Wayfair

Application

I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Wayfair (Boston, MA) in January 2018.

Interview

This is for the Entry-Level Software Engineer role for the Wayfair labs programme.
I applied to Wayfair through an Employee Referral in the first week of January.
I was contacted by a recruiter within 12-15 days, and the whole process took 2 weeks.

Phone Screen:
The recruiter scheduled a brief call and asked about my experience, what do I know about the company and their programme. They might throw in a couple of questions regarding your projects and how well you have worked in a team. Having PHP on your resume is a bonus as they work on that a lot.

Coding Challenge + Code Sample :
The recruiter sends a Coder-pad link, with a question on it. You have to complete it 60 minutes. The question is fairly easy. They will also ask you to send them a code sample. It can be any project you have worked which can show your coding abilities. (Make sure its modular and well commented and follows the coding standards).

Technical Interview (60 minutes)
Once an engineer reviews the coding challenge and your sample, the recruiter will schedule a phone interview with an engineer (60 minutes). You will work on the same Coder-pad link of the coding challenge.
The engineer will ask you about a couple of projects you have worked on.
He will then ask you to explain your code which you did in the challenge. Make sure you read it before the interview and analyze for time/space complexity and could you have done it with a better approach.
He will move on to a php question. He will throw in a PHP code and ask you to explain and debug it (mostly related to an edge case) and then try to find what output it will generate.
This part was tricky because not everyone has worked with PHP a lot. But you can ask him to explain certain syntax you aren't able to understand. This part checks your presence of mind.
The last leg of the interview was a VERY easy array based question. Try to throw in a couple of alternative solutions and compare their time and space complexity.

Behavioral Round:
After I cleared the technical interview, the recruiter scheduled a behavioral round of 30 minutes. The Wayfair labs programme manager will take this round mostly and will ask you all those tricky behavioral questions. They will focus on how can you work in a situation of conflict, or a difficult person.

Final call with the recruiter :
After the behavioral round, the recruiter scheduled a call within 2 days providing an update on my candidacy.

Overall Experience:
Very good. The recruiter was very prompt.
 The interviewers made sure I was comfortable talking to them. They were looking for a conversation than a traditional interview.

Tips/Suggestions :
1. Try to come up with alternative solutions to the problems you solve to give them a better understanding of how you think. You should explain your solution in an easy way.
2. Prepare your projects well and try to tell express what you learned from them.
3. CULTURE FIT is something they really care about.
4. Come up with the good question to ask them.
5. Research on the company REALLY well. Follow their tech blog, learn about their work culture from the engineers working there. They appreciate it during the interview.

Good Luck!!

Interview Questions