I applied through university. The process took 4 days. I interviewed at Principal Financial Group (Pune) in Aug 2019
Interview
Principal Global - Pune, visited our campus to recruitment for software engineer post. However, all branches were allowed to apply for it.
First Shortlisting - An online test comprising of almost 18 MCQs based on Quant - moderate level - Conducted at the campus
Second Shortlisting - an Elitmus pH test - test comprises of three subjects viz, Quant, Verbal English, and Problem Solving - Conducted at the campus
All shortlisted students were called for the next rounds at the company location. Four rounds were conducted at the location which took an almost whole day. Firstly we were asked to write a short paragraph on the goals for the next 5 years.
Third Shortlisting - Face to Face technical interview - based on resume (They don't ask for other documents, only resume is fine)
Fourth Shortlisting - Six puzzle questions & write a paragraph on your role model & priorities between family, job, money, innovation bla bla
Fifth & Sixth Shortlisting - HR round (they really look at whom you have mentioned as a role model and also your priorities)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Program for sorting an array.
Role Model.
The goal for the next five years.
About your projects.
Got a call from Hr for screening and after a week had 1st technical round scheduled which was for around 1.5hrs and after a week got confirmation on having the round clear and then one manager-technical round was there for an hour. Finally after clearing both last hr round was schuled with offer discussion.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Principal Financial Group in Sept 2025
Interview
First round was a chat with HR, no questions, just giving me details and letting me know I was selected for an interview and scheduling it.
The second round took place on Teams, 3 different developers from different teams. The interview was 2 hours long, first half was behavioral questions and the second hour was a live coding exam.
Live coding exam takes place on your PC, sharing your screen on Teams on your IDE of choice. They emailed me JSON files with 3 questions. I made the mistake of not noticing the questions on the email and thought they would communicate them verbally. Because of this, I misunderstood the question and they didn't correct me or didn't know to correct me. I recommend not sharing your screen until after you've received the email and pulled in the data and questions. I also wasn't a fan of doing this through my own IDE, because it means I had to spend time setting up a test environment and getting it to work with the JSON, something I wasn't familiar with. Personally would have preferred leetcode or something similar to simplify the process. The questions themselves weren't inherently super difficult.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The technical questions were structured something like this:
Given two JSON files. A list of objects containing data and a list of objects that contains data and objects containing data.
Given conditions, such as person's name, find out what company they work for, which can be found be performing lookups.
2 technical - OOPs fundamentals, sql, no dsa, list/string manipulation questions, previous projects in depth knowledge is must. Then there will be 1 HR round where basic knowlede of company will be asked, why you wanna switch, any situational questions etc.
