🚀 FlexTrade – Interview Experience (On-Campus)

📍 On-Campus | Pune
💼 Role: Associate Technical Analyst
🎓 Batch: 2027 | Branch: Information Technology

🏢 Company Overview

FlexTrade Systems is a global financial technology company that provides electronic trading and execution management solutions to financial institutions. Its products are widely used by buy-side and sell-side firms for trading, automation, and managing financial transactions.

📋 Application Process

• Application: On-Campus

• Online Assessment: Conducted at college

• Interview Process: Technical Round 1 → Technical Round 2 (Director) → HR

1️⃣ Online Assessment

⏱ Duration: 75 minutes
📝 Type: MCQ + Coding
📊 Difficulty: Easy to Medium

Topics included:

• Linux / Unix basics

• Linux commands & shell

• Process management

• File & filesystem management

• C / C++ output guessing

• C/C++ concepts & code tracing

• Python basics / coding

• Aptitude

• Basic DSA

The Linux Basics section mainly consisted of questions on Linux commands.

The DSA section had one coding question, with C++ mandatory, based on basic concepts such as arrays, strings, stack and queue.

The Linux Intermediate section was more practical, involving questions where I had to select the correct sequence of steps to perform Linux operations.

The C++ section consisted of basic MCQs covering pointers, references, OOP and code tracing.

2️⃣ Technical Interview – Round 1

📅 Held on 9 September
⏱ Duration: 45 minutes

Main Topics:

• Linux / Unix

• Shell scripting

• C++

• STL

• OOP

• DSA

• Projects

Linux was discussed from basics to moderate level:

• Linux vs Shell

• File/directory commands

• Hidden files

• File permissions (755, 644)

• top, ps, grep, find

• Regular expressions

• Case-insensitive searching

• Process searching/killing

• pgrep, kill, pkill, killall

• Pipes |

He also asked about basic shell scripting, including shebang, chmod, variables and if conditions, and asked me to write a basic shell script.

🔹 Core C++ & STL

Questions covered:

• C++ basics

• Pointers and memory management

• OOP

• Function overloading and overriding using virtual

• STL and commonly used containers

• Copy constructor

• Shallow copy vs Deep copy

• unique_ptr

• shared_ptr

For overloading and overriding, after asking the definitions, he asked me to write the code.

I was able to answer most C++ questions, but I was not able to answer the smart pointer questions completely.

3️⃣ Technical Interview – Round 2

📅 Held approximately 2 hours after Round 1
⏱ Duration: 60 minutes
👨‍💼 Interviewer: Director

This round again focused heavily on C++ and STL, which made it clear to me that these were very important for the role.

There was also a Unix command question related to finding log files, along with some basic Linux questions.

🔹 Company & Role

He asked me about:

• FlexTrade

• The Associate Technical Analyst role

• What I understood about the role

• Buy-side role for technical analyst

• Current products/solutions used by the buy side

He also asked:

“What is the topic on your resume that you know really well?”

I intentionally chose Linux and C++, since after the first interview I understood that these were highly relevant to the role.

🔹 C++ / STL / DSA

The interview again moved toward C++ and STL.

He asked me to find the second largest element in an array. I explained multiple approaches that came to my mind.

He challenged my approach, seemingly trying to confuse me even on simple concepts.

🔹 Operator Overloading

He gave me a rectangle problem:

• Create a Rectangle class with length and breadth.

• Create two objects in main().

• Directly add the two Rectangle objects.

I wrote the solution using operator overloading and explained:

“Operator overloading allows us to define how an existing operator behaves for user-defined objects. Here, + normally works with numeric types, but I overload it so that two Rectangle objects can be added.”

🧩 Puzzles

He asked the 25 horses puzzle, which I was able to solve.

He also asked the 8 balls puzzle, which I solved correctly.

Later, he changed the problem so that we didn't know whether the biased ball was heavier or lighter. I was not able to find the optimal 3-weighing solution under pressure, but I explained a 4-weighing approach.

🔹 Database

He also asked me about the difference between MySQL and PostgreSQL.

4️⃣ HR Interview

📅 Held approximately 15 minutes after Round 2
⏱ Duration: 45 minutes

The HR round mainly focused on my motivation, background, resume and behavioral questions.

Questions included:

• Why Associate Technical Analyst?

• Why FlexTrade?

• Do you understand the work of a buy-side firm?

• What are the current products/solutions used by the buy side?

• How do you handle conflicts in a project?

• What if you are asked to do work outside your responsibility?

• Family background

• Co-curricular activities

• Achievements

She also asked me about both projects mentioned on my resume and discussed them briefly.

HR also asked me if there was any achievement that I had not mentioned in my resume. I told her that I had played cricket, and that my team was the District-level 2nd Runner-up. We discussed cricket for a while and the conversation eventually ended with an interesting question: 

“Then why didn't you choose a career in cricket?” 😄

🎯 Overall Experience

Overall, the interview was strongly focused on C++, STL and Linux/Unix, especially in both technical rounds.

The biggest takeaway for me was that for this role, it is important to know the fundamentals deeply rather than just knowing many topics superficially.

I would recommend preparing:

C++ + STL + Linux/Unix + OOP + DSA + DBMS + Company/Role knowledge + Buy-side / Sell-side basics

Also, don't ignore simple questions. The interviewer may intentionally ask very basic things or challenge your answer just to see how you react under pressure.