This is about Prague (Czech Republic) development office of BarCap. Once you get passed the 3rd party recruiter company, where the initial process might be very different, BarCap inverview and hiring process is quite established - everything is happening fast enough, always as agreed with the applicant and on purpose.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
BarCap is usually requiring prooven experience in certain technologies, like SQL/T-SQL, multithreading, etc. and they are seriously asking about it on interviews and are canceling applicants with not enough knowledge, experience in these technologies.
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Overall, the process felt outdated, disconnected from how software is actually written, and more reflective of academic memorisation than professional engineering competence.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.
