Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

We’re interested in people with diverse backgrounds and encourage students from all degree disciplines to apply to our programmes.

For our graduate programme you must

• Be in your final year of study for a university degree or higher, or have graduated, and
• Have the permanent legal right to work in the country you’re applying to.

Exceptions

• For the UK and UAE, we consider candidates requiring visa sponsorship, but in the UAE, priority will be given to UAE nationals. 
• For graduate roles in US, we will not consider applications from candidates seeking Optional Practical Training (OPT) or Curricular Practical Training (CPT) employment.

We’re interested in people with diverse backgrounds and encourage students from all degree disciplines to apply to our programmes.

For our internship programme, you must

• Be in your in your penultimate (second to last) or final year of study of your bachelor or post-graduate degree.
• Have the permanent legal right to work in the country you’re applying to, for the full duration of the internship.
• The Bank does not sponsor work permits for Internships.

Exceptions

• For the UAE, we consider candidates requiring visa sponsorship, but priority will be given to UAE nationals. 
• If you’re required to completed mandatory National or Military service after graduation, we will accept applications from final year students.

Academic criteria – UK

• We’re looking for potential, which means we won’t look at your grades, but we’d like to see that you’re committed to learning and development. This could be through traditional education, but doesn’t have to be.
• If you have a degree or are currently enrolled at university, you’re unable to apply for this programme, but you can apply to one of our graduate opportunities.

Academic criteria – India

• Candidates should have a degree in engineering/technology or commerce/economics/science/administration from a recognised institution. 
• Graduating this year or in the last two years.
• 60% and above in degree.
• No prior apprenticeship or work experience.

Academic criteria – Singapore

• Legal right to work on a permanent basis in Singapore for the full duration of the apprenticeship (we’re unable to sponsor work permits for this opportunity).
• Recent graduates of a polytechnic.

UK Apprenticeship Funding

• To be eligible for a Government funded apprenticeship you must have lived in the UK or European Economic Area (EEA) for the last 3 consecutive years.

Not at all. We welcome students from all degree disciplines and encourage applications from students from all backgrounds.

No you don’t. Work experience can help provide practical insights into how a bank operates and the type of work you might like to do, but we don’t expect previous work experience.

For our graduate roles you must

• be eligible to work permanently in the country that you’re applying to.

Exceptions

• For the UK and UAE, we consider candidates requiring visa sponsorship, but in the UAE, priority will be given to UAE nationals. 
• For graduate roles in US, we will not consider applications from candidates seeking Optional Practical Training (OPT) or Curricular Practical Training (CPT) employment.
• If you’re required to completed mandatory National or Military service after graduation, we will accept applications from final year students.

For our internship roles

• You must have the legal right to work on a permanent basis in the country for which you’re applying for the full duration of the internship.

For UK Apprenticeships

• The Government’s Apprenticeship funding requires candidates to have lived in the UK/EEA for the last 3 consecutive years
• If you’re enrolled at university or have gained a degree or higher qualification, you’re not eligible for our Apprenticeship Programmes, however we encourage you to apply for our Internship or Graduate opportunities.

We can’t give you an exact timeframe because every role is different. However, we’ll try our best to keep you up to date on your progress.  You can learn more here.

We receive a high volume of applications each year and we make every effort to reply to each candidate as soon as possible.  The time this takes can vary depending on the time of year you applied, the programme you applied for, and how many applications have been received for that role.

Unfortunately not, you must choose one business area, when you make your application. To help you make this decision, we recommend you read about our different business areas in before applying. If we read your application and think you’re a perfect fit for a different business area, we’ll give you a call to have a chat.

Yes, but you’ll have to wait 6 months from the date you originally applied, before re-applying.

If you try to re-apply before this date, you’ll receive an error message. We take any attempts to circumvent this policy very seriously.

If you successfully progress to face-to-face interview stage, the first person you will meet will be a member of our Early Careers team. You can explain to them that you’d like to make a change, and they can explore if it’s possible.

You need to find a job you’d like to apply for. You’ll then be guided through our recruitment process.  This will include uploading your CV/Resume.

Yes, visit our experienced professionals careers website.

