I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Aug 2015
Interview
Very friendly and open. Strong emphasis on problem solving and interpersonal skills and little emphasis on technical minutiae. (The initial interview was pure code but no gotcha questions.)
The on site interview was four one hour sessions with either one or two people (the second being a shadow interviewer in training) with fifteen minutes of algorithm stuff and forty five of problem solving. (One was just problem solving).
The only negative with all this is that it was very compressed (no breaks between sessions except for lunch which was with another employee)
I was recalibrated afterwards and had to do an extra interview by phone. (I scored high on a newly added question so I was reinterviewed on the question it replaced.) The result was that my offer improved.
Throughout the process everyone involved was friendly, open, and within limits helpful.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I won't answer this because it's covered by NDA and it wouldn't do you any good. I will say that most of the questions are thought provoking and have no one right answer. Facebook's recruiters will give you lots of excellent advice for preparation — their goal is to find good people, not trip people up on dumb stuff.
Took about a month altogether, which felt longer given the intensity of the process. Kicked off with a technical screening, followed by two rigorous coding interviews. The DSA question on binary tree vertical order traversal hit me hard at first, but then I recognized the prompt instantly — I had just worked through something similar on PracHub. The final round was focused on system design, and while I ended up receiving an offer, I ultimately declined it. Overall, a challenging experience that definitely sharpened my skills.
1 leetcode med, 1 leetcode hard. make sure you know your DSA and leetcode questions. I wasn't able to get an offer bc i didnt complete the second question. Got a reply 2 days later saying they would move on
Overall, the process took a little over two weeks, which felt a bit longer than I anticipated. After a quick screening, I went through two technical rounds focusing on coding and DSA concepts. One of the questions was a classic palindrome check; mid-way through, I realized it was something I had practiced on PracHub just days earlier. The final step was a casual behavioral interview. I was relieved to get an offer shortly after, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string, determine if it is a valid palindrome considering only alphanumeric characters and ignoring case.