Deloitte’s Digital Interview

Yesterday I just completed a digital interview from Deloitte. Previously I just directly being rejected by them right after I applied from the position. So this is the first time I received a digital interview invitation from Deloitte, which is a good experience for me to learn and practice my interview skills. The position I applied for is Tax - Research and Development - Gi3 - 2024 Graduate Program (Perth).

About the digital interview

• It is a fully virtual interview powered by HireVue, but the submissions will be examined by the actual HR staff in Deloitte rather than AI (at least they pointed out in the intro section of the interview).

• It contains four questions. The first one is a written question, mainly asking you the reason for applying Deloitte and what you excite about this opportunity.

  • The subsequent three questions are answered through oral presentations with camera recorded, each question has two attempts. The questions are:
    • Tell me about yourself. What you study, when you graduate, hobbies, achievements?
      my response

      My name’s wenxiao and I am a recent graduate from The University of western australia with a master’s degree of Software Engineering. I just graduated in July this year.

      Apart from the study, I am a big fan of fingerstyle guitar. I learned to play guitar through online tutorial and joined the guitar club in my undergraduate university. and taught club members to play guitar. I also attended a few guitar concerts held by the club.

      The biggest achievement so far must be related to my research project during my final year of study. In the beginning, I don’t understand anything and I have no ideas to deal with it. However, through effective communication with my supervisor, I gained practical research skills and improved quickly. In the end, I earned a degree of higher distinction for this research project.

      Through this experience, I learned how to communicate effectively with people and how to deal with challenging issues that I had not encountered before, which will be beneficial for my future career.

    • One of the difficult challenges you encountered, what the situation is? how you deal with it?
      my response

      In a software development project I’ve done in a group, I faced a challenge. I was resposible for implementing the security components using a trusted third-party authentication library, but it was not compatabile with another crucial component in the system, which may potentially causing delays. I had to choose between sticking to the third-party library or try a more flexibl approach developing a custom solution to meet the deadline.

      After careful consultation with the supervisor and the client, I chose to develop a custom authentication solution. While it posed some security risks, I mitigated them through testing and reviews, my teammates also helped me a lot with this issue.

      The outcome was a successful project delivery on time, meeting our client’s expectations. I maintained my commitment to security by keeping the client informed about my decision and ensuring ongoing security updates.

      Through this experience, I learned the importance of communicating with others and try to be flexible when you are facing difficulties.

    • Describe a time you work in a successful team, what contributions you did?
      my response

      I was part of a 7-member team working on a web project during my final year of study, with 3 members dedicated to frontend, 2 for backend, and 2 for database management.

      I played an important role in our project as a member of the backend team. Not only in developing backend functionalities, but I act as a facilitator for seamless integration between the frontend, backend, and database.

      For the frontend, I facilitate clear communication within the team and maintain API request documentation to support the development of frontend functionalities. As for the database, I collaborate closely with the database team to align on the implementation of database query functionalities within the backend.

      By serving as this bridge between technical components, our project workflow remained seamless, resulting in a highly functional and well-integrated end product.

Complaints

These are all standard behavioral questions that appear rather ineffective in my opinion, but they are a necessary part of the job application process for almost every big company. I don’t know why they use these questions to select candidates, it makes no sense to me to choose candidates who all have the potential to become actors. Ahhh, headache…