The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Meta in Feb 2011
Interview
I got my resume submitted through an existing employer at Facebook. Was first contacted by a recruiter who called me up and had a half hour talk with me discussing why I wanted to join Facebook, and surprisingly also started asking me data structures and C++ basics like friend functions, complexity of searching and sorting etc (though she assured me that this was not an interview and only an informal chat). I got all her questions correct, though I donot know if that made any difference. I followed up with her sending her an email regarding scheduling an interview and then she wrote back gconfirming a phone interview slot. It was a phone screen with a Software Engineer at Facebook, and I was asked to code in Collabedit, a web interface in which both I and he could write and see the code.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You are given intervals of contiguous integers, like [1, 10), [15, 25), [40, 50), which are non-overlapping and of a fixed size.
Design a data structure to store these intervals and have the operations of insert, delete, and find functions
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.