FactSet Written Test and Interview Experience 2026

FactSet’s campus process has four rounds: a 50-question written test, a pen-and-paper coding screen, one or two technical interviews, and an HR round.

The company runs software engineering and data analytics operations out of Hyderabad and Chennai for a global investment platform serving institutional clients (factset.com/careers). Campus drives in India target B.Tech CSE, IT, ECE, and related branches. Eligibility criteria including CGPA cutoffs vary by campus; confirm current requirements with your placement cell before the drive.

This guide covers the test pattern, topic-wise syllabus, and interview structure based on campus placement reports and community interview experiences.

FactSet Campus Recruitment: Process at a Glance

Round	Format	Focus
Written Test	50 MCQs, 50 minutes	25 aptitude + 25 technical (C, C++, Java, DSA)
Coding Screen	Pen-and-paper, 2 to 3 problems	Data structures: matrix, linked list, strings
Technical Interview I	One-on-one, 45 to 60 minutes	CV and projects, DSA, C++ implementation
Technical Interview II	One-on-one, 45 to 60 minutes	System-design-adjacent DSA, complex problems
HR Round	One-on-one	Behavioural, motivation, relocation

Two notes on format variability: some campus drives report the written test and coding screen as a single combined on-campus round; others separate them. The rounds listed above represent the full reported process. Prepare for both the MCQ-based written test and the pen-and-paper coding screen regardless of which combination your drive uses.

Negative marking in the written test is -1 per wrong answer against +2 per correct. That ratio shapes test-day strategy: accuracy outweighs coverage.

Written Test: Format, Topics, and Marking Scheme

The written test puts 50 MCQ questions across two equal sections in a 50-minute window.

Aptitude Section (25 Questions)

Standard placement aptitude cluster:

• Percentages, profit and loss, time-speed-distance, time and work
• Number systems: HCF, LCM, divisibility rules
• Logical reasoning: number series, coding-decoding, blood relations, seating arrangements
• Data interpretation: table and bar chart reading with inference questions

Technical Section (25 Questions)

Topics restricted to four areas based on reported drives:

• C programming: pointers, arrays, output prediction, memory management
• C++ specifics: OOP concepts, constructor and destructor behaviour, STL basics
• Java basics: class structure, inheritance, exception handling
• Data structures: arrays, stacks, queues, linked lists, binary trees — conceptual MCQs

The -1/+2 scheme means a wrong answer on a question you guessed at costs you three effective marks relative to a correct answer. Target the questions you can solve confidently rather than attempting every question at lower accuracy.

Aptitude preparation for FactSet overlaps well with the ZS Associates online test, which also tests quantitative aptitude alongside an analytics-adjacent technical section. ZS material translates cleanly to the FactSet aptitude component with minimal additional drilling.

Coding Screen: The Pen-and-Paper Round

No IDE. No compiler. No autocomplete. FactSet’s coding screen asks you to write syntactically correct, logically sound code on paper.

Problems reported from campus drives documented on GeeksforGeeks include:

• Spiral matrix traversal from pivot: given an n x n matrix and a pivot at (r, c), move clockwise in a spiral and print only in-bounds elements
• Minimum number by removing n digits: from a given number, remove n digits to produce the smallest possible result
• 2D matrix to linked list: convert a matrix into a doubly-linked structure where each node carries a right pointer and a down pointer

All three sit at LeetCode medium-to-hard difficulty. They test matrix indexing with out-of-bounds handling, greedy digit selection logic, and pointer construction.

The pen-and-paper constraint is deliberate. Writing clean code without a machine confirms that your understanding of the algorithm is solid, not scaffold-dependent. Practice solving problems on paper before the drive: write full code rather than pseudocode, and check edge cases explicitly since you cannot run a test.

Technical Interview Rounds: Questions and Patterns

Technical Interview I

The first technical round opens with a project and CV review, typically 10 to 20 minutes, before moving to coding and concept questions. Interviewers go deep on your work: specific design choices, tradeoffs made, what you would change.

Questions reported from this round:

• Design a database schema for employees, companies, and job profiles; define table relationships and constraints
• Implement atoi: convert a string to integer, handling negatives, float truncation, and invalid characters
• In-place URL encoding: replace spaces with %20 in O(n) time without extra memory allocation
• Perfect binary tree check: determine whether a tree is perfect without using recursion or extra memory
• Run-length encoding: input aaaabbbddef, produce a4b3d2e1f1 in a single traversal, both recursive and iterative

The pattern across all five: correctness with edge-case coverage, not just a working happy path. Interviewers at FactSet do not prompt with hints the way some other companies do. Expect to derive your solution independently and talk through every edge case unprompted.

Technical Interview II

The second technical round escalates to system-design-adjacent problems. From reported experiences:

• Real-time stock stream, top 10: given a live data stream of trades (company name and price per second), return the top 10 most-traded companies at any instant in O(1) time
• Activity selection, maximum movies: given start and end times of films across multiple screens in 24 hours, find the maximum watchable count (an interval scheduling variant)
• Bank theft with constraints: maximise theft across n banks over n days, with the constraint that a bank robbed on day d cannot be robbed on day d+1 (greedy or dynamic programming)

Difficulty here is materially higher than standard IT services placement tests. It sits close to D.E. Shaw’s dynamic programming coding section, which also tests constraint-heavy, multi-step problem-solving under time pressure.

The top-10 streaming question tests your ability to design for real operational constraints: a correct answer involves a min-heap or sorted structure updated efficiently per incoming event, not a brute-force sort on every query.

HR Round and What Follows

The HR round is straightforward after the intensity of the two technical rounds. Standard questions reported:

• Walk through your internship or academic project
• Where do you see yourself in three years?
• Are you open to higher studies, and if so, when?
• Are you willing to relocate to Hyderabad?
• What are your strengths and what are you actively improving?

The relocation question carries practical weight: FactSet’s primary India engineering centre is Hyderabad, with a smaller Chennai presence. If relocation is a constraint, raise it clearly during HR rather than after an offer.

Offer timelines at campus drives typically run a few days to two weeks from the HR round, depending on batch size and intake calendar.

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The Technical Interview II question about streaming stock data and returning the top 10 most-traded companies in O(1) is a miniaturised version of a problem FactSet’s own data infrastructure handles in production. If FactSet-level data engineering is where you want to end up, that programme builds the foundations systematically.