Morgan Stanley Interview Experience for Summer Technology Analyst

I applied to Morgan Stanley for the Summer Technology Analyst role via their careers page in October 2023, without a referral. My resume was shortlisted, and I received an invitation for the Online Assessment on February 12, 2024.

Round-1 (Online Assessment)

I completed the Online Assessment on February 15. It consisted of three sections:

• Debugging Section: This section had debugging questions, to be solved in 20 minutes. I could choose any programming language. It was quite easy; a basic understanding of programming was sufficient to debug the questions.
• Aptitude Section: This section had 10 questions to be solved in 20 minutes, with a difficulty level ranging from easy to moderate.
• Coding Section: This section featured 3 programming questions, with a difficulty level comparable to LeetCode Easy-Medium. I was provided links for two of the questions: Merging Intervals and Level Order Tree Traversal. I managed to solve all three coding questions, and the debugging and aptitude sections also went well.

Round-2 (Technical Interview)

The very next day, on February 16, I received a call from HR informing me that I had cleared the Online Assessment. My technical interview was scheduled for February 20 at 2 PM. It was a Zoom call that lasted over 60 minutes, with two interviewers. They were friendly and made me feel comfortable. First, they asked me to introduce myself. Then, we moved on to SQL queries. They asked me 9-10 SQL queries, and since I had prepared well, I was able to write correct queries for almost all of them, which seemed to satisfy the interviewers. Next, they asked me a question related to C programming: they provided a piece of code, void func(){ int arr[10];}, and explained that this function was being called recursively an infinite number of times, given a system memory of 2 MB. They asked if this scenario would result in an error or a system crash. I was able to answer this question to their satisfaction. Following that, they asked about the difference between "call by value" and "call by reference," requesting an explanation with an example. Finally, they posed a medium-level DSA question, for which I successfully provided the logic and wrote pseudocode. The interviewers seemed happy with my approach. The interview concluded after they asked if I had any questions for them.

Round-3 (HR Round)

I received another call from HR the day after my technical interview, on February 21, with positive feedback from the panel. My HR round was scheduled for February 22. Before this round, I extensively read past Morgan Stanley HR interview experiences, researched the company and its core values, and prepared for common behavioral questions. The HR interview was also a Zoom call. The interviewer joined a bit late and immediately asked me to introduce myself. We then discussed a project mentioned on my resume, specifically why I chose MongoDB over a SQL database. Afterward, they asked several behavioral questions:

• What are your aspirations and career plans?
• Why do you want to join Morgan Stanley?
• What do you know about the business side of Morgan Stanley?
• What are the core values of Morgan Stanley?
• Given two teams, one working on Python and the other on C++, which team would I prefer to join and why?
• Could I describe a scenario where I had to sacrifice my ethics?
• Could I tell an interesting incident related to my project?
• Presented with a scenario: I'm part of a team tasked with delivering a product in one month, but some hypothetical bugs cannot be fixed within that deadline. My options are to deliver the product late or deliver it with bugs. What would I do?

The interview lasted about 30 minutes. The interviewer asked if I had any questions before it ended.

Exactly three weeks later, I received an email confirming my shortlisting for the Summer Analyst role at Morgan Stanley for the Summer of 2024.