Capital One Analyst development program
I've been invited to the final round of interviews in Richmond, Va. I have not had a formal interview with the company yet, but I got a reference from someone that worked there, and apparently did pretty well on an online assessment they gave me. From perusing the forums, I've seen a few topics about this program. Can anyone who's interviewed for this program tell me a little about:
-what the interview is like
-the ratio of people who make to out to Virginia vs how many people are offered
-about how long it takes them to get back to you
-starting pay
-upward mobility. Specifically, it looks like they're recruiting business analysts and data analysts from my school. Finance Rotation program was only listed on the virginia schools.
Interview is case format. I've never done a case interview but it ended up being a breeze. Interviewer helps walk you through the entire case.
Do your prep on the company and don't be like me. I scheduled the Capital One interview after I had all of my finance interviews because I just wanted some more interview experience. I'd say a lot of people move on b/c I thought I did a terrible job and still got a 2nd interview round offer.
Good luck.
The email said "Final round" on mine, but you said had one after? So you got through this case format interview, but then not past round 2?
??
There's only 1 super day after taking online tests. The director of HR is a very nice woman--their entire HR department is great in fact (one of the few very good ones I've heard of/been exposed to) and the company would be a very nice, relaxing fit for a lot of people I think. The cases are quite easy if you've prepared at all and are intelligent and, from what I saw, it is based a lot more on fit and if they think you'll stay longer term than anything else.
I didn't even take the online test. Got one of my top choices and I wouldn't have taken the offer, so I called the recruiter and politely declined to move on.
Company culture is more collaborative and laid-back than anything banking-related, from my experience.
I'm confused how you got a '2nd round final' when there is no first round interview from anything I've seen/heard/experienced? That was why I put the ????
The format is fairly simple:
2x fit/behavioral 2x cases
If you get asked to do a third case its because they are on the fence about you so get your fourth quarter mojo going if that happens to you.
They can come in any order but typically they will alternate along the lines of fit, case, fit, case. The fit interviews don't mean shit so long as you refrain from saying something along the lines of "I'm an axe murderer and will definately murder people in this office with an axe starting with the asians..." If you are going for a data analyst job you can get by with barely speaking English so long and you do ok on the cases. Come to think of it, a DA manager did one of my behaviorals and she barely spoke English. If you get dinged for fit, you are a social failure of the highest magnitude.
The cases are straight forward you'll get coached a bit through them. Take all the time and think about your responses, mainly we want to see how you solve a simple problem and the explanation is at least as important as the answer, particularly for the BA roles. That said, don't be wrong.
Also I hope your handle is because you are a lifelong A&M fan and not that you actually went to A&M because most likely you'll be a DA or an operations analyst if you get an offer, both roles are back office (and at a credit card company that means learn you some Chinese). The finance rotation program is also a mixed bag, there is some sexy work to be done in corporate finance but the vast majority of it is counting the money that BA make, you'll never make a single business decision in 95% of finance jobs. Plus their cases and math tests are easier and they go to inferior schools typically.
If you get an offer, feel free to PM me and I'll give you the skinny on some of your other topics but until then this is the best I can do. Good luck.
On the campus recruiting page, A&M is listed for business analyst and data analyst. Finance Rotation program isn't an A&M target, but its listed for Virginia Tech which is ranked lower than A&M by US News. I can't find any undergrad business rankings from us news, but the mba rankings put the business schools at Penn State, RIce, and Maryland below A&M as well.
It sounds like you work there so I'll take your word for it if you say there aren't a lot of A&M alum in the BA program. One look at our career center website seems to back up your assertion. I see a couple BA and OA Capital One positions on our career center surveys, but not many.
However, since I did well enough on the online assessment to get an invitation and since it generally sounds like interesting work from what I've researched, I'm interested to learn as much about it as I can. I realize I'm not going to be as marketable as the people with degrees from Duke, UVA, Cornell but would you say working as a data analyst at Cap One is a good opportunity relative to the average opportunity that presents itself to an A&M grad? Its not like I'm turning down offers to work at MBB.
Yes, deffinately. The might not be super interesting but you'll be learning a fairly marketable skill. Exit opportunities would be along the lines of database marketing consulting or any consumer financial products companies from banks to insurance that will use a lot of data driven decisioning. As with most large companies, the team you end up on is the largest determining factor of job satisfaction, but you'll have the opportunity to move around every 18-24 months if you are a good performer. If you are an American citizen with a DA's skillset, you'll never have trouble finding a job in the foreseeable future. If you impress your case study interviewers you could get a BA offer and we have incredibly aggressive hiring goals this year. Also I'm speaking for card specifically on all my comments, I don't know much about the culture in the business in Plano (Auto Finance and Mortgage) so maybe that is where the A&M people go. Also most BA's have engineering, hard science or quantatative economics backgrounds and outside of the finance department undergraduate business school graduates are relatively few and far between. That won't necessarily ding you but you'll have to make it clear you think a lot harder than linking balance sheets requires. And to answer your question, I think it’s a pretty decent company certainly one of the better ones in F500 in terms of quality of people in analytic/business leader roles. Entry level offers are above F500 average and to put it in perspective if I was given the choice between Deloitte/Accenture caliber consulting or working in one of the better groups here out of college I'd work at COF. Also if you get an offer you could end up in New York, Plano, Richmond or DC and may not have any say over where they put you though I figure after 4 years at College Station all those options are probably upgrades. Cheers and good luck.
Just bumping this thread as I just got back from a final round at cap one's richmond offices.
Is it fatal to get a case wrong? On the first case, there were three separate steps involving calculations. I tihnk I got the first two right, but the third I might have gotten wrong because I got a different answer than another kid who got the same case.
They also took my scratch paper to check my work at the end of the interview: how important is it to have neatly delineated work? I kinda wrote numbers all over the place and my paper was quite messy.
double post
I'm sure you aren't the first one to tear up a piece of scratch paper dude, I doubt anyone takes the neatness of your harried calculations into account.
Haha as you can tell I'm extremely neurotic about this offer.. It just seemed like such a wonderful place to work at.. I would be devastated if I don't get an offer.
:(
Capital One Business Analyst Development Program (Originally Posted: 03/13/2013)
I recently got an offer from Cap One BADP, and accepted it over some other PE shops. What options will I have at the end of the summer if I decide that Capital One isn't the place for me? How would you approach jumping into management or strategic consulting or banking?
I'm sure it'll be solid work experience for top bschool apps.
Anyone interview for Capital One Analyst Development Program? (Originally Posted: 02/04/2013)
I know it's not really considered a Consulting job, but the interview is a case interview, which is similar to most consulting interviews. I know it's math based, and I've done their online case review. I even went to a mock interview.
I was wondering if anybody has gone through the process. What's the difficulty? Everywhere I look, I see that people make it to the 2nd round, but I rarely see any offers.
It's not really all that difficult, and many of the people I know actually got offers. It's not a case interview so much as it is a math test that you're talking through with the interviewer. There isn't much strategic thinking involved or frameworks to draw from. It's very straightforward, and the interviewer tells you what path to take. You just have to know what math to do to get there.
Make you sure you know P= pQ - (FC + MC). Chances are you'll be asked basic questions about finding profit under various scenarios. As long as you know basic math you'll be good.
^ In comparison to a MBB Case interview, it's pretty easy. I don't think many of the people interviewing for Capital One aren't getting those obscure cases from strategy firms. I personally found it much more straightforward and less demanding than the others. Statistically most people are getting killed because most people suck at math.
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