Get a Job at Capital One: Interview Process and Top Questions

Capital One is an innovator and major player in the fintech space. It offers remote, hybrid, and in-office roles across the US, as well as in Toronto and London, and it has new grad opportunities and programs for current students. 

Interested in joining Capital One? Below, we break down the Capital One interview process and top questions you should expect to answer.

What is the Capital One interview process?

Capital One takes pride in its friendly, transparent interview process, and its use of case interviews—a conversation featuring a practical, high-level question, where you present the best solution to a business problem, similar to something you’d face day-to-day in the role you’re interviewing for. The interview process at Capital One is conducted virtually, and video is required for each of your interviews. 

The Capital One interview process typically takes about one month and involves:

• Recruiter phone screen, 
• Technical screen,
• Hiring manager pre-screen,
• Final rounds (“Power Days”).

Recruiter phone screen

Most Capital One candidates receive an automated assessment that tests skills in things like communication, customer-first mentality, leadership, and problem-solving. Once you pass this evaluation, you begin the interview process.

The first step of the process at Capital One is a standard 30-minute recruiter phone call. Prepare to discuss your resume, past experience as it relates to the job, and Capital One. 

Technical screen

Depending on the role, the next step in the interview process at Capital One is a coding challenge, testing your domain knowledge for the role. Expect a 70-minute, four-question, live technical assessment on CodeSignal, with data structure and algorithm questions of easy to medium-level difficulty. 

For non-technical roles, the tech screen varies. For example, PMs get a mini-case study in place of a coding challenge. 

Hiring manager pre-screen

For the next step, you’ll meet with the hiring manager for 30 minutes. Expect to discuss your background, while the hiring manager assesses your fit for the role. Plan which past experiences to discuss ahead of time, so you can prove your skills align with this new team, and prepare detailed questions about the position and team to demonstrate your interest. 

Power Day final rounds

Capital One calls its virtual onsite final rounds, “Power Days.” Expect to have 3–4 hour-long rounds scheduled back-to-back on one day. At Capital One, your Power Day usually consists of 1–2 rounds of what they call “job fit” interviews, a behavioral interview, and a case interview. 

Job fit interviews assess domain knowledge for the role and team, but also mix in culture fit. Case interviews assess your strategic, analytical skills by asking an in-depth, practical business problem that’s similar to something you’d do day-to-day in the role. 

Top Capital One Interview Questions

Behavioral

• Why do you want to work at Capital One?
• Tell me about yourself.
• Why did you leave your last role?
• Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
• Describe a challenging project you worked on and what made it difficult.
• Tell me about a time when you handled a difficult stakeholder.

Coding

• Design a banking system to facilitate account creation, deposits, transfers, and listing the most active accounts by total monetary activity, with commands entered via parsing CSV/JSON.
• Reverse a linked list.
• Implement a function to justify a list of words within a given width.
• Given a list of words, find the number of prefix pairs, i.e. pairs i, j where words[i] == words[j] or words[i].startswith(words[j]) or words[j].startswith(words[i]).
• Given stock prices for the next n days, how can you maximize your profit by buying or selling one share per day?

System design

• Design a system to communicate with a bank.
• Tell me about a system design problem you solved with machine learning.
• Design a fitness app.
• Design a smart electric meter software system for an apartment building featuring separate dashboards for tenants and the owner, showing electricity usage by specific units and floors.

Machine learning

• How do you stay up to date with advancements in machine learning?
• Tell me about a machine learning project you worked on.
• Tell me about a time when you worked with a difficult team member in a research setting.
• Explain the time and space complexities of sorting algorithms.
• How do you detect balanced parentheses in a string using Python?

Data science

• Explain the given linear regression output.
• Explain the data in a business sense.
• How do you handle missing data?
• How do you deal with an unbalanced classification problem?

Product management 

• Tell me about how you brought a product to market.
• You're a PM at an e-commerce site. What percentage discount should different customers get during onboarding?
• What is the potential market size for a better debit card?
• How would you improve the Capital One mobile app?
• Pick a Capital One product. Estimate the monthly revenue per customer.

Capital One Interview Loops Explained

Behavioral

The behavioral round at Capital One usually focuses on “Tell me about a time when…” questions, so prepare anecdotes from past experiences that exemplify how you handle a range of situations, both positive and negative. In behavioral interviews, Capital One wants candidates who are results-oriented, strong problem-solvers, and who have influential leadership skills. Highlight these skills in your behavioral round to stand out. 

