I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Los Angeles, CA) in Oct 2016
Interview
I applied through career fair, and received email within a week. scheduled a tech phone interview the next week. It was a 45 min interview. the interviewer was nice, but I was not in good condition (just taken a nap, and my brain was not functioning well). we went straight to the problem. The problem is some dynamic programming stuff, I was afraid that I can't come up with the right solution so I just started writing stupid recursion solution to save some time. and then we spent some time fixing it. And I came up with the "right" solution at the end, but I don't have time to write it, so I just explained how it should work. and then I asked a few questions, and that is it. I got rejection email in only 15 minutes later.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
for encoding that {a,b,c,...,z}<->{1,2,3,...,26}
if given a list of digit e.g. [1,2,3], this may represent {1,2,3}->{a,b,c} or {12,3}->{l,c} or {1,23}->{a,w}. so there are 3 possible interpretations for list [1,2,3]
so, given a list of digit, calculate the number of possible interpretations for the list.
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.