We encourage early application. Student applications area seasonal.

All countries, excluding Africa and the Middle East:

• Vacancies open: 1 September onwards
• Vacancies close: Most roles don’t have a set closing date, but by February we typically close roles, which is why we encourage early application.

For Africa & Middle East

• Vacancies open 1 January
• Vacancies close 30 April, each year.

No. Some of our roles have deadlines, but most are rolling recruitment. Don’t wait too long to apply – we may close applications early once we’ve received enough candidates.

Our Programmes commence 1st September each year.

The graduate programme is an 18 month programme.

We want all applicants to feel able to perform at their best throughout our hiring process.  We’ll support you with reasonable adjustments or accommodations, which you might need due to your long-term health condition, neurodivergence, disability or mental health condition.

Start by contacting us here.

• We’ll need you to contact us, before starting any assessments
• Any information you provide will be treated with complete confidentiality and shared only on a need-to-know basis.

Read more about Recruitment Privacy Policy

Our assessments have a number of accessibility features, available self-serve within the assessment, including colour contrast, keyboard only navigation and adjustable screen size. Closed captions are included for the video and audio content in our Workplace Scenarios assessment.

If these features do not support your needs or you need any other adjustment or accommodation due to your long-term health condition, neurodivergence, disability or mental health condition, please contact us here.

Our assessments have a number of accessibility features, available self-serve within the assessment, including colour contrast, keyboard only navigation and adjustable screen size.

If these features do not support your needs or you need any other adjustment or accommodation due to your long-term health condition, neurodivergence, disability or mental health condition, please contact us here.

Find the email that included a link to your assessment. This is how you can get back to your online assessment.

If you’re unable to find the original email contact us here explaining the issue. Please share the email address you used for your application.

If you were disconnected while completing an assessment, our testing systems are designed with this in mind. The system will automatically save your progress so you can re-enter the test and pick it up where you left off. You can log back in using the original assessment link.

If your assessment froze during completion, it could be because the internet connection – between your computer and the assessment system – is interrupted. When this occurs, please do not click on the test’s Exit button. Please refresh or reload the frozen assessment page, and you should be able to continue.

If you’re having any other technical issue or would like to check system requirements, please visit SHL’s assessment Help Centre for further support.

You’ll receive an email invitation to complete the assessment which will contain a URL. This takes you directly to the assessment, no registration is needed.

For our Skills Insight Assessment, the URL will take you to an assessment hub where you can read more about the Early Careers programme you applied to and tips for completing your assessment, before starting it.

When you’ve finished your assessment, you’ll receive an email notification that confirms we’ve received your completed assessment. Also, once you have completed the assessment, the status of their assessment on screen will have changed to Completed.

To find any emails from us, visit our careers portal, and go to ‘My Job Page’ and view all emails from us.

You will receive a feedback report upon completion of the Skills Insight Assessment, irrespective of the outcome. This report is based on your responses to the behavioural skills element of that assessment.

It highlights your top skills and areas where you can continue to stretch and grow, and is aligned to the skills we value at Standard Chartered. Regardless of the outcome of the assessment process, the insights provided in the feedback report can help you grow, develop and realise your potential.

We do not provide feedback on other online assessments.

Please contact us here.

Make sure you include:

• your full name,
• email address you used
• job requisition ID
• candidate ID

With this information, we’ll be able to help you.

The Skills Insight Assessment is designed to give you the opportunity to showcase your overall potential. The assessment focuses on how you approach different situations, think through information, and make decisions. It doesn’t measure your academic knowledge. 

We use it to objectively understand the extent to which your behavioural and reasoning skills are aligned to what is most important to be successful in an Early Careers role. Therefore, it helps us and you to make sure the role is right for you.

The Skills Insight Assessment comprises two elements:

• Behavioural Skills: measures the behavioural skills that are critical for success and helps us to understand how you typically work.
• Reasoning Skills: measures the reasoning skills that are critical for success in Early Careers roles. The assessment is designed to gain an understanding of your general cognitive ability based on three key aspects of reasoning: Deductive Reasoning, Inductive Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning.

First, you’ll be presented with a series of questions and asked to select the behavioural skills that best represent you. This section is untimed, but we recommend setting aside 15-20 minutes to complete it.

