I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at TikTok in Oct 2023
Interview
Reached the 2nd coding round and got rejected Had 2 leetcode mediums and 1 hard. First interviewer was communicative and engaging. My algorithm was mostly there and he seemed happy with it since the interview started a few mins late. Second interviewer was much less engaging - did introductions, gave me a coding question and went on mute for more than half of the interview. Then gave a leetcode hard with 10-15mins to go which I probably would’ve got if I had more time. Overall it was an okay experience and TikTok seems like an interesting company to work for. The bar seems high as solving a leetcode medium + hard in 40 mins while explaining your thoughts, cleaning your code and writing good tests is hard for anyone. Was awkward because the interviewer had muted themselves for quite a while.
Quick phone interview
2 leetcode interviews
Cross functional interview
Interview with manager
Overall, a hard process. Aligned with other big techs. If you study for leetcode, you should be fine
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe in a non technical way a technical problem you solved
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at TikTok in May 2026
Interview
60 minutes virtual interview. Started with a brief introduction, a few questions about resume, then the leetcode style coding interview. Got 2 medium questions. The interviewer would ask about the complexity and the potential optimization.
First meeting was a quick HR discussion. 30minutes. We talked about how I would fit into the role and what is the team composition. The next one was a live coding task relate to algorithms like what you would find from leet code.
