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Updated May 29, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 33 ratings

2.9

“Average” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 33 ratings

Positive	21%
Neutral	36%
Negative	42%

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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2011 (took a day)

My college recruiter had a copy of resume on my file. After the big college employment conference I received a phone call due to my software and technical capabilities. It was a short, 15-minute interview process.

Interview Questions

Describe to me what a hash table is.

Answer Question

Other Details

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

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Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2012 in San Francisco, CA (took 6 weeks)

In late January, I got a referral from a friend at the company, who told me that several new hires were about to be brought into the inside sales department. Within a couple of days of applying, I received an e-mail from a recruiter asking for my availability to conduct a Skype interview. After five days with no response, I received an offer from another company. I e-mailed the recruiter and told her of my situation and asked when I could expect an interview to be scheduled. She called me promptly and explained that a new class would not be brought on until March and asked if I would still like to proceed. Because I was so excited about Twitter, I told her that I would decline the other offer and move forward (my own decision, but I felt that strongly about the Twitter position).

A Skype call was finally scheduled for the following week. I prepared for several days the mock sales presentation that I was to give on Twitter's ad products. The Skype call and interview went very well and the Team Lead I spoke with was extremely friendly and casual. The next day, I was scheduled for an in-person interview with three individuals on the sales team, all of whom were very nice and asked the standard questions, as well as many pertaining to why I was interested in Twitter specifically. I got very positive feedback and left the interview feeling very good about my prospects. I then sent thank you e-mails and cards.

A week went by, and I sent a standard follow-up e-mail to the recruiter, reiterating my interest in the company. I received no response. A week later, I sent another follow-up e-mail. Again, I received no response. The following week, I sent an e-mail politely stating that, as I was exploring other opportunities but Twitter remained my number one choice, I was curious as to whether I was still being considered. Within a matter of minutes, the recruiter replied, saying that I was still being considered and that she would call me that afternoon to discuss next steps. I received no call. A week later, I sent another e-mail again asking for a timeline on next steps. I received an e-mail shortly stating that while Twitter wanted to consider me for the upcoming class, they now were projecting a start date of "either early summer or late fall". Needless to say, I was surprised, since I had been told that a new class would be starting in March.

A week later, I found out through friends that a new class had indeed started in March, but I was not selected. The fact that I wasn't selected doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the fact that I was repeatedly led on by the company, repeatedly ignored, and flat out lied to. Twitter seems to have absolutely zero respect for the time and effort invested by candidates and I firmly believe that I would have heard nothing from the company after the interview had I not repeatedly followed up.

Twitter has an incredible product line and I have no doubt that working at the company would have been a tremendously fun, educational, and productive opportunity. However, Twitter's recruiting process is by far the worst I have ever experienced. It was disrespectful and dishonest, and I hope that this is recognized within the company as something that needs to be addressed promptly and properly.

Interview Questions

What excites you about Twitter?

Answer Question

How do you deal with resistance from fellow employees on an initiative or task?

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a Presentation, a Group/Panel Interview, a 1:1 Interview and a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2012 in San Francisco, CA (took 2 months)

Applied on Twitter's website and was contacted a week later. The recruiter contacted me via jobvite to see if I'd be available for a a Skype interview. After giving her my availability, she took two days to respond about scheduling for my interview. It was a role play which went well. I prepared a lot for this interview, and my interviewer was really nice. I was told I'd hear back in a week, and when I didn't hear back in two, I reached out to the recruiters. No response, and then after about four weeks, or maybe five ... the recruiter asked for my availability for an onsite interview. After I told her my availability, she dropped off the face of the earth. I'm kidding, she's still at twitter, she tweets about how awesome it is to (not) work at Twitter all the time. Anyway, after about a week other candidates had actually tracked down said recruiter on Twitter and she responded saying they'd filled all their positions a long time ago. What a way to represent, Twitter.

Interview Questions

What do you do that's related to being an Account Manager?

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Feb 2012 (took 2 weeks)

I was told to write a scpy function. The input and output are defined as I want

Interview Questions

write scpy function

Answer Question

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Helpful Interview?

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Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 in San Francisco, CA (took 4+ weeks)

They were moderately quick to answer my application once I got a recommendation from a current employee. I proceeded to do a Skype call, where the leader of the team concluded she would like to invite me to a 1:1 meeting. After that, I and had to chase down the HR manager to close a date for the onsite interview. They called me almost two weeks after to coordinate a date. I flew over from to San Francisco in Christmas time and they did not pay for any expenses... Went through 3 rounds of 30-minute interviews with the team director, one of the managers and two peers. After two more weeks of insisting, they finally wrote saying it was not a good fit for the company.

Interview Questions

Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years in this company?

Answer Question

Do you feel this is a step back in your career?

