforGeeks and Leetcode. There were also weekly aptitude tests conducted on Pariksha, I was not really regular, but tried to practice as much as possible.

One of my observations during the tests was the balance between MCQs and coding questions. MCQs would be based on OOPS, OS, aptitude and sometimes probability. Some companies also asked DBMS and some even asked SQL queries. Its not important to have knowledge of each of those topics; prioritise depending upon the kind of profile you are aiming for. In any case, make sure you know OOPS very very well. Hypothetically, say there are 3 coding questions and 30 mcqs, and you have 1.5 hours to solve. So if out of 3 coding questions 2 are of a medium level and the other is very hard, most people won’t be able to solve the third question. In such cases the shortlist is decided by the MCQs. This may not always be the case, but I guess you get my point.

“As important as it is to practice enough before the tests, it is even more important to learn from your mistakes during the tests.”

Make a note of the topics you faced difficulty in, come back with those doubts and make sure those are clarified before you head for the next day. There are ample companies which visit our campus, so even if you mess up one of the tests, don’t lose hope. To keep myself motivated, I maintained a list of the companies whose tests went well. To cope with any anxiety, I made myself a safety cushion, a list of some companies whose tests went well and are not very rigorous in their interview process. Do whatever it takes, whether it is stress eating, stress shopping, revising or coding. Do enough to make yourself feel confident; that is what matters at the end of the day.

Along with coding, I reviewed probability, solved puzzles. I really did not prepare exclusively for quant roles. One of the other things that I also noticed was the length of the questions. Some questions are a really long read and the examples given with the question can be misleading, so make sure you have enough practice of such questions and avoid wasting time in understanding the problem statement. If the question was more than one paragraph long, I used to make note of important points on paper, short/one-word bullet points.

Interview

Coming to the interview, the shortlist for JPMC was released less than 12 hours beforehand. I used most of that time to keep myself calm; in fact, I binge watched friends and slept for most part of it. I wanted to keep myself calm and retain mental as well as physical strength for coming day(s).

The interview process had 5 rounds: 4 technical and one HR round. In the first interview I was asked questions on probability. In the next round were a coding question and a puzzle. The interviewer asked me to give an answer to the puzzle which was different than GeeksforGeeks. I asked him if I could code it, he happily agreed. After he was happy with the code, he asked me a couple of more puzzles, and also asked me if I had seen them before. I was honest and told him that I had, which he really appreciated and he let me off for other rounds.

“Companies value ethics more than we realise as college students.”

In the third round, the interviewer was really intimidating, but at the end of the round, he made me pretty comfortable to answer his questions without any fear. He asked me some more probability questions and some integrations from JEE syllabus. In the fourth round, I was asked two more questions on probability, out of which, one I couldn’t understand. She said we could skip the question and moved on to discuss my resume. I was also asked a proof of a algorithm, which I couldn’t fully derive, but she was pretty happy with the approach.

After the fourth round, they immediately told me I could go for the HR round. HR round was pretty much standard questions. Why JPMC, where do you see yourself in 5 years, what questions do you have for us, one example where you demonstrated team work, discussed PORs.

So, at the end the things which worked for me during the interview were :

1. Communication Skills : While solving any question, I made sure to speak what I was thinking, so that the interviewer was aware of my thought process. Also make sure you are humble and at no point rude to the interviewer (ofcourse, if he/she is being unfair you can make a noisy exit politely).

2. Honesty : Most of the optimal answers to puzzles are not that obvious that one could reach to a solution within 2–3 minutes. So if you have seen a problem before, never lie about it.

3. Resume : I was well versed with my resume, so any conversation around it went pretty smooth.

Other than this, please prioritize during interviews. Make sure you don’t spend too much time on one company and then lose time for the rest of the slot. If you don’t see hope, and their interviews are really long, politely excuse yourself, and have a friend keeping check for your turn. Stay hydrated during the entire process, keep friends by your side, rock that beautiful smile on your face and you’ll kill it!

All the best and Happy coding!