Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Interview Questions
& Process

I applied in January 2024. I had a phone screening at the end of February, followed by a writing sample about dealing with ambiguity. The final round was a panel interview in March. It took a very long time to hear back, and I received a rejection in early May, after their stated deadline. The people I interacted with seemed really great though.

I applied in December and they got back to me in February. The interviews were pretty straightforward and I enjoyed talking to the economists. The RAs gave me a lot of info, but they weren't super outgoing, making it tough to really connect. I also chatted with HR about salary expectations and how they could support me. I finished up interviews in March and then heard back in April that I didn't get the job. It took them over a month to decide, which felt really long.

I had a really fast phone chat, then they asked me to come in person. First, there was a 20-minute HR chat where they asked basic stuff like why I applied and why I'm leaving my current gig. After that, I went into a panel interview with one director and two other folks who seemed to be in lower management roles. This lasted about 2 hours total. The first 1.5 hours were the main part, focusing on my past experience and how it fits this role. The last 30 minutes, they hit me with 3 questions from a standard list, like asking for an example of overcoming a challenge.

First, I had a chat with a recruiter who gave me some info about the Philadelphia FED. She then asked me some standard interview questions, nothing too technical. After that, I met with three team members. They had my Github open and asked me about my past projects and some basic technical questions, like how I approach debugging and what my preferred programming language is. It was a pretty laid-back conversation.