HSBC Interview Experience for Trainee Software Engineer | On-Campus
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HSBC visited our campus on 1st November 2019 and offered Trainee Software Engineer profile. It was open for all branches. It had 3 online rounds followed by 2 rounds of In...
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HSBC visited our campus on 1st November 2019 and offered Trainee Software Engineer profile. It was open for all branches. It had 3 online rounds followed by 2 rounds of Interviews. Online Test: There were 3 online assessment rounds.
Round 1 Online Coding Assessment (30 minutes) Ques1(Very Easy): Given a string, we need to mirror the characters of the string in alphabetical order. In mirror operation, we change ‘a’ to ‘z’, ‘b’ to ‘y’, and so on. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/mirror-characters-string/ Ques2(Easy): Given an array of positive and negative numbers, arrange them such that all negative integers appear before all the positive integers in the array without using any additional data structure(inline) as a hash table, arrays, etc. The order of appearance should be maintained. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/dsa/rearrange-positive-and-negative-numbers/ One question (optimized solution) was sufficient to be shortlisted for the
next round. Out of 69 people, 48 were shortlisted for the next rounds.
Round 2 Online Immersive Assessment (Average duration of 45 minutes, no time limit though) This round was just to identify whether you have the skills required for the role and to assess your suitability for working at HSBC. Questions were asked on some videos or articles related to the role and situations you will be facing inside HSBC, i.e. about new technologies. Many questions were of situational judgment type where answer differs from person to person. They were looking for people having qualities like collaboration, integrity, inclusion, etc. These will be mentioned in one report which you will get after completing the assessment.
Round 3 Job Simulator (No time limit, the average time duration was 30 minutes) This round was almost similar to a virtual interview round. The questions were based on situations you will encounter in HSBC and some were about the new technologies. The webcam was ON during the interview and you have to record your answers in some given time limit. Around 2-4 minutes was given to think about the problem first. After round 3, 20 people were shortlisted for interview round. Interview Rounds : There was one Technical round and one HR round.
1.
Technical Interview 1. Introduce yourself, the obvious question. 2. Which programming languages do you know and why did you choose them? 3. Differences between C and C++. What is Data structure? What are arrays and how they are different from the list? 4. Difference between Python and C/C++ in terms of their implementation. 5. What is API and tell me something about cloud computing? 6. Explain your Internship project. (My project was related to Deep Machine Learning, DML) 7. Which type of DML algorithm did you use in your project and why? 8. What is the difference between the working principle of SGD (Stochastic Gradient Descent) and Adam optimizer (which I used in my project)? 9. Why do you want to switch to the IT/Data Science domain from Mechanical? 10. What is Tensorflow and why did you use it in your project? 11. Any questions?
2. HR interview : 1. Tell me something about yourself which is not mentioned in your Resume. 2. Why do you want to join HSBC? 3. What changes will you bring to HSBC after joining as its employee? 4. How was your Internship and what skills did you acquire from it? 5. Rate yourself in terms of your integrity and why do you think so? 6. What other interviews did you give and why you were not selected in them? 7. Tell me an instance where you had to go against your ethics and principles. 8. If you are given a project with a deadline and you know that you are unable to complete it before that, will you compromise with the quality and stick to a deadline. What will be your reaction to this situation? 9. Why did you prefer IIT Bhubaneswar over other colleges and why Mechanical Engineering stream? 10. Why do you want to shift to IT even after performing very well in Mechanical Engineering? 11. How did you spend your 3 years of college, and how was your experience? 12. Rate yourself in Maths and Computing (as Mathematics was my favorite subject). 13. Where do you see yourself after 3 years? 7 people were finally selected after these 2 rounds. Topics concentrated on: Data Structures & Algorithms, Machine Learning, DBMS, Cloud Computing (If you know) Suggestions : Prepare your Resume well, as they ask questions mostly from Resume (Internship project is what they mostly focus on). Don't include anything in your resume which you don't know very well. If you don't know any answer, just say no and avoid guessing. Basic knowledge about Data Structure and algorithms is very important. Be confident while answering and maintain eye contact with the Interviewer.
About This Question
This is a reported interview question from a hsbc interview for a data science role (intern level) during the oa round reported in 2025.
It covers the following topics: Arrays, Strings, Hash Table, Sql, Ml .
Difficulty rating: Easy
Topics
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About Hsbc Interview Reports
This question was reported by a candidate who interviewed at Hsbc. LeakCode aggregates interview reports from 10+ sources, including 1Point3Acres, Glassdoor, LeetCode Discuss, Blind, Reddit, Indeed, and Nowcoder. Each report is translated where necessary, deduplicated against existing entries, and tagged by company, role, round type, and reporting date.
Use this question as one calibration data point, not a memorization target. Companies typically rotate their question pools every 2-4 months; the exact wording of a 2024 question may differ from what you encounter today. The underlying pattern, difficulty level, and follow-up depth at Hsbc are the higher-signal extractions to take from this report.
For broader preparation context, the Hsbc interview process typically includes a recruiter screen, one or two technical phone screens, and a 4-5 round on-site loop covering coding, system design (at L4+ levels), and behavioral. Reports tagged on LeakCode show the round-by-round distribution and typical difficulty calibration. To browse questions filtered by round type and seniority, use the company hub linked above.
How To Practice This Type of Question
Solve similar problems on LeetCode under timed conditions (25-35 minutes per medium difficulty). The goal is pattern recognition: recognize the underlying technique (sliding window, two-pointer, BFS, memoized recursion, etc.) within 60-90 seconds of reading. Strong candidates verbalize their hypothesis out loud before coding, then iterate based on feedback. Weak candidates dive into implementation immediately, lose time on the wrong approach, and run out of time for follow-ups.
Companies update their question pools every 2-4 months. The exact wording of any given question may have been retired by the time you interview. Focus your prep on the pattern, not the specific problem. The patterns that appear in Hsbc reports consistently are the ones worth investing in; one-off niche problems are not.
During Your Hsbc Round
Apply the standard interview round template: clarify requirements (2-3 minutes), state your approach out loud and confirm direction with the interviewer (3-5 minutes), code with narration (15-25 minutes), test with concrete examples including edge cases (5 minutes), discuss optimization or trade-offs if time permits (5 minutes). This template is universally accepted across FAANG and adjacent companies; deviating from it produces weaker interviewer feedback signal.
The single most predictive failure mode in Hsbc reports tagged "no hire": not asking clarifying questions. Interviewers are explicitly trained to weight this. Strong candidates ask 3-5 clarifying questions even on problems that look obvious; weak candidates dive into code immediately. The clarifying-question check is often the first signal recorded in the interviewer's written notes.