I applied online and got an interview set up a couple weeks later.
1. Phone interview with a recruiter, very easy:
- tell me about yourself
- what do you know about FDM?
- recruiter spent most of the time talking about the training process and asking about which IT streams you prefer
2. Got an email invitation a few days later to attend an assessment day (9am to 3pm):
- short presentation on the company followed by a logic test, pretty straight forward (determine output for for/while loops, branching statements, logic based brain teasers). Given 45 mins to do the test, but you could honestly finish it in less than 15 mins.
- They give you a bunch of riddles / logic problems to figure out with all the other candidates. They really just use this as a distraction for them to get other work done or prepare the rest of the interview as it's unsupervised and not being handed in or anything.
- Math test (long division, multiplication, basic arithmetic - simple stuff)
- set theory test (venn diagrams, intersections unions - again, easy)
- 7 min technical interview based on what you know about java and unix (i did very poorly on this interview and still got an offer)
- 7 min behavioural interview - standard hr questions
- final HR presentation discussing salary. training, some details about the 2 year contract. They offer you an insulting low salary ($37000) with no benefits, which you are bound to for 2 years. You are forced to pay a $30000 fee to recoup "training costs" if you breach this contract.
3. OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:
The assessment day giant time suck, where i spent almost 3 hours just waiting around in silence doing nothing. It's very clear that this place is just a glorified temp agency that capitalizes on desperate new graduates. You are contracted out to do IT work at major financial institutions at literally half of the pay of what these banks pay their internal new grads, even without the training and certifications. Do not fall for their scam.