Capital One

Capital One Interviews

1. Sep 17, 2021

   Product Development Program Interview

   Anonymous Employee in Richmond, VA

   No Offer

   Positive Experience

   Average Interview

   Application

   I applied through an employee referral I interviewed at Capital One (Richmond, VA) in Sep 2021

   Interview

   First interview completed so far called the (Mini Case. - Product), haven't been invited for the second one and I can't comment on an offer because the process is ongoing. The first one is to screen out candidates that don't fit. Interviewer was nice and it was a good experience. At this stage before the interview, a week or so, the recruiter will give you some product or service of Capital One, literally nothing else in my case, they'll give you a link to a case study video, the one that is 20 min, but it doesn't apply until later stages of the interview process. They simply give you the name of the service that you will be interviewing for and 3-4 links to read through about GENERAL interview guidance, not specific. Your experience could be different, but here is my interview experience for their CreditWise service.
   
   I prepared and researched for questions that the product mini case interview was on. Search CIRCLES method on youtube, you'll see a video with more than 16k views and a person sitting in front of a desk. I am describing the thumbnail because I am not sure if I can link it in this review. It is 10 minutes and 12 seconds. Very helpful if you are used to the STAR method and not the CIRCLES method. I didn't really use the CIRCLES method, but that was my mistake, but then again some of the questions didn't fit the criteria of the circles method because the circles method mostly applies to questions about a product or service you are trying to build.
   
   I prepared for about 10 days at 1 hour a day. Adjust as needed. I made a google doc about the service they were going to ask about and noted pros and cons of the service and why I thought they were pros and cons, I wrote all my thoughts down in this google doc and just wrote anything else that might've been useful for the interview. I used this google doc to jog my memory an hour and a half right before the interview. The benefit of preparation is that, when similar questions come up, you are ready to go and that stuff just comes out of your mouth naturally. It doesn't sound memorized if you add just a few brief pauses here and there to simulate authentic answers.
   
   Finally, I would say the biggest thing is to practice questions about how revenue is generated for the product, how you can improve the product, conflicts when building the product, UI changes to the product. Literally think of good questions and frame them in these categories to practice, I had no one to practice with so I practiced on my own. YOU CAN DO THIS! I BELIEVE IN YOU!
   
   Good luck and remember to prepare quality answers!
   

   Interview

   Why Capital One? Tell me about yourself? How does creditwise generate revenue for the company? How can Capital One drastically increase the revenue from creditwise? Before launching creditwise, how would you determine the market share of the service? One answer is to talk about the number of users that might be attracted to the platform. Also remember to have calculations on how you got to that answer, for example there are x million people in the US, out of that, how many users are using the competitor's service, how many users are using x service, so if we subtract those numbers, you'll get xyz, I believe that a good estimate would be x users brought to our new platform because of those calculations. Something like that. That is what I thought of at the top of my head, not saying is was the right answer, but I think that is good. You can't possibly know these types of questions ahead of time, so try your best. What improvements would you make with the designs of this proposed product? (showed me mobile app designs and asked for improvements) You're working on the project and need a technical solution provided by a different team at Capital One, you talk to their product manager but they have a high priority tasks already and don’t believe they will be able to help you for the next 6 months, even though you need their help right now. You set up a meeting with their team’s senior leadership to propose a solution and come to some type of compromise. What would you do before the meeting, during the meeting, and after the meeting? Talk about how to efficiently shift resources (headcount) or something else so that neither of the projects are blocked and can move forward normally towards completion. Any good ideas along the lines of that for before, during, and after the meeting. Talk about influence, approval of resources, approval from design ,engineering, other senior leadership to begin with. Stuff like that, it shows you are thinking like a real PM. What technical requirements would you build out for the sign up feature for new users on the credit wise platform? I talked about Image recognition, database validation, etc. This was for a driver license based sign up feature in the app, so you take a picture of your driver license to sign up instead of filling out information manually. The whole point is to remove customer pain points. Again, that was my example that I was given, yours could be the same product or service, but different functionality. being asked about. Let’s say Montana has redesigned how their driver licenses look, now you need to make an adjustment to the creditwise sign up feature and how it'll work for new users that have a Montana driver's license, how would you do this? I just said that you would need some sort of added extension to the application where you can add a question right before they sign up that asks them if they are a Montana resident, that way the image recognition feature will be a little different, but it'll get the same result as everyone else, a seamless sign up process for credit wise. How would you measure the success of this creditwise sign up feature? Talk about one or two of the following depending on its fit within your use case: A/B experiment, switchback experiment, synthetic control experiment, power analysis experiment. These are some things I learned during Uber's APM Summit Program, but don't know how it was perceived by the interviewer, although they were nice I couldn't tell how well I was doing, maybe it was their personality, I couldn't tell. How would you improve creditwise? Pick an area of the application (design, features, etc), dive deep and talk about solutions for it that'll generate revenue and remove customer pain points. I compared it with credit card approval odds that NerdWallet has on their platform and how if Capital One implemented something like that, it could generate a lot of revenue for the company because the users can sign up through creditwise with some type of regular credit card incentive and they could increase their customer base this way because more people would be attracted to the platform if it actually competed with the big competitors like creditkarma or nerdwallet. A few others, but I can’t remember them honestly. Study these and whatever service you are given, it could be completely different. Remember to vocalize your thoughts, be concise, effective, and practice! Good luck to whoever is reading this, remember even if you don't get it, you are one step closer to your goal of being a PM or something else like a Product Marketing Manager. If anything, it was a learning experience of how interviews are done for this program. Remember to post your experience as well. I could be doing something more important right now, but I want to help others land these amazing opportunities that lead to high paying careers.

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