BNY Mellon Internship Interview Experience 🎯

Hello everyone! I’m sharing my BNY Mellon internship interview experience to help juniors who are preparing for campus placements and internship opportunities.

🏢 Company & Role

• Company: BNY Mellon

• Role: Software Engineering Intern

• Mode: On-Campus

• College: Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT)

• Selection Process: Online Assessment + 2 Interview Rounds

📅 Application & Online Assessment

BNY Mellon conducted an on-campus opportunity at PICT. Around 500 students appeared for the offline Online Assessment (OA).

The OA pattern was quite different from the previous year. From what I had heard, the previous year's OA consisted of 4 DSA questions — 2 Medium and 2 Hard. This time, however, the pattern was:

• 2 DSA questions

• 1 Development/Debugging question

• An AI assistant was also available during the assessment.

💻 Question 1 — Array | Medium

The first question was based on an array.

Given an array, in one operation, we could select two adjacent elements and replace them with their sum, thereby reducing the size of the array by one. The objective was to make the resulting array a palindrome using the minimum number of operations.

The main idea involved a two-pointer/greedy approach.

🌳 Question 2 — Graph | Hard

The second question was considerably harder.

We were given an undirected tree, and an operation allowed us to remove a current leaf node. We could perform the operation at most K times, and the goal was to find the minimum possible diameter of the remaining tree.

The solution required combining tree/graph concepts with binary search on the answer.

This was definitely the tougher of the two DSA problems for me.

🛠️ Question 3 — Development

The third question was related to development/debugging, involving a music-system application.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact problem statement, so I don't want to give an inaccurate description.

📊 OA Result

I was able to solve one question completely and one partially.

Out of approximately 500 students, 39 candidates were shortlisted for the interview process.

The results were announced on 8th August, and the interviews were scheduled for 10th August.

🧑‍💻 Round 2: Technical Interview

The first interview round was described as a Technical Round, but personally, I found the questions to be quite challenging.

The interview started with the usual "Tell me about yourself", after which the interviewer went deep into my projects and the technologies I had used.

Fortunately, I was comfortable explaining my projects and tech stack, so this part went smoothly. There wasn't much cross-questioning or follow-up beyond that.

💻 DSA

The interviewer then moved to DSA.

Interestingly, I wasn't asked to write complete code. Instead, I was expected to explain the approach and perform a dry run.

The questions were mostly based on standard DSA patterns, but they were the kind of questions where the approach needed to click quickly, roughly around the LeetCode Medium level.

I was able to solve the 3–4 DSA questions that were asked.

🧩 Puzzle

After DSA, the interviewer suddenly moved to a puzzle question.

This was unexpected for me because I hadn't specifically prepared for puzzles, and I ended up fumbling a bit here.

So, one important takeaway for me was:

Don't prepare only DSA, DBMS and OOP. Be prepared for unexpected logical/puzzle-based questions as well.

🤝 HR/Behavioral Questions

Towards the end, the interviewer asked some situational and behavioral questions, such as:

• How would you handle an argument within a team?

• What would you do if the workload wasn't distributed equally?

• How would you handle an emergency situation?

• How would you deal with problems while working in a team?

I was able to answer these questions confidently.

The interview went reasonably well overall, but because I had struggled with the puzzle, I wasn't sure whether I would make it to the next round.

Fortunately, I was shortlisted for the second round! 🎉

🧑‍💻 Round 3: Technical + Resume Interview

The second round took place after the lunch break.

Initially, I assumed this would mainly be an HR round, but it turned out to be a combination of Technical + Resume-based questions.

Again, it started with my introduction.

However, this time the interviewer gave me some key points that he expected me to cover in my introduction, such as:

• Family background

• Strengths

• Weakness

• Other personal/professional aspects

So, instead of simply giving my prepared introduction, I had to adapt it based on what the interviewer was looking for.

🧱 OOP

The interviewer then moved to Object-Oriented Programming and asked questions based on OOP concepts.

🗄️ DBMS

After OOP, the discussion moved towards DBMS.

The interviewer asked conceptual questions as well as SQL queries, and I had to write the queries during the interview.

This round involved both theoretical understanding and practical application.

📄 Resume Discussion

There was also discussion around the projects and technologies mentioned on my resume.

The round ended with me getting an opportunity to ask questions to the interviewer.

Overall, I felt that the second round went really well. However, just like after the first round, I still wasn't completely sure about the final result.

🎉 Final Outcome

And finally, the result was announced...

SELECTED! ✅🎉

Getting selected for the BNY Mellon internship was an amazing experience, especially because after both interview rounds I wasn't completely confident about the outcome.

💡 My Takeaways for Juniors

If you're preparing for BNY Mellon or similar product-based companies, I would recommend focusing on:

• DSA: Especially Medium-level problems and standard patterns.

• Problem-solving: Be ready to explain your approach and dry-run it without necessarily writing code.

• OOP: Know the concepts properly and understand their real-world applications.

• DBMS: Prepare both concepts and SQL queries.

• Projects: Know every technology mentioned in your resume and be able to explain your project end-to-end.

• SQL: Practice writing queries without relying on autocomplete.

• Aptitude/Puzzles: Don't completely ignore logical puzzles because interviewers may surprise you.

• HR/Behavioral: Prepare situations related to teamwork, conflicts, workload management and handling unexpected problems.

• Introduction: Don't memorize it word-for-word. Be flexible enough to modify it according to the interviewer's questions.

Most importantly, don't get discouraged if one part of the interview doesn't go perfectly. I personally fumbled during the puzzle round and still made it to the next round and eventually got selected.

I’m sharing this experience hoping it helps juniors preparing for their upcoming placements and internships.

All the best! Keep preparing and stay confident. 🚀