Personal Capital Interview Questions
& Process

So first, there was a recruiter screening where we talked about my experience and why I'm interested in Personal Capital. Then, I had a couple of tech screenings with Sr. Engineers/Hiring Managers. The first one was pretty general iOS stuff and they showed me some screens and asked how long I thought it would take to build them. The second one, we chatted about WWDC highlights, and they really dug into Async Await. They also asked me to build out a collection view for their Daily Capital Blog app in about 10 minutes, which ran a bit over time. The last screening was with the Director of Mobile Engineering. They wanted me to rebuild the allocations view in their app, which you can see by downloading the app, using demo mode, and navigating to holdings and allocations. The task involved taking an array of integers and drawing rectangles based on their ratio to the total sum.

So it was a pretty standard interview process. They did ask me one question that I felt was a bit out of line, asked with a really serious tone. The interviewers seemed to lack sales-oriented personalities, more like managers. After an initial FaceTime chat, they set up a mock call, which I believe was the last stage. Unfortunately, I had to cancel the mock call because of a scheduling conflict with my other job, and after that, I never heard back. I wasn't too bothered though, as the compensation plan didn't seem that great from what I recall.

The interview was very well designed, with 1 manager call to check experience fit for the team, and another 3 rounds of video technical interviews. Then because my flight to SF was delayed, they kindly provided a take-home project which involved an AWS microservice design to finish before the onsite date. At last it is the onsite interview that included knowledge test, OOP question, system design. The interviews are set up at a medium level, and they keep emphasis on checking your coding fundamentals, as well as how well you know about microservices, scalable systems, etc. I feel very comfortable at the interview, and really appreciated that the manager let me join the team lunch and chat together. They are really a fantastic engineering team there.

This company's interview process is really inefficient and takes way too long, with about 5 steps and over 4 phone calls plus an in-person interview spread out over weeks. They ask the same questions over and over, which is excessive for a company that isn't even a top-tier firm. They also lie about compensation, claiming sales associates make 45-50k when it's actually closer to 32-38k unless you're a top performer. To be a top performer, you have to work incredibly hard, making 250 calls a day with voicemails for each, which isn't worth the low pay, soul-crushing work, and unqualified managers. The company equity offered to everyone is likely worthless, and advisors here are just holding onto their jobs hoping for an IPO, despite not understanding basic financial concepts. This company has 8 billion in AUM and grew during a bull run, so they aren't a major wealth manager. They also don't offer a 401k match.