I hope the diversity and inclusion leader sees this because I was told I couldn’t have interviewed any better and wasn’t selected simply because I was an external candidate not already embedded in culture and an internal candidate was in the mix. This was a bias that prevented me from having equal standing going into the recruitment process. After an executive referral, I went through multiple phone interviews. One was an hour and a half grilling via a senior recruiter, and I was told he was taking copious notes to pass on to hiring managers. I found out later that none of my responses were shared. I was then passed to another recruiter who talked about their online testing. I would not proceed to an onsite interview without passing tests, including an algebra one. I went through a stressful studying and (self) tutoring event of 2-3 weeks in length. I’m in the IT industry and when I need to crunch numbers I do it in Excel. The math was very hard and stressful for me, and I didn’t understand the point for the IT position I was applying to. Regardless, I spent many hours (25+) working hard to pass all the online tests, and I did. I had two job potentials but when I was scheduled for Power Day only one team was represented, and I ended up missing the other opportunity as a result. I had to complete a super-secret business case that was purely math. As a director I strategize. When I tried to strategize during the case I was told not to and to only talk numbers, so I felt my hands were tied. After the case I was told they have it to teach a lesson that they are different and business/tech and finance work closely together on efforts, more so than other companies. I have worked closely with financial counterparts throughout my career, so I felt the case was still a time waster. Despite it not being my strong suit, I passed it. Several other people interviewed and none of us were hired because the hiring manager was looking for a “specific” candidate. I was consistent from my phone interviews so if the notes were shared we all could have saved the time to realize I wasn’t “specific” beforehand. I was referred to another potential fit (via referrer, not recruiter). I went through more phone interviews and had to keep following up for a Power Day. I was passed to a new recruiter who said I needed to go to Richmond. I drove three hours to do this in bad NOVA traffic, both ways. Upon getting to the site my onsite contact was nowhere to be found. Five out of the six interviews were remote – so why did I have to drive down there? Two of them were scheduled for an hour but only had 30 minutes. I waited alone for over an hour for one round. Despite the poor logistics, the interviews went well. Over a week later I was told that I didn’t get it because there was an internal candidate in the mix (see above). Such a mean process that was, taking over 3 months of my time, money for gas, and vacation days from me to be told I never really had a chance. Very disappointed in the meanness and bias displayed from this organization.

A Capital One Power Day is the final and most important step of their hiring process. It usually involves five interviews with people from different departments, giving you a 360° assessment across culture, leadership, technology, collaboration, and technical depth. They look for cultural alignment (collaboration, adaptability, customer focus), leadership style and ability to scale teams, domain expertise (e.g., engineering leadership, cloud-native, fintech, AI/ML), cross-functional collaboration in regulated environments, and technical problem-solving through case-style discussions rather than coding. Answers are best given in STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result). While originally designed as a single “power day,” in practice these interviews are often spread over several days due to scheduling.