Pinterest Interview Questions

Application

The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in October 2018.

Interview

Initial call with recruiter. Phone screen with an engineer, Leetcode "Medium" question. Onsite with four engineers and an eng manager, mostly whiteboard problem solving (not really algorithms per se). Everyone was friendly and smart.

Interview Questions

Application

The process took 8+ weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in October 2018.

Interview

The interview process was very drawn out. I had initial phone interview with HR in mid August. After that I had to wait 2.5 weeks for next phone interview with hiring attorney. After that i had to wait 3.5 weeks to go in for interviews with 4 people. After that waited 4 days for feedback and it was a no go. They asked me a lot of questions how I would implement processes, nothing unusual.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Pinterest in March 2018.

Interview

Very quick, nice people. Good process. Spoke first with the recruiter and then with the hiring manager. Recruiter got back to me the same day as my interview with hiring manager.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in August 2014.

Interview

Painless process. The recruiter was available and helpful throughout.

The interview questions ranged from hands-on coding, to algorithms, to architecture, to UI. Difficulty was above average, similar to a Google or Apple on-site. Stay focused, don't panic, explain your thought process as you go, and make sure your grey matter is well rested beforehand. The questions aren't insanely difficult, but they have pitfalls and traps, and getting a correct answer isn't the only thing that matters.

All the interviewers were super nice and went out of the way to answer questions I had about the company. Make sure you have thoughtful Pinterest-related questions to ask and new ideas to share. They are getting a read on your preparation, thought process, and priorities when doing the reverse interview.

Interview Questions

Negotiation

Base salary was a bit low, but they offered a stunning amount of equity. Don't bother negotiating if your only reason is "just cause." I had two other offers with higher base and commensurate equity so they were willing to wiggle a bit on the base/equity to increase my comfort level. Superb offer if you are bullish on the future of Pinterest, they are clearly looking for long-term, invested employees.

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest in August 2014.

Interview

A manager at Pinterest saw my profile on LinkedIn and reached out to me to have a chat. After we met up and talked, he set me up with a recruiter to arrange a phone interview with one of the engineers. During the phone interview, I was first asked about my background, then I was asked to write some code using collabedit, and finally I was given the opportunity to ask some questions.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA).

Interview

Applied through a university recruiter. The process was very smooth and well organized. I was kept up to date the whole time and took less than 2 weeks. I had 2 phone interviews - both included algorithms (read CLRS) and knowledge based question (know your Unix, networking, etc). Definitely make sure you review beforehand - the questions were more challenging than my Facebook/Google/Linkedin/Ebay/Microsoft/Salesforce/Yahoo/SV startup interviews.

I chose Pinterest over other companies because I felt that the impact I could make would be greater and the team that I interviewed with seemed like a good fit.

Interview Questions

Negotiation

No negotiation - the offer was higher than pretty much every other company.

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest.

Interview

Hiring process overall was pretty smooth. Fun phone screen. Had some delicious (albeit short) lunch there. Interviewed with five people, mostly amicable and interesting. One was open-ended about previous experience, one was architectural, and the rest focused only on scholastic algorithmical experience and O notation with a bit of data structure.

This was all in a couple of weeks from first sending in a resume and getting a feel for positions from the recruiter.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Pinterest.

Interview

Interviewed with them at a University Recruiting Event. Met with one of their new engineers and answered one question. The interview lasted about 30 minutes. The interviewer was really nice and did a good job of exploring various ways we could optimize the solution.

Application

I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA).

Interview

The process took a little more than a month. There was one phone interview, where there was a discussion about past projects and a small coding problem. For the on-site interview, I met 4 people.

1. Discussion on past projects. One algorithm question related to a data structures.
2. Object oriented code design question
3. Algorithm questions on arrays and tress.
4. System design question.

The people there were very nice, and the interview was smooth.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took a week. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in September 2013.

Interview

The whole process took about two weeks.

1. Apply online
2. Recruiter call you for 45min - ask you about your experience and what you want to do. She will check with hiring manager to see if there is a match. All companies does this step. However, I think its waste of time. They should start with Tech phone screening.

3. Tech phone screen ~1hr. (First 45min talking about your experience, last 15min for coding)
4. onsite interview (coding only)

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Pinterest.

Interview

Had one phone interview. Asked me to talk about my resume, explain hash tables (insertion/deletion/search time, how rehashing affects these times).

Interview Questions