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Ning Inc Interview Questions & Reviews

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Web: www.ning.com | HQ: Palo Alto, CA

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Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 11 ratings

3.1

“Average” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 11 ratings

Positive	27%
Neutral	55%
Negative	18%

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1–10 of 11 Ning Inc Interviews

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1.0

Very Easy Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Apr 2011 (took a day)

Two calls-HR and hiring manager. Very funny, the hiring manager is a designer, so basically she didn't ask me any technical questions.

Interview Questions

What is Agile Development Cycles?

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2011 (took 3 weeks)

First round phone screener with HR contact who either did not read, or did not understand a marketing resume - as they normally recruit for engineering roles. Given a very open ended project brief.

2nd round interview with hiring manager. Started off with a tactics question - not a good sign. Aggressive tone, and unstructured in style. Zero focus on achievements/experience, all focused on hypotheticals about how I would do the job, what I thought of what they've been doing recently and why.

Lack of communication between HR and hiring manager, leading to significant gap between hiring manager phone interview and feedback/not progressing further.

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Nov 2010 in Palo Alto, CA (took 2 weeks)

There are two phone interviews, all programming questions. Just need to prepare some basic knowledge in Data Structure, Algorithms, and programming skills. Thy will ask you to actually code on a shared online document and ask some puzzle questions.

Interview Questions

Calculate fibonacci for a very large number, and try to write a program to calculate it.

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2010 (took 3 weeks)

Long interview process, but for a good reason. They are in the process of rebuilding and want to ensure that they have the right personnel. I had 2 phone interviews, one project assignment and then met with eight different people at their headquarters. Nice people, good atmosphere, but in the end, I just didn't have the background they were looking for.

Interview Questions

In a practice scenario, respond to a customer complaint and explain the logic in how you responded.

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, a Presentation, a Skills Test and a Personality Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2008 in Palo Alto, CA (took 3 weeks)

It was before the layoffs in January 2009 so their interviewing practice might've been different back then. The overall impression the company was a big mess.

I was approached by an internal recruiter asking what time I can talk. Once I gave the time, I was told my skills were not relevant. After about a week I got an email it was a mistake and now they wanted me to take a test (they also assigned a different recruiter). They provided me with a description and links to the documentation that didn't lead to any documentation. I managed to find some documentation and complete the test. A couple of days later I couldn't find the same documentation because the links changed again.

Then I had a phone interview with some strange questions, with which I didn't have real life experience and I thought I busted it. But they told me I did perfectly, and invited me in person. I had an interview with 2 guys, one of which was never looking at me and always staring at the floor. The questions were more of a general type and puzzles. At one point the eye contact avoiding guy started to argue with me about an algorithm he didn't have a clue about and removed everything I wrote from the board. I didn't really do well, but they were kind of arrogant and it wasn't comfortable. Then I had an interview with another guy, probably more senior. He asked me the same question as the guy on the phone, I told him I already had it but he continued anyway. He refused to take a look at a real life application I had on my laptop. He kept repeating he didn't want to be late for a train, at this point I should've better let him go... Then I talked to some executive over a speaker phone. He asked me to write a very simple loop.

Next day I spoke with the recruiter, they didn't want to continue with me and I would never in my life continue with them. A couple of month later they had layoffs, one of the recruiters was let go and congratulated me I was lucky not to get in.

Interview Questions

You have a database table and millions of transactions. How would you scale it?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

More Ning Inc Software Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2009 in Palo Alto, CA (took 3 weeks)

Overall good experience. The questions were relevant and understandable, though the questions seemed more geared toward feeling out cultural fit rather than job performance abilities.

The people I interviewed with were all very professional, but down to earth as well. I was treated with respect and it seemed as though the interviewers were genuinely interested in what I had to say. Ultimately did not get an offer though.

Interview Questions

Describe your experience as a Ning user

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2010 in Palo Alto, CA (took a day)

Recruiter found me. Position requires intermediate to advanced coding. Recruiter had a set of HTML/PHP/SQL questions.

Interview Questions

What do the HTML status codes 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 represent

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2007 (took a day)

I had a description of a software engineer, but it was for a QA tech lead. I declined since it was not a match.

Interview Questions

It was regarding a testing project that I did for a couple of months.

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2009 (took 4+ weeks)

Approached by recruiter that saw my info online. Initially had some communications with the recruiter over email, then had a over the phone conversation. The recruiter arranged a phone interview with one of the engineer, but the interview missed the time due to some work issues that came up the last minute. Rescheduled and completed the phone interview, the recruiter arranged another phone interview with a different engineer, and was rejected after the 2nd phone interview.

Interview Questions

Describe an algorithm that sorts a list of numbers into alternating order, i.e.
a < b > c < d > e....

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

More Ning Inc Software Engineer Interviews

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jun 2009 in Palo Alto, CA (took 5 days)

I dont understand why engineering managers are asked very low level technical questions and then base the screen selection based on the outcome of the answers... Understandably managers ought to be stong technically... but that is in the technology domain, not at a level a junior engineer needs to be proficient at.