How I got a Summer Internship at Credit Suisse

7 min readJan 12, 2022

So it’s been around two months since I interviewed for Credit Suisse, a global Investment bank headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, for the role of Technology Intern. I have decided to write about my overall experience throughout the whole recruitment procedure.

Overview

In a nutshell, the procedure for the recruitment looked something like this:

As it was an on-campus recruitment drive, I submitted my resume and a few other details.
After the resume filtering, I received the online test link.
After a couple of days, I got shortlisted for the interviews.
After two interviews, I was able to bag the internship.

So let’s get started with the whole internship recruitment experience!

Round One: The Online Test

Clearing the Online Test was a huge challenge for me as I was pretty new to Competitive Programming. The test was conducted on HackerEarth. The pattern was 2 MCQ questions (6 marks each) and 3 Programming questions (Two 50 marks questions and One 100 marks question).

The MCQ questions were completely random. The questions I received were based on Microsoft SQL Server and Hadoop Hive, while others received questions based on XML, PostgreSQL, C#, Java, Python and other stuff. I did not know the answer to either of the questions so I just guessed it, as answering each question was mandatory.

The three programming questions were as follows (Not the exact questions, framed according to my memory and rough work):

Max Divisor Tree (50 M): Given a tree with a root node N, which has a property that the children of any node are one of the factors of that node (except 1 and the number itself). What is the maximum height of the tree?
I solved this question, passing all 10 test cases.
The Abandoned City (50 M): You are in an abandoned city and the only way to get out is by paying some coins. To collect these coins you need to traverse some of the N houses. Every ith house has a maximum of Ai coins. You can start traversing from any house but you can only go in one direction i.e. left or right. To get out of the city you need to pay K coins. Find the minimum number of houses you need to visit to get out of the city (-1 if it is not possible to get out).
I solved this question partially, passing 6/10 test cases.
Number of ones (100 M): You are given a binary string with 3 ones and 2 zeroes. After an operation, it has 4 ones and 3 zeroes. The operations follow the pattern:
No. of 1s in ith string = No. of 1s in (i-1)th string + 3 * No. of 0s in (i-2)th string.
No. of 0s in ith string = 2 * No. of 0s in (i-1)th string + 2 * No. of 1s in (i-2)th string
Given N find the number of ones in the Nth string. Return the answer modulo 10⁹ + 7.
I solved this question partially, passing 4/10 test cases.

The overall difficulty of the MCQs was Hard and that of the Programming questions was Intermediate.

32 students were selected for the second round and I was one of them.

Round Two: The Technical Interview

This interview was supposed to be a Technical Interview and I was expecting a lot of questions about stuff like Data Structures and Algorithms, however, it was a lot more like a techno-HR round for me.
Platform: Zoom
Time: 35-40 mins

We were made to wait in the lobby till our turn. Then we were sent into a breakout room from where we were sent to the rooms for an interview. There were 2 interviewers for me. The first one asked me more tech-oriented questions while the other asked more situation-based questions. Both the interviewers were super friendly.

Firstly, I was asked to tell about myself and my achievements throughout my journey. My introduction went on for about 8–10 mins because I did not want to miss out on any information.

I covered my marks from 10th, 12th, CET, JEE and current CGPA (because they asked about it). Then moved on to my journey in Mobile App Development and how I started with Web Technologies recently. Talked about the clubs I am a part of, my positions in those clubs and all activities I have conducted/been a part of. Then I talked about my previous internships and projects.

