I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Barclays in Nov 2009
Interview
I was approached by a Headhunter for a profile at Barclays Capital in Singapore. My current profile matched well with the one offered. I decided to take the interview. My resume was shortlisted and I first had a telephonic interview.
Questions in the telephonic interview were fairly difficult. It was a C# profile. Questions began with explaining past experience and topics covered were threading, event handling, delegates, winforms, database connectivity. I could answer 80% of the questions.
A few days later I received a call from the consultant saying I was shorlisted and invited for a personal interview. There was another round of tech interview- similar to the first one covering more or less the same topics. Another round was the HR round which consisted of questions like why Barclays, why do you wish to leave your current job,etc.
Two days later, I got a confirmation offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In WCF, how would you throw an event from the service provider to the client side? How will the client answer this
The interview felt less like an assessment of Java engineering ability and more like a pub quiz for obscure syntax trivia. Instead of exploring problem-solving, design decisions, debugging skills, or real-world development experience, the focus seemed to be on recalling exact language details that most professional developers would simply look up in seconds.
It's a curious hiring strategy: rejecting people who know how to build software because they can't instantly recite syntax that modern IDEs autocomplete for them anyway
Overall, the process felt outdated, disconnected from how software is actually written, and more reflective of academic memorisation than professional engineering competence.
Initial CGPA based screening.
Three rounds in total post that.
First eliminatory round consisted of DSA and sql round for screening.
Difficulty Leet Code Medium.Strings question.
Pen paper DSA in person. Leet Code Easy. A sorting variant.
HR or behavioural round.
Final verdict: Selected
I arrived at the Barclays Munich office on Leopoldstraße. A friendly recruiter named Katharina welcomed me. We discussed Java microservices, Kubernetes deployments, and team culture. The atmosphere felt professional yet relaxed. Overall, a positive experience.