Next, you’ll be asked to analyse scenarios, interpret information, identify patterns and sequences, perform numerical calculations, and draw logical conclusions from the information provided. This section is timed and takes 36mins. Before you start the section, you’ll have the opportunity to complete practice questions. We recommend doing these to familiarise yourself with the format and types of questions you’ll see in the assessment.

We use automated decision-making in the Skills Insight Assessment to support a consistent and fair process for all candidates. Candidate responses are scored by the assessment system against pre-determined scoring criteria and answers that are relevant to skills required for the role.

The score is then compared with a score set in advance by human decision-makers. If the score meets or exceeds that level, the candidate progresses to the next stage of the recruitment process.

This approach helps us manage large application volumes efficiently and provide timely outcomes to candidates, while applying the same scoring process consistently to everyone.

AI is not used in this assessment.

For the reasoning skills element of the Skills Insight Assessment, there are practice questions embedded within the assessment itself. We strongly recommend you complete these. They are not scored, and you can take them as many times as you like.

Practicing for the behavioural skills element is not necessary, as there are no right or wrong answers. The questions are designed to understand your preferences, work style, and how you naturally tend to respond in different situations. The best approach is to answer honestly and choose the statements that describe you most accurately. The format is straightforward, and you simply need to choose the statements that best describe you.

Should you wish to take full-length practice tests before completing your actual assessment you can do so here. The relevant practice tests are the Behaviour-Based Assessment and General Ability Test (Mobile-Enabled, Interactive).

Set aside 60 minutes overall to complete the assessments.

The behavioural skills element is not timed but should take 15-20mins. You can take as long as you need, though we recommend not spending too much time on any one answer.

Only the reasoning skills element is timed and will take exactly 36mins. You can take as much time as you need to review the instructions and to complete the practice questions before you start the timed questions.

The behavioural skills section is untimed, and you can leave the assessment and come back to it again later, although we recommend completing it in one sitting. Your responses will be saved up to the last question you answered.

You can’t pause or leave the reasoning skills section. You must complete this in one sitting.

If you don’t complete the assessment by the deadline, your assessment results will not be considered. We recommend you complete the assessment as soon as you can.

Brazilian Portuguese, Canadian French, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English International, English US, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish.

Yes, the Skills Insight Assessment, provided by SHL, is bias audited on an annual basis. The most recent bias audit results can be found here.

Demographic data (gender and ethnicity) are obtained via candidate disclosures. That information is then used to calculate impact ratios. This is done by dividing the selection rate (proportion of a group passing the assessment) of a specified demographic category by the selection rate of the most selected demographic category.

The Skills Insight Assessment helps us to determine your suitability for the Early Careers role you’ve applied to, by assessing how you approach different situations, think through information, and make decisions.

You may refer to our Privacy Statement for information on our data retention policy. Please contact the Americas Employee Relations team (ER.Americas@sc.com) for such requests or any questions.

Please contact ER.Americas@sc.com and advise that you wish to decline to participate in the Skills Insight Assessment, in which case your suitability for the Early Careers role(s) you applied for will be assessed at other stages of the application process.

If you are invited to do this assessment, it means that programming is a critical skill for the job you have applied for. The coding simulation helps us to evaluate your programming skills in an objective and standardised way.

You will have two problem statements to solve by running and testing your own source code within a simulated IDE environment.

If you’ve applied for a data science role, your assessment will also include relevant multiple-choice questions assessing your foundational data science knowledge. These will be presented before the coding simulation.

We use automated decision-making in the Coding Simulation to support a consistent and fair process for all candidates. The assessment measures a candidate’s ability to develop code that is functionally correct, produces the expected outputs, is efficient, and follows coding best practices. The assessment system uses automated scoring to assess these key dimensions and combines them into an overall score, with the greatest emphasis placed on the quality and correctness of the solution.

The overall score is then compared with a score set in advance by human decision-makers. If the candidate’s score does not meet that level, they do not progress within the recruitment process.

This approach helps us manage large application volumes efficiently and provide timely outcomes to candidates, while applying the same scoring process consistently to everyone.

