I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta in Oct 2018
Interview
Facebook came out to my university for their "Face Off" recruitment event. Applied to Facebook via their website, got a guaranteed phone interview when I participated in their white boarding competition. Interview was set up 2 weeks later.
Disclaimer: this would be my first ever phone coding interview
Called promptly at our starting time, i was already prepared with the website for coding our solution already up.
Facebook disabled the ability for the website to compile code so it was just a syntax highlighted text editor.
After 5 minutes of of the employee saying what she does at Facebook, she proceeds to explain the technical question, catching me off guard as there would be no behavioral question like the website and recruiters mentioned there was likely going to be to start off the interview.
After 5 minutes of explaining the problem and running through the test cases, the interviewer stopped and let me take over with any questions i had.
the interviewers voice was a little bit hard to understand specifics when mentioning specific details, but the general idea for the duration of the call was able to be communicated. only had to ask for repetition twice. I then proceeded to explain the steps i would take to solve the problem over the phone saying out my steps and a possible working solution as well as the run time and space-time requirements that would be necessary,
I was cut off during the Big O talk and was asked to ignore that for the time being and instead begin coding, at what was probably 15 minutes into the interview at this point
During the coding of the problem asked many times if some assumptions could be made about the code, more often than not go an Inclusive OR response ("Yes") when the question wasn't phrased for a yes or no, leading to multiple awkward pauses.
Finished coding my first initial draft of the solution around the 40 minute mark, i asked if it was alright to start testing by walking through, we do that up until the 51 minute mark where she cuts me off to let me know we're running out of time and to point out an error in my code before moving on to say i could ask her 1 question about Facebook with the time we had left.
Overall the Interview seemed more focused on solving the problem than the details around the problem , no idea if my explanation before coding was worth anything.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a 2D array of letters, return whether a given word can be found in the grid.
To make a word, you can use any adjacent character next to the character you're currently on in the word. But you cannot use the same grid index twice
i.e. in a 2x2 array, you could find a 4 letter word by visiting each letter once
no referral, directly applied online.
1 takehome with blue jean
2 technical rounds
- easy lc in first round
- easy-medium lc in second round
that was sufficient for intern level interview
I applied through university. I interviewed at Meta
Interview
First step in person (University recruiting), two coding problems at the blackboard and 5 minutes for questions to the interviewer.
Second step remotely. A quarter behavioural and the rest three quarters of an hour for 2 coding problems.
I felt a strong connection to the interviewers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Motivations that brought me there.
Questions about SWEish experiences I had through my university career, both general (topic like particular challenges, collaboration) and more specific (experience with particular libraries).
Did the OA, the OA was 4 questions, passed, and then had an interview with a software engineer at Meta - still waiting to hear results back! I took it yesterday so fingers crossed
