Morgan Stanley Interview Pattern

Interview Experience Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley had a written test. The written test had three sections-aptitude, computer knowledge based and computer programming. All the three sections were objective. Aptitude had 10 questions, computer knowledge had 10 questions and compute programming had 30 questions. The total time given was 90 minutes. There was one-fourth negative marking for each question. The questions were not too tough. The only constraint was time.

Morgan Stanley conducted its on-site process. The process began with a coding test. There
were 5 questions to be solved in 45 minutes. The questions were again simple but time was the
bottleneck. After the written test, the company had a pre-placement talk which lasted for about an hour. Following the pre-placement talk, there was a technical interview. The interview was basically meant to discuss the programs that we had written during the coding test. The interviewer discussed three of those codes with me. Then, he modified a problem slightly and asked me for the approach.I gave him an approach using HashMaps. He was satisfied with the approach. He then delved deep into HashMaps. We talked about open addressing, quadratic probing and hashmap implementations. He asked how a HashMap achieved O(1) time complexity and related stuff. This round lasted for about an hour.

They had shortlisted 9 students. We were invited for a group task. This was interesting. We had to design a structure using straws and pins that could be marketed. We had to give them the marketing strategy, the company for which the product could be useful, the company name, logo, slogan, risks and related stuff. They wanted to have a look at your team working ability. This round lasted for 45 minutes.
We then had another technical interview. This was a hard-core technological interview. The interviewer asked about databases. He asked me to model a university database. He then asked me to implement the database in Java. He wanted to have a look at how I handle object-oriented concepts. He also asked me to write code for stacks and queues. He then asked a bit on hashmaps.
The interviewer was putting me under a lot of pressure even if I did things correctly. It was a sort of stress interview and lasted for about an hour. He probably also wanted to have a look at how I handled pressure.

Following the technical interview, I was immediately called for interview with an HR representative.
This interview was a normal HR interview and lasted about 25 minutes. She asked me about one of the projects that I had done. I was asked about a recent technical article that I had read. I was also asked about any initiatives that I might have taken at my institute. Then, there were typical HR questions such as why Morgan Stanley etc. She also asked if I had taken any financial courses. I said I had studied a course on financial markets. She then asked me some basic finance related questions as the difference between futures and forwards etc. This was the lightest interview of them all! After the interviews, the company officials discussed for about two and a half hours and finally announced the list of four shortlisted candidates. I was fortunate enough to be one of them.

Thanks Manu for sharing the interview experience with us.