This assessment uses AI to automatically evaluate your programming ability. This enables assessment of your code even when it does not compile, which is not possible using standard evaluation methods. This allows us to gain deeper insights into your coding skills, even when minor errors cause your code to fail.

For some roles, the Coding Simulation uses AI-based proctoring to flag any potential violations during test-completion, ensuring assessment-session integrity. You’ll be notified if this applies as you enter the assessment. A breakdown of the features will be available at that point.

The assessment instructions are available only in English.

The programming languages available to use are C++, Java, Java script, Python, Kotlin, Haskell, Golang or Scala.

If you’ve applied for a data science role, the programming language is restricted to Python and R.

It is a timed assessment. Depending on the Technology role you have applied for, your assessment will take between 45-85 minutes.

Yes, you can complete a practice test here. You should select the ‘Coding Simulation’ practice test. The test presents one practical coding question, which you can answer using your preferred programming language. The practice test lasts 30 minutes.

If you encounter a runtime error or a timed-out error while compiling code, you should ensure that there are no infinite loops in your code, as this may lead to compilation issues.

If you are receiving an error even after writing correct code, you should be aware that each question includes both visible test cases as well as hidden (edge) test cases. You are advised to review your code and the question carefully and then attempt to compile again after making the necessary modifications.

If the issue persists or you have additional questions, you should visit SHL’s assessment Help Centre for further support.

You must use a laptop or desktop computer; tablets and phones are not supported.
You can use any of the following browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.

You can’t pause or leave the Coding Simulation. You must complete this in one sitting.

If you don’t complete the assessment by the deadline, your assessment results will not be considered.  We recommend you complete the assessment as soon as you can.

The Workplace Scenarios assessment is used to evaluate your motivation for applying to us and other key skills that are critical for success in all Early Careers roles here.

Your responses to the assessment help us understand if you’re the right fit for an Early Careers position in an objective and standardised way.

In addition, this assessment is designed to give you insight into how we work and what matters to us. It’s important for us, as well as for you, that you’re the right fit for the role.

You’ll be presented with four scenarios that you may experience when working at Standard Chartered. For each scenario, you’ll be given some background information, either in video or text format. You will then be asked one question about each scenario.

The Workplace Scenario assessment is a one-way video interview. This means you’ll be asked to record a video of yourself responding to the questions. There are prompts provided for each question to help you answer fully. It doesn’t matter what order you answer them in.

You have the flexibility to record responses at a time that suits you.

We recommend you take the assessment as soon as possible once you’ve received the invitation. Once you’ve completed it, your responses will be reviewed by a member of our Early Careers team and they will let you know the outcome as soon as possible.

Please set aside 20 minutes for this assessment. The actual questions are timed. You will have 1 minute to prepare, and 2 minutes to record your answer to each question.

Yes, there will be a short practice question to check your device compatibility and to help you get comfortable with recording your response. You can complete the practice question as many times as you like.

We recommend doing this to familiarise yourself with the format and experience of the assessment.

No, you can’t pause during your preparation or recording time. You should complete this assessment in one sitting.

If you are unhappy with your first response, you will have one opportunity to re-record your response to each question. You must submit your second attempt as your response.

AI is used only to help check your device compatibility (i.e. that your camera and microphone are working) to ensure you have an optimal assessment experience and that it is audible for our Early Careers team to evaluate.

AI is not used to evaluate your responses to this assessment. Your responses will be evaluated by a member of our Early Careers team.

Yes, you must submit a video recording. If you prefer not to see yourself while recording your responses, you can minimise the frame displaying your face by clicking on the icon in the top right of the frame.

Yes, you’ll have one opportunity to re-record your response to each question. You must submit your second attempt as your response.

It doesn’t matter what you wear, or what your background looks like. We are interested in only what you have to say.

The video interview will be presented in English. Please submit your response in English.

Yes. We offer apprenticeships in a range of different businesses across our markets. You can find out more here

For any employment verification, please email AskHR@sc.com with the ex-employee’s consent. If you’re a former employee needing to confirm an employment verification letter, please email to AskHR@sc.com.

Please refer to our Recruitment Privacy Statement, which is available at here.