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through an Employee Referral and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 (took a day)

I conducted an initial phone interview with a Twitter engineer via the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers program. I interacted with two HR people via email before the phone interview.

The interview lasted about 30 minutes, and he only asked one technical question: implement the "getElementsByClassName" function using a simplified model of the DOM. This was based on my stated preference for front-end engineering. I went with a recursive solution to the problem, and after a couple minutes had it working most of the way. We talked about improvements to be made, such as a non-recursive algorithm, that would improve it's efficiency. Then I asked a few questions about Twitter.

I thought the question went reasonably well as I answered it correctly, but was surprised about the lack of other technical questions. He said I would get a followup within three days, but eventually I contacted the HR person to ask about the status of my application and got a rejection email very soon after with little explanation.

Interview Questions

Implement the getElementsByClassName(element, className) function in Javascript.

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Other Details

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

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Helpful Interview?

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Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 (took 2 weeks)

I was contacted by an internal recruiter and agreed to interview. A phone interview was set up by another person, where all of my personal information was incorrect, so I had to confirm my details. This was a Skype interview. After I passed the first round, another phone interview round was scheduled, where again, my personal information was incorrect, so I had to confirm again. This round was also supposed to be over Skype, but the interviewer called me on the phone instead. Both rounds had fairly easy questions with collaborative coding on the web. I knew I didn't make it after the second round, but haven't heard back from the recruiter after that.

Overall, the interviews themselves were fair, but the organization was just absolutely terrible.

Interview Questions

Create an iterative version of a recursive algorithm that uses as little extra space as possible.

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Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2011 in San Francisco, CA (took a day)

One technical interview, asked me a tree related problem, not solving the problem quickly enough, failed..

Interview Questions

In a binary integer value tree, find the lowest level common ancestor of two values.

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Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2011 in San Francisco, CA (took 1 week)

The recruiter set up the date and time.

The engineer asked me to introduce myself then to code on collabedit.com. He has only one question.

Interview Questions

Given n sets of choices: (1,2,3), (2,3,4), (4,5)

You pick one element from each set of choices.

Generate all possible picking.

View Answers (6)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

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Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2011 in San Francisco, CA (took a day)

Referred by a colleague who previously worked with the Director for Talent Acquisition; I was immediately invited in for an onsite interview. Prior to, I spent time researching Twitter's platform, technical staff, search patterns, etc.

Tele-communication (calling from the outside in) is an ongoing issue; you won't be able to call into Twitter to speak with an internal staff person if you need to confirm directions, your arrival time, traffic pile-ups, etc.--I encountered two driving from the South Bay into the City at 2pm!! This was frustrating as the coordinating staff's information for BART/parking was incomplete at best.

I arrive for the interview running behind schedule, just as the coordinator is actually calling me on my cell phone as I walk into the building...ironic. She explained, they have 'no phones' at their desks and that there was a problem with the phone at the front desk....???? What's up with that???

The interviewers consisted of two engineers who asked about sourcing and offer guidelines, two recruiters who asked standard recruiting/sourcing questions (boolean strings, sites used, etc.), and the Director. I spoke with the Director, then the recruiters (my total time investment was FIVE and a quarter hours--an hour and a quarter driving up, two and a half hours onsite, and one and a half hours in return traffic).

The Director immediately shoots 'technical engineering type questions' -- even though I know the answers I'm completely caught off guard and thinking to myself, why the heck is he asking me about 'Software life cycle', 'what is object oriented design'...??? Then another more appropriate recruiting question; 'You have 90 days and unlimited budget to recruit 100 engineers, without which the company will fail; what do you do? -- answered accordingly.

When I interviewed with the recruiters, as their side of the interview draws to a close they ask if I have any questions. I'm very curious about how technically astute each of them is, so I ask them individually to please explain the 'software life cycle' .... their answers were incorrect/skewed.

Overall the interview seemed to go well with positive feedback from each interviewer -- the Director ended by saying....'we all know how it is to be on the waiting end so I assure you that will not be the case. I have my notes and we'll be debriefing and get back to you by the end of the week.' That's an indirect quote but not far from actual content. I sent 'Thank You' notes and follow-up emails. That was the absolute LAST I ever heard from Twitter.

Hypothetically -- You have a candidate referred by a "personal colleague", coming to your San Francisco office from the South Bay, sends you a 'Thank You' note and follow-up notes -- never mind the cold-shoulder the candidate gets, but refusal to acknowledge that FIVE AND A QUARTER hours out of that candidate's time/life warrants no acknowledgement or is less valuable than yours!!, well that's just a plain ugly candidate experience.

My initial reluctance to share this experience was because I thought it was a fluke/an individual experience--the world's largest micro blog can't possibly be so irresponsible in closing the loop with candidates--particularly onsite candidate...? I've since learned from internal Twitter ppl as well as others who have interviewed, this is par for the course. Great tool...poor practices.