First zoom interview with HR acquisition consultant about 30 minutes. If went well you will be scheduled a Video interview with the hiring managers. The questions could be very technical details.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at CIBC (Toronto, ON) in Oct 2024
Interview
CIBC relies on skills tests to determine suitability for a technical candidate. While common practice, this is the red flag. Candidates with lots of experience will not like to be treated the same way as juniors coming fresh off University.
CIBC did not talk to me until I passed their online skills test, not even a courtesy "hello" type of call. This is the second red flag.
After passing their skills test, I had a video call with their recruiter, followed by another video call with the hiring manager. They all had the video feed off but required me to have mine on. This is the 3rd red flag, as I consider it lack of respect and professional courtesy.
After all the interviews I was ghosted. Completely. This is another red flag that I have for CIBC.
Lastly, what transpired from the interviews was that their salary bands and benefits sit below what other banks offer, except for their defined benefit pension (which is only good for younger people who spend a lot of time at CIBC). This is the last red flag.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A mix of technical and behavioral questions, all specific to the job.
Interview went really great but they did not provide update even after 8 weeks. I followed up with HR almost every week then HR replied saying that they chose another candidate
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at CIBC (Toronto, ON) in June 2024
Interview
1st round: phone screen with a recruiter
2nd round: OA, 30 minute to complete leetcode medium question
3rd round: meeting with the hiring manager and a senior developer for technical assessment which involves basically everything they can google and is barely related to the job description.
From my point of view, they are not really hiring and they are just trying to gaslight you and show how "supreme" they are. You cannot ask clarifying questions. They will just ignore you and ask you to give a yes/no answer without any context. If you cannot memorize the definition of some specific technical terms, they will just smirk and mark down a note to fail/lowball you later. They set up a peer coding session but they don't want to listen to you to learn about your thought process. They literally told me to shut up and code. You can sense the hostility and how toxic the working environment will be.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Basically whatever they can google, including cloud technologies(they claim to use both azure, aws, gcp so they ask you all of them), databases(DBA skills + SQL, again they claim to use like 6-7 databases at the same project), ETL, java/JVM, python, javascript, NoSQL, and all related frameworks... Many of them are asking you to memorize the definition and you are deemed unexperienced in that area if you cannot cite the definition, even if you have extensive experience in using it.