First Interviewer:

I don’t know much about Flutter (The projects I mentioned in my introduction were mostly in Flutter). Can you explain it to me? Described Flutter and Dart in short.
Is Dart/Flutter similar to Kotlin? Explained my views about how I felt that most of the features of Dart seem like they are taken from various languages like Javascript and Java.
Questions related to one of my projects (Fast n’ fresh) which is an e-commerce grocery delivery mobile app and my responsibilities while working on the projects.
Asked about my current internships and how big of a team I have worked with.
Asked whether I worked in an agile manner in the internship. I had no idea what agile is but I explained the way I worked at my previous internships.
Asked whether I know about DBMS. I answered I have it in my current semester so I know about it a bit but I don’t personally like the theory part of it and am more interested in the practicals.
Asked me what is metadata? I answered data about the data present in the database. (I knew what metadata meant in HTML so this was an educated guess).
Asked me about what data structures I have studied so far. I said I am comfortable with linear data structures like arrays, queue, stack, linked lists. But I am not comfortable with advanced data structures like trees and graphs.

Second Interviewer:

You have mostly worked with a team of 2-3 people, did you know any of these people beforehand (through college, etc.)?
Are you fine working with people you don’t already know?
What would you do if you were with a team of people who kept asking doubts? Would you be frustrated? Gave an example of how the junior-senior relation/doubt-solving in PICT works.
Would you be better off working with people from different countries with different cultures or people from India? And would it affect the project in either of the conditions?
Would working with someone who is disabled or handicapped affect the project?
In a situation where a goof-up happened from your side and the team decided that they would be willing to take the blame together, would you go with the team or take the blame? Gave my opinions.
Would you be better off working with a team of 5 females where everyone has different experiences or with a team of people you have known? This was a very weird/funny question and almost made me crack up!

Do you have any questions?

How long does it usually take for an individual’s work to get recognized at Credit Suisse?
In the pre-placement talks, it was mentioned that Credit Suisse provides social services like mid-day meals in collaboration with Akshaya Patra, so are interns also involved in it?
What tech stack would I be working with, if I get selected? And am I allowed to give my preferences as to what team I want to work with?

Both the interviewers answered my questions in a lot of detail and were very clear with their opinions and answers.

Those were all the questions I was asked. Some other candidates had their interviews very tech-oriented. After this interview, some of the candidates (I am not aware of the count) were called into a breakout room and were informed that they did not make it any further. I was made to wait in the lobby for my HR round.

Round Three: The HR Interview

Platform: Zoom
Time: Around 15 mins

After waiting a long time, I was called to the interview room. There was just 1 interviewer, he was a friendly guy.

Questions:

Tell me about yourself and your family. And also talk me through your resume.
Gave a similar introduction as the previous round just included details about myself and my family
You have done 2 internships at the same time in the past, where one of them was providing monetary benefits. This can land you into legal trouble. Are you aware of that? I was not aware, however, I had informed the Hiring Manager of the company that was offering me the stipend, about this before getting hired.
Tell me about a situation where you were in charge but things didn’t go as planned and how you managed it.
Tell me about a person who has inspired you and affected your life or way of work.
Asked about the availability of a few of my documents like PAN Card, Aadhaar Card, Passport, etc.
Asked whether I was aware of the stipend and whether I was fine with it.
Asked whether I was fine with relocating to either Pune or Mumbai for the Internship.

Do you have any questions?

Most of the projects that I have done in the past have been mostly frontend-oriented and if I get selected I would love to work on something else like backend or cloud, so is it possible to consider this preference. I asked this question as I was told to inform the HR about my preference by the previous interviewer.
As we know the past year and a half was very tough for everyone, so how did Credit Suisse handle the whole pandemic scenario?

Finally, 16 students were selected for the internship and I was one of them.

Conclusion

A few tips from me if you are appearing for the interview:

Be confident while answering the questions you are asked.
Review every detail in your resume/portfolio, especially your projects and internships.
Be honest while answering the questions. Say NO if you don’t know about something they have asked.
Pay attention during the Pre-Placement Talks. It is extremely useful for gaining insights about the company and framing some questions.
Very Important: Be very patient. You might have to wait for your turn for a very long time. I had to wait in the zoom lobby for a total of about 5-5.30 hours.

This was my first time writing an article so I would really appreciate any constructive comments. If you have come this far, thanks a lot for devoting your time to reading all of this.