What Is the Commonwealth Bank Interview Process Like? (Round by Round)

Commonwealth Bank, which most candidates call CommBank, runs two different hiring paths. Experienced technology candidates report four to five steps: a short screening call, one or two technical interviews, a conversation with the hiring manager, and a brief call about pay. Those reports describe three to four weeks from the first call to a decision.

The graduate program follows four published stages instead: an online application, an online assessment, a digital interview, and an assessment center. Graduate candidates report six to eight weeks for that path, because the bank schedules the later stages on fixed dates.

Quick Overview

Stage 1: The Screening Call

A recruiter from the Talent Acquisition team calls first, and sometimes the hiring manager does. Candidates report 15 to 30 minutes of background questions mixed with simple technical ones. The motivation question appears here in almost every report, so prepare it with how to answer why Commonwealth Bank.

Stage 2: Online Assessment or Coding Test

The test depends on your path. Graduate candidates report an online assessment built from short games, with a personality questionnaire plus numerical and verbal reasoning, which means answering questions about charts and short texts. Technology candidates report a timed coding test instead, with data structure problems plus multiple choice questions on language basics such as Python, JavaScript, or React. Reported difficulty is medium, and several candidates report that AI tools were not allowed.

Stage 3: First Technical Interview

One detailed report describes a panel of two senior engineers and the hiring manager, for about one hour. The session covered an introduction, a project from the resume, object oriented programming questions, and a string task in code. It also included a SQL query written live on a shared screen. SQL appears in many CommBank reports, so practice writing joins and grouping by hand.

Stage 4: Second Technical Interview

The same report describes a longer session of about 90 minutes, with a senior engineer and a senior manager. It covered pseudo code for an API, together with more SQL writing. An API is the set of calls that one service offers to another.

Senior candidates report an architecture discussion instead, covering their current system and its security and compliance choices. The question types are listed in the Commonwealth Bank system design interview.

Stage 5: Digital Interview (Graduate Path)

CommBank's careers pages describe short pre-recorded questions, answered to your camera. The invitation email gives 48 hours to complete it. Candidates report about seven behavioral questions, with roughly a minute to think and up to two minutes for each answer. No interviewer is present, so structure every answer in the STAR format: Situation, Task, Action, Result.

Stage 6: Assessment Center (Graduate Path)

CommBank writes this stage as "assessment centre", and its pages describe activities plus interviews with business leaders. The bank tells you during that process whether your assessment center is virtual or face to face.

Candidates report three parts: a panel interview with two interviewers, several short interviews of about 15 minutes with people from nearby teams, and a group task with about five candidates. One reported group task was to plan how to promote a product. Contribute early, add to what others say, and keep the group inside the time limit.

Stage 7: Manager and HR Conversation

A manager discusses the role, the team, and how work is planned. A short HR call then covers pay, benefits, and your notice period, and checks begin only after an offer. CommBank's careers FAQ gives an average of 20 business days for background checks.

Timeline and Decision

CommBank's careers FAQ states that its Talent Acquisition team contacts applicants within three weeks of the role closing. One candidate report describes feedback within a day between rounds, then an offer three to four weeks after the final call.

Candidates rate the difficulty close to 3 out of 5, and about two thirds report a positive experience. Reported waits for each stage are collected in how long it takes to hear back.

Questions to Ask Them

Every round ends with time for your questions, so prepare three. Good questions here: how the team releases changes now that core banking runs on AWS, and how risk and compliance reviews fit into a normal sprint. Ask also how many days each week the team works in the office. A specific question proves that you researched this bank.

How to Prepare

• Drill the coding patterns. Grokking the Coding Interview covers the medium difficulty problems that these tests use.
• Write SQL by hand. Practice joins, group queries, and window functions without autocomplete, because reports describe live SQL on a shared screen.
• Prepare one project in depth. Both technical rounds include questions about a project from your resume, so know its decisions and its failures.
• Learn the design vocabulary. Grokking the System Design Interview prepares the architecture discussion that senior candidates report.
• Record yourself once. Answer two behavioral questions on video in the STAR format, then watch the playback for pace.