First Citizens Bank Interview Questions
& Process

I got referred to FCB and a recruiter reached out. They told me there would be three rounds initially. The first was with a tech lead focusing on my background, which was easy to talk about. He then gave me a code snippet to debug, which I found trickier than he did, and I think I messed it up, but they still put me in for round two. Round two was with a Senior Software Engineer who asked some system design questions. This interviewer seemed to really not know how to run an interview; their questions were super vague and confusing, and I got tired of trying to answer because they kept cutting me off. It wasn't great. Surprisingly, I got moved to a third round with a director. The recruiter said it would be behavioral, but the director ended up asking about my background again. This interviewer was also unfocused, easily distracted, and seemed to gloss over my answers while repeating questions. Out of nowhere, they declared I couldn't code, which was bizarre since I hadn't written any code for them. The recruiter then called, admitting the director went off-script and that they wanted to see me code. I agreed, and they set up a 4th round with the same person from the second round. They asked two coding questions, and I solved both in my textpad. This interviewer was a bit better this time, and I felt I did my best in this round. After that, the recruiter ghosted me despite my follow-ups. It was a really unprofessional experience overall.

It was three rounds total. The first part was a take-home financial debt sizing modeling exercise. The first two interview rounds were with associate and director level people, and the last round was with managing directors. They were really honest, asking about my experience and my future goals. The modeling exercise was fair, but challenging, requiring basic Excel skills and financial knowledge, like understanding discounted cash flow.

I interviewed for the Lead Enterprise Incident Management role, and it was a letdown. Most of it, like 90%, was about my personal life, like marital status, not my skills or if I could do the job. It felt wrong for a senior role. HR coordination was bad too. They made me travel about 25 km each way, but communication was all over the place. Calls were missed, and they said they'd call back the next day but never did. Even after the in-person interview, no real update or anything. The whole thing felt messy, poorly run, and invasive. I expected better for such a key position.

I applied for this role on 11/25/24. The recruiter did an initial video screen on 12/13/24, which went well. Then, I interviewed with the hiring manager on 12/23/24. We were scheduled for an hour but talked for almost two. A panel interview happened on 1/14/25, though only two out of four people showed up. I asked the recruiter for an update via email on 1/22/25. They replied on 1/23/25, saying interviews were ending and I'd hear back after they spoke with the hiring manager. I followed up again on 2/5/25 because I hadn't heard anything. On 2/13/25, I was told I wasn't selected because they found more qualified candidates. It's disappointing because it started out so positive with First Citizens Bank, and then I felt ghosted.