I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Charles Schwab (Hollywood, Los Angeles) in May 2025
Interview
Interview process was straight forward and transparent as to what the entire process would look like and what the expectations were. Automated interview guides were sent for each round to help prepare as a candidate. Questions were personal and did not feel like "canned" questions. The interview was free flowing and it was up to the candidate to lead the interview and keep it on track with the expected outcomes.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Do you want to walk me through the technical detail of one of the projects on your resume?
I applied online. I interviewed at Charles Schwab (Southlake, TX) in Sept 2025
Interview
Had a virtual interview with a manager. Normal enough. At the end he tells me that he is going to schedule an in person interview. He tells me this interview will cover technical troubleshooting, along with some design and architecture with a white board.
I get to the site, someone picks me up in the lobby and takes me to a conference room. He then starts a Teams meeting where the other interviewers then join the Teams meeting.
So they had me come in person to one of their sites so that all of the people interviewing me could do so virtually.
Throughout the entire interview only one of the interviewers turned on their camera, which was for the (roughly) 5 minutes he asked me questions. Other than that the people from Charles Schwab were faceless blocks on a Teams meeting.
Of the hour and a half interview there was maybe 10 minutes of conversation around troubleshooting or design. The rest of the interview was 95% random java questions, most of which seemed like they were things the interviewers had done or used sometime within the last 24 hours or questions that were taken from an Oracle Java certification exam.
The person who asked the most questions could barely be understood. Even the other Charles Schwab person that came to get me from reception couldn't understand what he was asking. Cheap microphone + Teams = having to ask someone to repeat themselves at least three times, which makes you look like a jerk.
We did actually need the whiteboard, they wanted to me write some code on it for an entry level software position, because who doesn't write their best code on a whiteboard.
The behavior of the people from Charles Schwab seemed unprofessional and felt unprepared. To have someone come for an in person interview only to have the interview be on Teams was rude.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What steps would you take to scale a product from 700 users to 1,000,000?
Virtual interview process with 3 board members in the team and took almost 1 hour to interview me to get the technical questions answered.
Tell me about yourself and .net core with authenication and authorization.
2 rounds in total. Both were technical. First was more like an easy one. mostly my previous work experience discussion, and it lasted 45 minutes. The second round went on for 2 hrs