Coding

Capital One’s Power Day coding rounds include a technical interview and a case interview. The technical interview is similar to the coding challenge, with easy to medium-level common coding questions, with a focus on data structures and algorithm questions. 

While we discuss the case interview in more depth later in this post, expect to solve a practical business problem, similar to work you’d do every day in this role. Prepare by getting familiar with Capital One’s suite of products, current ventures and problems it's facing. 

System design

The system design round is a standard whiteboard interview, similar to other top tech companies. For your system design interview at Capital One, prepare to present your solution for about 45 minutes, but remember to ask clarifying questions at the beginning, and expect follow-up questions from your interviewers after you’re finished with your design. Focus on communicating your thought process and decision-making, as well as discussing tradeoffs and the pros and cons of multiple solutions, more than worrying about a perfect solution, and consider using a system design framework to organize your process. 

Machine learning

Capital One’s Power Day machine learning rounds include a case interview, which involves discussion of a full ML lifecycle when solving an ML-related business problem. You'll also face a technical round, assessing your ML knowledge, including algorithm selection, data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation.

Data science

A unique step of the data science round at Capital One is the take-home data science challenge you receive before your Power Day, which assesses your data and engineering analytics, written communication, and predictive modeling.

For your Power Day rounds, expect a case interview with a practical business problem, and a technical statistics-heavy round.

Common data science topics: 

• Statistics
• SQL
• Python
• SQL joins
• Data processing

Product management 

The product management Power Day rounds at Capital One are case-heavy. Expect a product skills round, which delves into your past product experience. Prepare several past PM experiences to talk through from start to finish, so you’re ready for multiple angles of possible questions. Then, expect a product design and product strategy round, which involves presenting a product solution to a practical problem. And lastly, another case interview, focused on product analyst skills, asking you to solve a current business problem. Prepare by brushing up on your PM skills, but also get to know Capital One’s business position and its range of products, so you can answer practical questions.

Capital One Interview Tips

Capital One values innovation, problem-solving, collaboration, and customer focus. 

Highlight these values in your behavioral interviews when discussing your past experiences to show that you align with its values. Capital One assesses these interpersonal skills in behavioral interviews, but also in case interviews.

Capital One has a data-driven culture. 

Capital One is big on data. Demonstrate that you make data-driven decisions in your case interviews, but also touch on this in your hiring manager and behavioral interviews when bringing up past work experiences to stand out. 

Know Capital One inside and out.

Before your interview, get to know Capital One’s various products and technologies. This is particularly important because your case interview will likely involve a Capital One product. Check out Capital One’s website and do your research ahead of time to shine in your case interview. When doing your research, think about what’s exciting to you, and what business/product you’d be most excited to work on, and why?

FAQs

How competitive are Capital One interviews?

While technical interviews are slightly easier than comparable companies of its size, Capital One’s interviews are still quite competitive, especially for engineering, data, and PM roles, so it’s important to go in prepared.

Prep your interview skills ahead of time: 

• Try a peer mock interview to practice your case interview skills,
• Brush up on your coding skills,
• Practice Capital One interview questions. 

How should I prepare for my case interview at Capital One? 

Case interviews are popular at Capital One for most positions. This type of interview is a conversation with a practical, high-level question, where you address and present the best solution to a business problem, similar to something you’d face day-to-day in the role you’re interviewing for.

Capital One recommends preparing for a case interview by taking notes and asking follow-up questions in the interview when the problem is presented. Also, talk through your process to show off your strategic thinking and organization. Don’t worry about the specific answer as much as you focus on your reasoning and decision-making for why it's a great possible solution. Don’t talk about past experiences in this interview, but instead focus on the case and communicating your solution.

Does Capital One hire students or new grads? 

Yes! Capital One offers 10-week internships for undergrads, full-time rotational roles for recent grads, and internship opportunities for grad students. Find out more information on Capital One’s Student & Grad programs page.

More Capital One Interview Prep Resources

Exponent has extensive resources to prepare you to feel your best when it comes time for your interview at Capital One:

💬 Brush up on interview questions asked at Capital One

📖 Read through these role-specific Capital One interview guides